But it seems unrealistic to expect a recipient of a grant, upon receiving it, to publicly announce ethical and legal reservations about the grant-giver… and then for the grant-giver to be OK with that, and to follow through on providing the grant funding.
‘Biting the hand that feeds you’ doesn’t typically result in good outcomes.
Sure, though I think altruistic grantmakers should want their grantees to criticize them (because an altruistic grantmaker should care more about getting useful and actionable criticism than about looking good in the moment), and I think a lot of EA grantmakers walk the walk in that respect. E.g., MIRI has written tons of stuff publicly criticizing Open Phil, even though Open Phil is by far our largest all-time funder; and I don’t think this has reduced our probability of getting future Open Phil funding.
One advantage of the norm I proposed is that it can help make this a more normal and expected practice, and (for that reason) less risky than it currently is.
And since everything’s happening in public, grantmakers can accumulate track records. If you keep defunding people when they criticize you (even when the criticisms seem good and the grant recipients seem worthy, as far as others can tell), others can notice this fact and dock the grantmaker reputational points. (Which should matter to grantmakers who are optimizing this hard for their reputation in the first place.)
Fair points. I guess if any community can create a norm where it’s OK for grant receivers to criticize grantmakers, it’s the EA community.
I was really just pointing out that creating and maintaining such an open, radically honest, self-reflective, criticism-welcoming culture is very much an uphill struggle, given human nature.
Interesting idea.
But it seems unrealistic to expect a recipient of a grant, upon receiving it, to publicly announce ethical and legal reservations about the grant-giver… and then for the grant-giver to be OK with that, and to follow through on providing the grant funding.
‘Biting the hand that feeds you’ doesn’t typically result in good outcomes.
Sure, though I think altruistic grantmakers should want their grantees to criticize them (because an altruistic grantmaker should care more about getting useful and actionable criticism than about looking good in the moment), and I think a lot of EA grantmakers walk the walk in that respect. E.g., MIRI has written tons of stuff publicly criticizing Open Phil, even though Open Phil is by far our largest all-time funder; and I don’t think this has reduced our probability of getting future Open Phil funding.
One advantage of the norm I proposed is that it can help make this a more normal and expected practice, and (for that reason) less risky than it currently is.
And since everything’s happening in public, grantmakers can accumulate track records. If you keep defunding people when they criticize you (even when the criticisms seem good and the grant recipients seem worthy, as far as others can tell), others can notice this fact and dock the grantmaker reputational points. (Which should matter to grantmakers who are optimizing this hard for their reputation in the first place.)
Fair points. I guess if any community can create a norm where it’s OK for grant receivers to criticize grantmakers, it’s the EA community.
I was really just pointing out that creating and maintaining such an open, radically honest, self-reflective, criticism-welcoming culture is very much an uphill struggle, given human nature.