(I wrote this comment in a personal capacity, intending only to reflect my own views / knowledge.)
Hi,
In 2021, the EA Infrastructure Fund (which is not CEA, though both are supported and fiscally sponsoredby Effective Ventures) made a grant for preparatory work toward potentially creating a COVID-related documentary.[1] I was the guest fund manager who recommended that grant. When I saw this post, I guessed the post was probably related to that grant and to things I said, and I’ve now confirmed that.
This post does not match my memory of what happened or what I intended to communicate, so I’ll clarify a few things:
The EA Infrastructure Fund is not CEA, and I’m just one of its (unpaid, guest) fund managers. So what I said shouldn’t be treated as “CEA’s view”.
The EAIF provided this grant in response to an application the grantseekers made, rather than “commissioning” it.
When evaluating this grant, I consulted an advisor from the COVID forecasting space and another from the biosecurity space. They both flagged one of the people mentioned in the title of this post as seeming maybe unwise to highlight in this documentary.
But I don’t recall this having been about that person having disagreed with authorities.
Instead, my notes confirm that one of the advisors solely mentioned that that person’s work hadn’t been very impactful, since it was principally used just by the EA and rationality communities for their own benefit (rather than having impact at a larger scale).
And my rough memory (but I lack clear notes in this case) is that the other advisor basically thought this person’s work had made overly strong claims overly confidently and that this didn’t seem like good epistemics to highlight. (As opposed to the worry being that the person was overly divisive or controversial.)
I passed a summarized version of those thoughts on to the grantseekers, along with various other bits of tentative feedback/advice.
I didn’t make the grant conditional on excluding anyone. And if I recall correctly, I didn’t feel very confident about whether and how to feature specific people in the documentary and I explicitly communicated that I was giving various bits of input merely as input and I want the grantees to make their own decisions.
(Though this post makes me think that I failed to adequately emphasize that this was just input, and that therefore in this case it may have been better to not give the input at all. I now intend to adjust my future communications in light of that.)
I don’t immediately recognize the other two names in the title of this post, and couldn’t find any comments from me about those people in my main grant evaluation notes doc or a few other related docs. So I don’t know why they’re mentioned in the title or screenshot.
[1] The grant is described in one of EAIF’s public payout reports. But it doesn’t seem productive to name the grantees here.
(EDIT: I wrote this and hit publish before seeing Rachel also commented shortly beforehand. Her comment does not match my memory of events in a few ways additional to what I noted in this comment. I might say more on that later, but I’d guess it’s not very productive to discuss this further here. Regardless, as noted in my comment, it does seem to me that in this case I failed to adequately emphasize that my input was intended just as input, and I regret that.)
Thank you, Michael—this helps me better understand what occurred from your perspective. As mentioned in my post, it had become difficult to ask for clarification regarding the issue at hand, which is why I had not mentioned the outcome to you until now, and that is one of the ways I mentioned I would love to see improvements made in communications at large. I don’t have any ill will towards you.
(I wrote this comment in a personal capacity, intending only to reflect my own views / knowledge.)
Hi,
In 2021, the EA Infrastructure Fund (which is not CEA, though both are supported and fiscally sponsored by Effective Ventures) made a grant for preparatory work toward potentially creating a COVID-related documentary.[1] I was the guest fund manager who recommended that grant. When I saw this post, I guessed the post was probably related to that grant and to things I said, and I’ve now confirmed that.
This post does not match my memory of what happened or what I intended to communicate, so I’ll clarify a few things:
The EA Infrastructure Fund is not CEA, and I’m just one of its (unpaid, guest) fund managers. So what I said shouldn’t be treated as “CEA’s view”.
The EAIF provided this grant in response to an application the grantseekers made, rather than “commissioning” it.
When evaluating this grant, I consulted an advisor from the COVID forecasting space and another from the biosecurity space. They both flagged one of the people mentioned in the title of this post as seeming maybe unwise to highlight in this documentary.
But I don’t recall this having been about that person having disagreed with authorities.
Instead, my notes confirm that one of the advisors solely mentioned that that person’s work hadn’t been very impactful, since it was principally used just by the EA and rationality communities for their own benefit (rather than having impact at a larger scale).
And my rough memory (but I lack clear notes in this case) is that the other advisor basically thought this person’s work had made overly strong claims overly confidently and that this didn’t seem like good epistemics to highlight. (As opposed to the worry being that the person was overly divisive or controversial.)
I passed a summarized version of those thoughts on to the grantseekers, along with various other bits of tentative feedback/advice.
I didn’t make the grant conditional on excluding anyone. And if I recall correctly, I didn’t feel very confident about whether and how to feature specific people in the documentary and I explicitly communicated that I was giving various bits of input merely as input and I want the grantees to make their own decisions.
(Though this post makes me think that I failed to adequately emphasize that this was just input, and that therefore in this case it may have been better to not give the input at all. I now intend to adjust my future communications in light of that.)
I don’t immediately recognize the other two names in the title of this post, and couldn’t find any comments from me about those people in my main grant evaluation notes doc or a few other related docs. So I don’t know why they’re mentioned in the title or screenshot.
[1] The grant is described in one of EAIF’s public payout reports. But it doesn’t seem productive to name the grantees here.
(EDIT: I wrote this and hit publish before seeing Rachel also commented shortly beforehand. Her comment does not match my memory of events in a few ways additional to what I noted in this comment. I might say more on that later, but I’d guess it’s not very productive to discuss this further here. Regardless, as noted in my comment, it does seem to me that in this case I failed to adequately emphasize that my input was intended just as input, and I regret that.)
Thank you, Michael—this helps me better understand what occurred from your perspective. As mentioned in my post, it had become difficult to ask for clarification regarding the issue at hand, which is why I had not mentioned the outcome to you until now, and that is one of the ways I mentioned I would love to see improvements made in communications at large. I don’t have any ill will towards you.
(I’ve now responded via email.)