The inclusion of things on this list that might be better suited to other funds (e.g the LTFF) without an explanation of why they are being funded from the Infrastructure Fund makes me slightly less likely in future to give directly to the Infrastructure Fund and slightly more likely to just give to one of the bigger meta orgs you give to (like Rethink Priorities).
I think that different funders have different tastes, and if you endorse their tastes you should consider giving to them. I don’t really see a case for splitting responsibilities like this. If Funder A thinks a grant is good, Funder B thinks it’s bad, but it’s nominally in Funder B’s purview, this just doesn’t seem like a strong arg against Funder A doing it if it seems like a good idea to them. What’s the argument here? Why should Funder A not give a grant that seems good to them?
I find this perspective (and its upvotes) pretty confusing, because:
I’m pretty confident that the majority of EA Funds donors choose which fund to donate to based far more on the cause area than the fund managers’ tastes
And I think this really makes sense; it’s a better idea to invest time in forming views about cause areas than in forming views about specifically the funding tastes of Buck, Michelle, Max, Ben, and Jonas, and then also the fund management teams for the other 3 funds.
The EA Funds pages also focus more on the cause area than on the fund managers.
The fund manager team regularly changes composition at least somewhat.
Some fund managers have not done any grantmaking before, at least publicly, so people won’t initially know their fund tastes.
In this particular case, I think all fund managers except Jonas haven’t done public grantmaking before.
I think a donation to an EA Fund is typically intended to delegate to some fund managers to do whatever is best in a given area, in line with the principles described on the EA Funds page. It is not typically intended to delegate to those fund managers to do whatever they think is best with that money, except if we assume that what they think is best will always be something that is in that area and is in line with those principles described (in which case it would still be problematic for them to donate in other ways).
Likewise, if you pay a contractor to do X and then instead they do Y, this may well be problematic even if they think doing Y is better and even if they might have good judgement. And especially so if their ad for their services focused on X rather than on their individual track record, tastes, or good judgement.
To be clear, this comment isn’t intended as sharp criticism of any choices the EAIF made this round. I also didn’t donate to the EAIF this round and lean quite longtermist myself, so I don’t personally have any sense of my donation being used a way I don’t like, or something like that. I’m just responding to your comment.
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Another way to put this is that if you don’t really see “a case for splitting responsibilities like this”, then I think that means you don’t see a case for the current set up of the EA Funds (at least as a place for you specifically to donate), and so you’re not the relevant target audience?
(I feel like this will sound rude or something in written text without tone—apologies in advance if it does sound that way; that’s not my intent.)
Yeah, that’s a good point, that donors who don’t look at the grants (or know the individuals on the team much) will be confused if they do things outside the purpose of the team (e.g. donations to GiveDirectly, or a random science grant that just sounds cool), that sounds right. But I guess all of these grants seem to me fairly within the purview of EA Infrastructure?
The one-line description of the fund says:
The Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund aims to increase the impact of projects that use the principles of effective altruism, by increasing their access to talent, capital, and knowledge.
I expect that for all of these grants the grantmakers think that they’re orgs that either “use the principle of effective altruism” or help others do so.
I think I’d suggest instead that weeatquince name some specific grants and ask the fund managers the basic reason for why those grants seem to them like they help build EA Infrastructure (e.g. ask Michelle why CLTR seems to help things according to her) if that’s unclear to weeatquince.
Yeah, good point that these grants do seem to all fit that one-line description.
That said, I think that probably most or all grants from all 4 EA Funds would fit that description—I think that that one-line description should probably be changed to make it clearer what’s distinctive about the Infrastructure Fund. (I acknowledge I’ve now switched from kind-of disagreeing with you to kind-of disagreeing with that part of how the EAIF present themselves.)
I think the rest of the “Fund Scope” section helps clarify the distinctive scope:
While the other three Funds support direct work on various causes, this Fund supports work that could multiply the impact of direct work, including projects that provide intellectual infrastructure for the effective altruism community, run events, disseminate information, or fundraise for effective charities. This will be achieved by supporting projects that:
Directly increase the number of people who are exposed to principles of effective altruism, or develop, refine or present such principles
Support the recruitment of talented people who can use their skills to make progress on important problems
Aim to build a global community of people who use principles of effective altruism as a core part of their decision-making process when deciding how they can have a positive impact on the world
Conduct research into prioritizing between or within different cause areas
Raise funds or otherwise support other highly-effective projects
Improve community health by promoting healthy norms for interaction and discourse, or assist in resolving grievances
Re-reading that, I now think Giving Green clearly does fit under EAIF’s scope (“Raise funds or otherwise support other highly-effective projects”). And it seems a bitclearer why the CLTR and Jakob Lohmar grants might fit, since I think they partly target the 1st, 3rd, and 4th of those things.
Though it still does seem to me like those two grants are probably better fits for LTFF.
And I also think “Conduct research into prioritizing [...] within different cause areas” seems like a better fit for the relevant cause area. E.g., research about TAI timelines or the number of shrimp there are in the world should pretty clearly be under the scope of the LTFF and AWF, respectively, rather than EAIF. (So that’s another place where I’ve accidentally slipped into providing feedback on that fund page rather than disagreeing with you specifically.)
Though it still does seem to me like those two grants are probably better fits for LTFF.
But this line is what I am disagreeing with. I’m saying there’s a binary of “within scope” or not, and then otherwise it’s up to the fund to fund what they think is best according to their judgment about EA Infrastructure or the Long-Term Future or whatever. Do you think that the EAIF should be able to tell the LTFF to fund a project because the EAIF thinks it’s worthwhile for EA Infrastructure, instead of using the EAIF’s money? Alternatively, if the EAIF thinks something is worth money for EA Infrastructure reasons, if the grant is probably more naturally under the scope of “Long-Term Future”, do you think they shouldn’t fund the grantee even if LTFF isn’t going to either?
Ah, this is a good point, and I think I understand where you’re coming from better now. Your first comment made me think you were contesting the idea that the funds should each have a “scope” at all. But now I see it’s just that you think the scopes will sometimes overlap, and that in those cases the grant should be able to be evaluated and funded by any fund it’s within-scope for, without consideration of which fund it’s more centrally within scope for. Right?
I think that sounds right to me, and I think that that argument + re-reading that “Fund Scope” section have together made it so that I think that EAIF granting to CLTR and Jakob Lohmar just actually makes sense. I.e., I think I’ve now changed my mind and become less confused about those decisions.
Though I still think it would probably make sense for Fund A to refer an application to Fund B if the project seems more centrally in-scope for Fund B, and let Fund B evaluate it first. Then if Fund B declines, Fund A could do their own evaluation and (if they want) fund the project, though perhaps somewhat updating negatively based on the info that Fund B declined funding. (Maybe this is roughly how it already works. And also I haven’t thought about this until writing this comment, so maybe there are strong arguments against this approach.)
(Again, I feel I should state explicitly—to avoid anyone taking this as criticism of CLTR or Jakob—that the issue was never that I thought CLTR or Jakob just shouldn’t get funding; it was just about clarity over what the EAIF would do.)
Though I still think it would probably make sense for Fund A to refer an application to Fund B if the project seems more centrally in-scope for Fund B, and let Fund B evaluate it first.
In theory, I agree. In practice, this shuffling around of grants costs some time (both in terms of fund manager work time, and in terms of calendar time grantseekers spend waiting for a decision), and I prefer spending that time making a larger number of good grants rather than on minor allocation improvements.
(That seems reasonable—I’d have to have a clearer sense of relevant time costs etc. to form a better independent impression, but that general argument + the info that you believe this would overall not be worthwhile is sufficient to update me to that view.)
And btw, I think if there are particular grants that seem not in scope from a fund, is seems totally reasonable to ask them for their reasoning and update pos/neg on them if the reasoning does/doesn’t check out. And it’s also generally good to question the reasoning of a grant that doesn’t make sense to you.
Tl;dr: I was to date judging the funds by the cause area rather than the fund managers tastes and this has left me a bit surprised. I think in future I will judge more based on the fund mangers tastes.
Thank you Ben – I agree with all of this
Maybe I was just confused by the fund scope.
The fund scope is broad and that is good. The webpage says the scope includes: “Raise funds or otherwise support other highly-effective projects” which basically means everything! And I do think it needs to be broad – for example to support EAs bringing EA ideas into new cause areas.
But maybe in my mind I had classed it as something like “EA meta” or as “everything that is EA aligned that would not be better covered by one of the other 3 funds” or similar. But maybe that was me reading too much into things and the scope is just “anything and everything that is EA aligned”.
It is not bad that it has a broader scope than I had realised, and maybe the fault is mine, but I guess my reaction to seeing the scope is different to what I realised is to take a step back and reconsider if my giving to date is going where I expect.
To date I have been judging the EAIF as the easy option when I am not sure where to give and have been judging the fund mostly by the cause area it gives too.
I think taking a step back will likely involve spending an hour or two going though all of the things given in recent fund rounds and thinking about how much I agree with each one then deciding if I think the EAIF is the best place for me to give, and if I think I can do better giving to one of the existing EA meta orgs that takes donations. (Probably I should have been doing this already so maybe a good nudge).
Does that make sense / answer your query?
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If the EAIF had a slightly more well defined narrower scope that could make givers slightly more confident in where their funds will go but has a cost in terms of admin time and flexibility for the Funds. So there is a trade-off.
My gut feel is that in the long run the trade-off is worth it but maybe feedback from other donors would say otherwise.
I think that different funders have different tastes, and if you endorse their tastes you should consider giving to them. I don’t really see a case for splitting responsibilities like this. If Funder A thinks a grant is good, Funder B thinks it’s bad, but it’s nominally in Funder B’s purview, this just doesn’t seem like a strong arg against Funder A doing it if it seems like a good idea to them. What’s the argument here? Why should Funder A not give a grant that seems good to them?
I find this perspective (and its upvotes) pretty confusing, because:
I’m pretty confident that the majority of EA Funds donors choose which fund to donate to based far more on the cause area than the fund managers’ tastes
And I think this really makes sense; it’s a better idea to invest time in forming views about cause areas than in forming views about specifically the funding tastes of Buck, Michelle, Max, Ben, and Jonas, and then also the fund management teams for the other 3 funds.
The EA Funds pages also focus more on the cause area than on the fund managers.
E.g., “Why donate to this fund” doesn’t mention any specific fund managers.
The fund manager team regularly changes composition at least somewhat.
Some fund managers have not done any grantmaking before, at least publicly, so people won’t initially know their fund tastes.
In this particular case, I think all fund managers except Jonas haven’t done public grantmaking before.
I think a donation to an EA Fund is typically intended to delegate to some fund managers to do whatever is best in a given area, in line with the principles described on the EA Funds page. It is not typically intended to delegate to those fund managers to do whatever they think is best with that money, except if we assume that what they think is best will always be something that is in that area and is in line with those principles described (in which case it would still be problematic for them to donate in other ways).
Likewise, if you pay a contractor to do X and then instead they do Y, this may well be problematic even if they think doing Y is better and even if they might have good judgement. And especially so if their ad for their services focused on X rather than on their individual track record, tastes, or good judgement.
To be clear, this comment isn’t intended as sharp criticism of any choices the EAIF made this round. I also didn’t donate to the EAIF this round and lean quite longtermist myself, so I don’t personally have any sense of my donation being used a way I don’t like, or something like that. I’m just responding to your comment.
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Another way to put this is that if you don’t really see “a case for splitting responsibilities like this”, then I think that means you don’t see a case for the current set up of the EA Funds (at least as a place for you specifically to donate), and so you’re not the relevant target audience?
(I feel like this will sound rude or something in written text without tone—apologies in advance if it does sound that way; that’s not my intent.)
Yeah, that’s a good point, that donors who don’t look at the grants (or know the individuals on the team much) will be confused if they do things outside the purpose of the team (e.g. donations to GiveDirectly, or a random science grant that just sounds cool), that sounds right. But I guess all of these grants seem to me fairly within the purview of EA Infrastructure?
The one-line description of the fund says:
I expect that for all of these grants the grantmakers think that they’re orgs that either “use the principle of effective altruism” or help others do so.
I think I’d suggest instead that weeatquince name some specific grants and ask the fund managers the basic reason for why those grants seem to them like they help build EA Infrastructure (e.g. ask Michelle why CLTR seems to help things according to her) if that’s unclear to weeatquince.
Yeah, good point that these grants do seem to all fit that one-line description.
That said, I think that probably most or all grants from all 4 EA Funds would fit that description—I think that that one-line description should probably be changed to make it clearer what’s distinctive about the Infrastructure Fund. (I acknowledge I’ve now switched from kind-of disagreeing with you to kind-of disagreeing with that part of how the EAIF present themselves.)
I think the rest of the “Fund Scope” section helps clarify the distinctive scope:
Re-reading that, I now think Giving Green clearly does fit under EAIF’s scope (“Raise funds or otherwise support other highly-effective projects”). And it seems a bit clearer why the CLTR and Jakob Lohmar grants might fit, since I think they partly target the 1st, 3rd, and 4th of those things.
Though it still does seem to me like those two grants are probably better fits for LTFF.
And I also think “Conduct research into prioritizing [...] within different cause areas” seems like a better fit for the relevant cause area. E.g., research about TAI timelines or the number of shrimp there are in the world should pretty clearly be under the scope of the LTFF and AWF, respectively, rather than EAIF. (So that’s another place where I’ve accidentally slipped into providing feedback on that fund page rather than disagreeing with you specifically.)
But this line is what I am disagreeing with. I’m saying there’s a binary of “within scope” or not, and then otherwise it’s up to the fund to fund what they think is best according to their judgment about EA Infrastructure or the Long-Term Future or whatever. Do you think that the EAIF should be able to tell the LTFF to fund a project because the EAIF thinks it’s worthwhile for EA Infrastructure, instead of using the EAIF’s money? Alternatively, if the EAIF thinks something is worth money for EA Infrastructure reasons, if the grant is probably more naturally under the scope of “Long-Term Future”, do you think they shouldn’t fund the grantee even if LTFF isn’t going to either?
Ah, this is a good point, and I think I understand where you’re coming from better now. Your first comment made me think you were contesting the idea that the funds should each have a “scope” at all. But now I see it’s just that you think the scopes will sometimes overlap, and that in those cases the grant should be able to be evaluated and funded by any fund it’s within-scope for, without consideration of which fund it’s more centrally within scope for. Right?
I think that sounds right to me, and I think that that argument + re-reading that “Fund Scope” section have together made it so that I think that EAIF granting to CLTR and Jakob Lohmar just actually makes sense. I.e., I think I’ve now changed my mind and become less confused about those decisions.
Though I still think it would probably make sense for Fund A to refer an application to Fund B if the project seems more centrally in-scope for Fund B, and let Fund B evaluate it first. Then if Fund B declines, Fund A could do their own evaluation and (if they want) fund the project, though perhaps somewhat updating negatively based on the info that Fund B declined funding. (Maybe this is roughly how it already works. And also I haven’t thought about this until writing this comment, so maybe there are strong arguments against this approach.)
(Again, I feel I should state explicitly—to avoid anyone taking this as criticism of CLTR or Jakob—that the issue was never that I thought CLTR or Jakob just shouldn’t get funding; it was just about clarity over what the EAIF would do.)
In theory, I agree. In practice, this shuffling around of grants costs some time (both in terms of fund manager work time, and in terms of calendar time grantseekers spend waiting for a decision), and I prefer spending that time making a larger number of good grants rather than on minor allocation improvements.
(That seems reasonable—I’d have to have a clearer sense of relevant time costs etc. to form a better independent impression, but that general argument + the info that you believe this would overall not be worthwhile is sufficient to update me to that view.)
Yeah, I think you understand me better now.
And btw, I think if there are particular grants that seem not in scope from a fund, is seems totally reasonable to ask them for their reasoning and update pos/neg on them if the reasoning does/doesn’t check out. And it’s also generally good to question the reasoning of a grant that doesn’t make sense to you.
Tl;dr: I was to date judging the funds by the cause area rather than the fund managers tastes and this has left me a bit surprised. I think in future I will judge more based on the fund mangers tastes.
Thank you Ben – I agree with all of this
Maybe I was just confused by the fund scope.
The fund scope is broad and that is good. The webpage says the scope includes: “Raise funds or otherwise support other highly-effective projects” which basically means everything! And I do think it needs to be broad – for example to support EAs bringing EA ideas into new cause areas.
But maybe in my mind I had classed it as something like “EA meta” or as “everything that is EA aligned that would not be better covered by one of the other 3 funds” or similar. But maybe that was me reading too much into things and the scope is just “anything and everything that is EA aligned”.
It is not bad that it has a broader scope than I had realised, and maybe the fault is mine, but I guess my reaction to seeing the scope is different to what I realised is to take a step back and reconsider if my giving to date is going where I expect.
To date I have been judging the EAIF as the easy option when I am not sure where to give and have been judging the fund mostly by the cause area it gives too.
I think taking a step back will likely involve spending an hour or two going though all of the things given in recent fund rounds and thinking about how much I agree with each one then deciding if I think the EAIF is the best place for me to give, and if I think I can do better giving to one of the existing EA meta orgs that takes donations. (Probably I should have been doing this already so maybe a good nudge).
Does that make sense / answer your query?
– –
If the EAIF had a slightly more well defined narrower scope that could make givers slightly more confident in where their funds will go but has a cost in terms of admin time and flexibility for the Funds. So there is a trade-off.
My gut feel is that in the long run the trade-off is worth it but maybe feedback from other donors would say otherwise.