I deeply appreciate the rare privilege of this support, and I am working hard to put it to good use.
My burn rate turned out lower than expected, so the 6-month support is actually going to cover me for 11 months—from October 2021 up to the end of August 2022.
Sometime in 2022Q4 I will share a public write up of how things went.
As of now I’m on track with the plan I sketched last year, namely:
(Phase 1) Independent study until spring / summer 2022
(Phase 2) Get into my next “big project” by end of 2022.
(Phase 1) is nearly complete—main thing left is to finish and post some EA Forum stuff.
I started on (Phase 2) in ~July 2022 and progress has been good so far. I decided to start some 1-8 week projects to test some ideas and potential long-term working relationships, improve my project management skills, and also do some hopefully useful things.
An EA infrastructure project (not public yet, may not pursue).
My salary for some of the above is covered by other sources, but initial exploration on all of them was covered by the LTFF grant. I think there’s a strong counterfactual case that the LTFF grant has been important for making these happen.
The biggest problem I faced so far was an unusually long “low” period during winter 2021 - spring 2022. I’ve had these lows roughly once a year since forever, but this one was unusually bad. It have been exacerbated by a COVID-19 infection. This badly derailed my independent study (rate of progress dropped to ~20% of spring/summer 2021). This experience led me to make a big medication change, which I hope will improve things for the coming years. This medication change was sped up by the LTFF grant, because it made it easier to pay for private psychiatrist appointments.
On a personal note: I also met a girl and asked her to marry me. She said “yes”.
Edit 2022-08-19: Updated the Parfit archive bullet to note that funding is secured (and to make clear that it’s his physical papers and correspondence, given Pablo’s comment below).
Edit 2022-08-19: The Parfit archive digitisation project is now funded (pending formalities).
Yes I’m talking about all the boxes of unpublished papers and correspondence he left behind after his death. (Plus a bunch of harddrives from the 1980s to 2017 that we’ve not looked at yet.)
I just started on this a couple days ago. That’s to say:
Wednesday: emailed Parfit’s former long-term partner to ask what’s up with the archive.
Thursday: called with the person who has possession of the physical archive. Realised we should digitise it ASAP; drafted funding application and requested quotes from digitisation services.
Friday: final drafting funding application (now), will share to potential funders this evening.
Friday: final draft of funding application, secured funding.
There’s already a top philosophy professor involved (the person who has the archive). They plus an assistant have nearly finished the initial sift. There is some incredible material in there.
I’ve not yet thought much about building a team around this, but my quick thought is that ideally I would hire a project manager and just be in an advisory role myself.
Pablo: if you or someone you know might be interested in project-managing this, or serving in an advisory role, send me an email. Likewise other readers. Thanks!
P.S. I’d like to acknowledge the help of Peter McIntyre here. Peter encouraged me to apply for the LTFF grant in summer 2021. I wasn’t thinking about seeking financial support at the time. Minimally he sped me up on seeking funding by several months; maximally he is counterfactually responsible for quite a bit of what I’ve done December 2021-present.
We’ve also been doing ~daily virtual co-working sessions for over a year.
I deeply appreciate the rare privilege of this support, and I am working hard to put it to good use.
My burn rate turned out lower than expected, so the 6-month support is actually going to cover me for 11 months—from October 2021 up to the end of August 2022.
Sometime in 2022Q4 I will share a public write up of how things went.
As of now I’m on track with the plan I sketched last year, namely:
(Phase 1) is nearly complete—main thing left is to finish and post some EA Forum stuff.
I started on (Phase 2) in ~July 2022 and progress has been good so far. I decided to start some 1-8 week projects to test some ideas and potential long-term working relationships, improve my project management skills, and also do some hopefully useful things.
These include:
Radio Bostrom: audio narrations of Bostrom papers (soft-launched).
Helping with Will’s book launch (mainly: feedback on website and related marketing stuff; web development).
A project to digitise Derek Parfit’s archive of papers and correspondence (started Wednesday, funding secured today).
Comment Helper for Google Docs (beta phase).
Dialling up my attempts to help people get funding for things (2 people confirmed; 1 pending).
Dialling up my advisory role at 80,000 Hours to involve more proactive mentorship of several team members (going well).
Dialling up my attempts to help people think about their next career steps and/or offer useful advice on their projects (>5 calls and email threads).
Spending more time writing Tweets and EA Forum comments (just starting).
An EA infrastructure project (not public yet, may not pursue).
My salary for some of the above is covered by other sources, but initial exploration on all of them was covered by the LTFF grant. I think there’s a strong counterfactual case that the LTFF grant has been important for making these happen.
The biggest problem I faced so far was an unusually long “low” period during winter 2021 - spring 2022. I’ve had these lows roughly once a year since forever, but this one was unusually bad. It have been exacerbated by a COVID-19 infection. This badly derailed my independent study (rate of progress dropped to ~20% of spring/summer 2021). This experience led me to make a big medication change, which I hope will improve things for the coming years. This medication change was sped up by the LTFF grant, because it made it easier to pay for private psychiatrist appointments.
On a personal note: I also met a girl and asked her to marry me. She said “yes”.
If you’d like to know more, many of my working notes are semi-public at https://notes.pjh.is. I’m @peterhartree on Twitter.
Edit 2022-08-19: Updated the Parfit archive bullet to note that funding is secured (and to make clear that it’s his physical papers and correspondence, given Pablo’s comment below).
I’m curious about your plans to digitize Parfit’s archive. I’ve made~all his writings available here, but maybe you have other things in mind?
Edit 2022-08-19: The Parfit archive digitisation project is now funded (pending formalities).
Yes I’m talking about all the boxes of unpublished papers and correspondence he left behind after his death. (Plus a bunch of harddrives from the 1980s to 2017 that we’ve not looked at yet.)
I just started on this a couple days ago. That’s to say:
Wednesday: emailed Parfit’s former long-term partner to ask what’s up with the archive.
Thursday: called with the person who has possession of the physical archive. Realised we should digitise it ASAP; drafted funding application and requested quotes from digitisation services.
Friday: final drafting funding application (now), will share to potential funders this evening.Friday: final draft of funding application, secured funding.
There’s already a top philosophy professor involved (the person who has the archive). They plus an assistant have nearly finished the initial sift. There is some incredible material in there.
I’ve not yet thought much about building a team around this, but my quick thought is that ideally I would hire a project manager and just be in an advisory role myself.
Pablo: if you or someone you know might be interested in project-managing this, or serving in an advisory role, send me an email. Likewise other readers. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this!
P.S. I’d like to acknowledge the help of Peter McIntyre here. Peter encouraged me to apply for the LTFF grant in summer 2021. I wasn’t thinking about seeking financial support at the time. Minimally he sped me up on seeking funding by several months; maximally he is counterfactually responsible for quite a bit of what I’ve done December 2021-present.
We’ve also been doing ~daily virtual co-working sessions for over a year.