I feel quite aligned with you spiritually on this topic: we both want more diversified funding for these causes, and see Good Ventures-as-sole-funder both getting in the way of that outcome and creating a variety of second order problems. I’m sorry to hear that OP may have actively dissuaded you from pursuing diversification. Folks like you, as well as OP staff, will now spend more of their time pursuing other funding sources, and I expect that to be strongly positive for the causes and the general EA project over the long run.
In the short run, I agree we have recently lost valuable time and energy via this path, and I regret that and accept a good deal of responsibility. When FTX showed up on the scene, it felt like plurality was happening, and as soon as they went away, I became quite fixated on this topic again.
Thanks for your thoughts, Dustin. I think it was a mistake at the time—and I said as much—to think that FTX and OpenPhil represented sufficient plurality. But I definitely didn’t think FTX would blow up as it did and given that people can only do so many things, it’s understandable that people didn’t focus enough on donor diversification.
I feel quite aligned with you spiritually on this topic: we both want more diversified funding for these causes, and see Good Ventures-as-sole-funder both getting in the way of that outcome and creating a variety of second order problems. I’m sorry to hear that OP may have actively dissuaded you from pursuing diversification. Folks like you, as well as OP staff, will now spend more of their time pursuing other funding sources, and I expect that to be strongly positive for the causes and the general EA project over the long run.
In the short run, I agree we have recently lost valuable time and energy via this path, and I regret that and accept a good deal of responsibility. When FTX showed up on the scene, it felt like plurality was happening, and as soon as they went away, I became quite fixated on this topic again.
Thanks for your thoughts, Dustin. I think it was a mistake at the time—and I said as much—to think that FTX and OpenPhil represented sufficient plurality. But I definitely didn’t think FTX would blow up as it did and given that people can only do so many things, it’s understandable that people didn’t focus enough on donor diversification.
I didn’t think of it as sufficient, but I did think of it as momentum. “Tomorrow, there will be more of us” doesn’t feel true anymore.