some of this is because I want to be reassured that I had a positive impact, even if all my various speculative research ideas (and occasional unproductive depressive spirals) amount to nothing.
You may be interested to know that Open Philanthropy reasons similarly. At least that’s what I got from Ajeya Cotra’s discussion on worldview diversification with Rob Wiblin on the 80K podcast:
I think there’s something to be said for not going all in on what you believe a rigorously philosophical accounting would say to value. I think one way you could put it is that Open Phil is — as an institution — trying to place a big bet on this idea of doing utilitarian-ish, thoughtful, deep intellectual philanthropy, which has never been done before, and we want to give that bet its best chance. And we don’t necessarily want to tie that bet — like Open Phil’s value as an institution to the world — to a really hyper-specific notion of what that means.
You may be interested to know that Open Philanthropy reasons similarly. At least that’s what I got from Ajeya Cotra’s discussion on worldview diversification with Rob Wiblin on the 80K podcast: