Thanks for this. Hauke Hillebrandt has been thinking about this concept of what he calls ‘mission hedging’ for a while, hopefully he’ll weigh in.
In my view, the most potentially compelling example of this is shorting Facebook stock. From publicly available information, it seems that the large majority of Dustin Moskowitz and Cari Tuna’s wealth is still in Facebook. If Facebook were to go under (unlikely, but possible), then the large majority of explicitly EA money would disappear. Given strongly diminishing returns, if you’re interested in funding the areas that Open Phil funds that have a small gap (like AI or EA community growth), you’d therefore have a much bigger impact in the world in which Facebook decreases in value.
Thanks for this. Hauke Hillebrandt has been thinking about this concept of what he calls ‘mission hedging’ for a while, hopefully he’ll weigh in.
In my view, the most potentially compelling example of this is shorting Facebook stock. From publicly available information, it seems that the large majority of Dustin Moskowitz and Cari Tuna’s wealth is still in Facebook. If Facebook were to go under (unlikely, but possible), then the large majority of explicitly EA money would disappear. Given strongly diminishing returns, if you’re interested in funding the areas that Open Phil funds that have a small gap (like AI or EA community growth), you’d therefore have a much bigger impact in the world in which Facebook decreases in value.