I think Nick is suggesting that if we had Open Phil split into funders A and B (which were smaller than Open Phil), then A declining to fund an organization due to a COI concern would be somewhat less problematic because it could go to B instead. I’m not a graph theory person either, but it seems the risk of both A and B being conflicted out is lower.
I don’t think that’s a good reason to split Open Phil, although I do think some conflicts are so strong that Open Phil should forward those organizations to external reviewers for determination. For example, I think a strong conflict disqualifies all the subordinates of the disqualified person as well—eg I wouldn’t think it appropriate to evaluate the grant proposal of a family member of anyone in my chain of command.
I think Nick is suggesting that if we had Open Phil split into funders A and B (which were smaller than Open Phil), then A declining to fund an organization due to a COI concern would be somewhat less problematic because it could go to B instead. I’m not a graph theory person either, but it seems the risk of both A and B being conflicted out is lower.
I don’t think that’s a good reason to split Open Phil, although I do think some conflicts are so strong that Open Phil should forward those organizations to external reviewers for determination. For example, I think a strong conflict disqualifies all the subordinates of the disqualified person as well—eg I wouldn’t think it appropriate to evaluate the grant proposal of a family member of anyone in my chain of command.
Correct: a treatment of this question that does not consider BATNAs or counterfactuals would be inaccurate.