As much as I dislike their marketing (I’m clearly not the target audience), I don’t think it requires much imagination to see why open phil may have gone ahead with the grant.
The event was widely covered and Obama himself tweeted about the event. If they came to open phil with some similar idea, intended to make catastrophic risks salient to a wide audience I can see why they would seriously consider funding it.
Open phil aren’t stupid. If they are doing something seemingly stupid, they probably have information we don’t.
Open Phil doesn’t necessarily owe anyone an explanation, but the website seems fairly vacuous, and most of their “projects” are just mentioning times when they have invested in someone else’s company. Strong vibe of “all hat, no cattle.”
As much as I dislike their marketing (I’m clearly not the target audience), I don’t think it requires much imagination to see why open phil may have gone ahead with the grant.
see for example this event they put on:
https://helena.org/magazine/the-story-of-america-in-one-room
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_in_One_Room
The event was widely covered and Obama himself tweeted about the event. If they came to open phil with some similar idea, intended to make catastrophic risks salient to a wide audience I can see why they would seriously consider funding it.
Open phil aren’t stupid. If they are doing something seemingly stupid, they probably have information we don’t.
That doesn’t feel consistent with a grant to fund Helena’s work “on policy related to health security” as the grant is described on OP’s website.
Open Phil doesn’t necessarily owe anyone an explanation, but the website seems fairly vacuous, and most of their “projects” are just mentioning times when they have invested in someone else’s company. Strong vibe of “all hat, no cattle.”