I think that we should probably trust people to make some more speculative grants if we trust them in general. My sense is the bio team at openphil do pretty good work in general (though I haven’t looked it up) so I’m willing to give a few speculative grants a pass.
I will circle back if this goes terribly or if there are lots more like it.
It’s more that the grant was speculative and still is low-transparency (why did OP think there was a huge potential upside?) There can be rational grounds for making low-transparency grants, though—cf. my speculation in another comment.
I think if you’re going to make speculative, low-transparency grants, you have to be squeaky clean on conflicts of interest and related matters. There’s zero evidence of COI at present, and a plausible rationale for the grant that would be undermined by its disclosure, so I am not terribly worried about this one.
Completely agree about the long applications. I don’t think they are super useful at all. I wasn’t using that as example of good process, just as a recognition I might have some emotional bias against this kind of grant.
The thing i might be most interested in here is the track record Helena has in the area. Have they done good stuff in biosecurity before? For a grant of 500k I would expect a reasonable track record in the field, regardless of how speculative it is or isn’t.
And yes a big question is how good are OpenPhil atpredicting the fruits of this kind of grant. I have no clue. I wonder what odds you would get on forecasting for this one ;).
I’ll flag that I’m emotionally biased as a director of an NGO that often has to write 10 page applications and often have 3-5 phone conversations to apply for grants of $5,000 to $25,000 from foundations and donors. $500,000 dollars feels instinctively like an awfully large amount of money to entertain words like “speculative” and “pass”, but maybe I need to move my frame of reference!
I’m intrigued that you are willing to give a grant of $500,000 a “pass”, what do you mean by that exactly? In my mind $500,000 is a large amount of money. To try and steelman a little (with assumptions), do you mean that you would be OK with the grant if the organisation was shown to have a track record in the area, and the approach could have a a high expected value if successful (even if a low chance of success) then you would be OK with the grant even if it didn’t bear fruit?
Personally I don’t believe we should give any grant a “pass” as such. Maybe small grants of a few thousand dollars.
Also what do you mean “if this goes terribly”, do you mean the result of the grant? What would constitute the going terribly?
As a side note, you might well disagree but I don’t think we should need to rely too much on trust when it comes to grants of this size—even if we do trust the org and the people involved. I know other NGOs and donors don’t get as much scrutiny as EA associated grants (one of the great things about EA), but I think any grant over $50,000 could at least always carry with it one page explainer document which outlines the credentials of the org, and what the grant might achieve (even if no math there)
“I’m intrigued that you are willing to give a grant of $500,000 a “pass”, what do you mean by that exactly? In my mind $500,000 is a large amount of money. To try and steelman a little (with assumptions), do you mean that you would be OK with the grant if the organisation was shown to have a track record in the area, and the approach could have a a high expected value if successful (even if a low chance of success) then you would be OK with the grant even if it didn’t bear fruit?”
Yes I do think this.
And the question is whether they are good at predicting. Do you think your long applications help that? Ive done huge grant application docs and thought they were largely a waste of everyone’s time.
I imagine I want scrutiny but I currently trust OP. I don’t sense long documents would have helped—I imagine they knew this was risky.
I think that we should probably trust people to make some more speculative grants if we trust them in general. My sense is the bio team at openphil do pretty good work in general (though I haven’t looked it up) so I’m willing to give a few speculative grants a pass.
I will circle back if this goes terribly or if there are lots more like it.
It’s more that the grant was speculative and still is low-transparency (why did OP think there was a huge potential upside?) There can be rational grounds for making low-transparency grants, though—cf. my speculation in another comment.
I think if you’re going to make speculative, low-transparency grants, you have to be squeaky clean on conflicts of interest and related matters. There’s zero evidence of COI at present, and a plausible rationale for the grant that would be undermined by its disclosure, so I am not terribly worried about this one.
Completely agree about the long applications. I don’t think they are super useful at all. I wasn’t using that as example of good process, just as a recognition I might have some emotional bias against this kind of grant.
The thing i might be most interested in here is the track record Helena has in the area. Have they done good stuff in biosecurity before? For a grant of 500k I would expect a reasonable track record in the field, regardless of how speculative it is or isn’t.
And yes a big question is how good are OpenPhil atpredicting the fruits of this kind of grant. I have no clue. I wonder what odds you would get on forecasting for this one ;).
Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.
Hey Nathan
I’ll flag that I’m emotionally biased as a director of an NGO that often has to write 10 page applications and often have 3-5 phone conversations to apply for grants of $5,000 to $25,000 from foundations and donors. $500,000 dollars feels instinctively like an awfully large amount of money to entertain words like “speculative” and “pass”, but maybe I need to move my frame of reference!
I’m intrigued that you are willing to give a grant of $500,000 a “pass”, what do you mean by that exactly? In my mind $500,000 is a large amount of money. To try and steelman a little (with assumptions), do you mean that you would be OK with the grant if the organisation was shown to have a track record in the area, and the approach could have a a high expected value if successful (even if a low chance of success) then you would be OK with the grant even if it didn’t bear fruit?
Personally I don’t believe we should give any grant a “pass” as such. Maybe small grants of a few thousand dollars.
Also what do you mean “if this goes terribly”, do you mean the result of the grant? What would constitute the going terribly?
As a side note, you might well disagree but I don’t think we should need to rely too much on trust when it comes to grants of this size—even if we do trust the org and the people involved. I know other NGOs and donors don’t get as much scrutiny as EA associated grants (one of the great things about EA), but I think any grant over $50,000 could at least always carry with it one page explainer document which outlines the credentials of the org, and what the grant might achieve (even if no math there)
“I’m intrigued that you are willing to give a grant of $500,000 a “pass”, what do you mean by that exactly? In my mind $500,000 is a large amount of money. To try and steelman a little (with assumptions), do you mean that you would be OK with the grant if the organisation was shown to have a track record in the area, and the approach could have a a high expected value if successful (even if a low chance of success) then you would be OK with the grant even if it didn’t bear fruit?”
Yes I do think this.
And the question is whether they are good at predicting. Do you think your long applications help that? Ive done huge grant application docs and thought they were largely a waste of everyone’s time.
I imagine I want scrutiny but I currently trust OP. I don’t sense long documents would have helped—I imagine they knew this was risky.