I’m curious about your take on prioritizing between science funding and other causes. In the 80k interview you said:
When we were starting out, it was important to us that we put some money in science funding and some money in policy funding. Most of that is coming through our other causes that we already identified, but we also want to get experience with those things.
We also want to gain experience in just funding basic science, and doing that well and having a world-class team at that. So, some of our money in science goes there as well.
That’s coming much less from a philosophy point of view and much more from a track record… Philanthropy has done great things in the area of science and in the area of policy. We want to have an apparatus and an infrastructure that lets us capitalise on that kind of opportunity to do good as philanthropists.
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So, I feel like this isn’t Open Phil’s primary bet, but I could imagine in a world where there was a lot less funding going to basic science — like Howard Hughes Medical Institute didn’t exist — then we would be bigger on it.
My question: Is funding in basic science less of a priority because there are compelling reasons to deprioritize funding more projects there generally, because there is less organizational comparative advantage (or not enough expertise yet) or something else?
Decisions about the size of the basic science budget are made within the “near-termist” worldview bucket, since we see the primary case for this funding as the potential for scientific breakthroughs to improve health and welfare over the next several decades; I’m not involved with that since my research focus is on cause prioritization within the “long-termist” worldview.
In terms of high-level principles, the decision would be made by comparing an estimate of the value of marginal science funding against an estimate of the value of the near-termist “last dollar”, but I’m not familiar with the specific numbers myself.
I’m curious about your take on prioritizing between science funding and other causes. In the 80k interview you said:
My question: Is funding in basic science less of a priority because there are compelling reasons to deprioritize funding more projects there generally, because there is less organizational comparative advantage (or not enough expertise yet) or something else?
Decisions about the size of the basic science budget are made within the “near-termist” worldview bucket, since we see the primary case for this funding as the potential for scientific breakthroughs to improve health and welfare over the next several decades; I’m not involved with that since my research focus is on cause prioritization within the “long-termist” worldview.
In terms of high-level principles, the decision would be made by comparing an estimate of the value of marginal science funding against an estimate of the value of the near-termist “last dollar”, but I’m not familiar with the specific numbers myself.