I also think it’s worth stressing that the best alternative to finding a great (above-bar) option to spend money on now is not to spend on options below the bar, but to wait / keep looking and spend it at an above-bar opportunity later (and ideally invest to give while you’re at it).
In your example, this cashes out (roughly) in us using Research multiple times to find as many Alpha-like projects as possible and fund those, and to only start looking for and funding Beta-like projects when there are no more Alpha-like projects to find. Even if there is only one extra Alpha and one extra Beta to find, it’s better (with the parameters as provided in your example) to find and fund that Alpha and find and fund Beta, than to find at fund only one of the two.
Cases somewhat akin to “you can only use Research for either Alpha or Beta” can occur, but only under very specific conditions, e.g. when opportunities are time-sensitive and/or when there is a very tight bottleneck on research resources (=strongly increasing marginal costs to doing research), which might in fact be the case currently.
(As a side point: given the option of investing to give, it’s important to “set” the bar taking into account our expectations of how cost-effective future opportunities will be, investment benefits one can achieve in the meantime, value drift and expropriation risks etc.)
I also think it’s worth stressing that the best alternative to finding a great (above-bar) option to spend money on now is not to spend on options below the bar, but to wait / keep looking and spend it at an above-bar opportunity later (and ideally invest to give while you’re at it).
In your example, this cashes out (roughly) in us using Research multiple times to find as many Alpha-like projects as possible and fund those, and to only start looking for and funding Beta-like projects when there are no more Alpha-like projects to find. Even if there is only one extra Alpha and one extra Beta to find, it’s better (with the parameters as provided in your example) to find and fund that Alpha and find and fund Beta, than to find at fund only one of the two.
Cases somewhat akin to “you can only use Research for either Alpha or Beta” can occur, but only under very specific conditions, e.g. when opportunities are time-sensitive and/or when there is a very tight bottleneck on research resources (=strongly increasing marginal costs to doing research), which might in fact be the case currently.
(As a side point: given the option of investing to give, it’s important to “set” the bar taking into account our expectations of how cost-effective future opportunities will be, investment benefits one can achieve in the meantime, value drift and expropriation risks etc.)