I genuinely respect your attempts to find out the true answer here, but from my (relatively naive—I certainly haven’t read all your stuff) POV, shouldn’t the conclusion be much closer to “nobody knows a goddamn thing, don’t spend any money till we become more confident”
Thanks, Aaron. I think decreasing the uncertainty about the effects on soil animals, in particular, about whether soil nematodes have positive or negative lives, would be more cost-effective than funding HIPF. However, OP does not fund interventions targeting wild animals or invertebrates, so that is not a live option. In addition, my sense is that OP has historically found it difficult to spend as much as desired by its major funders, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, so I believe they would not want to decrease their spending.
I genuinely respect your attempts to find out the true answer here, but from my (relatively naive—I certainly haven’t read all your stuff) POV, shouldn’t the conclusion be much closer to “nobody knows a goddamn thing, don’t spend any money till we become more confident”
Thanks, Aaron. I think decreasing the uncertainty about the effects on soil animals, in particular, about whether soil nematodes have positive or negative lives, would be more cost-effective than funding HIPF. However, OP does not fund interventions targeting wild animals or invertebrates, so that is not a live option. In addition, my sense is that OP has historically found it difficult to spend as much as desired by its major funders, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, so I believe they would not want to decrease their spending.