FWIW, I think this kind of questioning is fairly Habryka-specific and not really standard for our policy applicants; I think in many cases I wouldn’t expect that it would lead to productive discussions (and in fact could be counterproductive, in that it might put off potential allies who we might want to work with later).
I make the calls on who is the primary evaluator for which grants; as Habryka said, I think he is probably most skeptical of policy work among people on the LTFF, and hasn’t been the primary evaluator for almost any (maybe none?) of the policy-related grants we’ve had. In your case, I thought it was unusually likely that a discussion between you and Habryka would be productive and helpful for my evaluation of the grant (though I was interested primarily in different but related questions, not “whether policy work as a whole is competitive with other grants”), because I generally expect people more embedded in the community (and in the case above, you (Sam) in particular, which I really appreciate), to be more open to pretty frank discussions about the effectiveness of particular plans, lines of work, etc.
FWIW I think if this is just how Habryka works then that is totally fine from my point of view. If it helps him make good decisions then great.
(From the unusualness of the questioning approach and the focus on “why policy” I took it to be a sign that the LTFF was very sceptical of policy change as an approach compared to other approaches, but I may have been mistaken in making this assumption based on this evidence.)
FWIW, I think this kind of questioning is fairly Habryka-specific and not really standard for our policy applicants; I think in many cases I wouldn’t expect that it would lead to productive discussions (and in fact could be counterproductive, in that it might put off potential allies who we might want to work with later).
I make the calls on who is the primary evaluator for which grants; as Habryka said, I think he is probably most skeptical of policy work among people on the LTFF, and hasn’t been the primary evaluator for almost any (maybe none?) of the policy-related grants we’ve had. In your case, I thought it was unusually likely that a discussion between you and Habryka would be productive and helpful for my evaluation of the grant (though I was interested primarily in different but related questions, not “whether policy work as a whole is competitive with other grants”), because I generally expect people more embedded in the community (and in the case above, you (Sam) in particular, which I really appreciate), to be more open to pretty frank discussions about the effectiveness of particular plans, lines of work, etc.
FWIW I think if this is just how Habryka works then that is totally fine from my point of view. If it helps him make good decisions then great.
(From the unusualness of the questioning approach and the focus on “why policy” I took it to be a sign that the LTFF was very sceptical of policy change as an approach compared to other approaches, but I may have been mistaken in making this assumption based on this evidence.)