If someone had asked me beforehand which fund would evaluate CLTR for funding, I wouldāve confidently said LTFF.
For the other two, Iād have been uncertain, because:
The Lohmar grant is for a project thatās not necessarily arguing for longtermism, but rather working out how longtermist we should be, when, how the implications of that differ from what weād do for other reasons, etc.
But GPI and Hilary Greaves seem fairly sold on longtermism, and I expect this research to mostly push in more longtermism-y directions
And Iād find it surprising if the Infrastructure Fund funded something about how much to care about insects as compared to humansāthatās likewise not necessarily going to conclude that we should update towards more focus on animal welfare, but it still seems a better fit for the Animal Welfare Fund
Climate change isnāt necessarily strongly associated with longtermism within EA
I guess Giving Green could also be seen as aimed at bringing more people into EA by providing people who care about climate change with EA-related products and services theyād find interesting?
But this report doesnāt explicitly state that thatās why the EAIF is interested in this grant, and I doubt that thatās Giving Greenās own main theory of change
But this isnāt to say that any of those grants seem bad to me. I was just somewhat surprised they were funded by the EAIF rather than the LTFF (at least in the case of CLTR and Jakob Lohmar).
A big part of the reason was simply that CLTR and Jakob Lohmar happened to apply to the EAIF, not the LTFF. Referring grants takes time (not a lot, but I donāt think doing such referrals is a particularly good use of time if the grants are in scope for both funds). This is partly explained in the introduction of the grant report.
I recognise there is admin hassle. Although, as I note in my other comment, this becomes an issue if the EAIIF in effect becomes a top-up for another fund.
FWIW, itās not just admin hassle but also mental attention for the fund chairs thatās IMO much better spent on improving their decisions. I think there are large returns from fund managers focusing fully on whether a grant is a good use of money or on how to make the grantees even more successful. I therefore think the costs of having to take into account (likely heterogeneous) donor preferences when evaluating specific grants are quite high, and so as long as a majority of assessed grants seems to be somewhat āin scopeā itās overall better if fund managers can keep their head free from scope concerns and other āmetaā issues.
I believe that we can do the most good by attracting donors who endorse the above. Iām aware this means that donors with different preferences may want to give elsewhere.
(Made some edits to the above comment to make it less disagreeable.)
FWIW, I was also confused in a similar way by:
The CLTR grant
The Jakob Lohmar grant
Maybe the Giving Green grant
If someone had asked me beforehand which fund would evaluate CLTR for funding, I wouldāve confidently said LTFF.
For the other two, Iād have been uncertain, because:
The Lohmar grant is for a project thatās not necessarily arguing for longtermism, but rather working out how longtermist we should be, when, how the implications of that differ from what weād do for other reasons, etc.
But GPI and Hilary Greaves seem fairly sold on longtermism, and I expect this research to mostly push in more longtermism-y directions
And Iād find it surprising if the Infrastructure Fund funded something about how much to care about insects as compared to humansāthatās likewise not necessarily going to conclude that we should update towards more focus on animal welfare, but it still seems a better fit for the Animal Welfare Fund
Climate change isnāt necessarily strongly associated with longtermism within EA
I guess Giving Green could also be seen as aimed at bringing more people into EA by providing people who care about climate change with EA-related products and services theyād find interesting?
But this report doesnāt explicitly state that thatās why the EAIF is interested in this grant, and I doubt that thatās Giving Greenās own main theory of change
But this isnāt to say that any of those grants seem bad to me. I was just somewhat surprised they were funded by the EAIF rather than the LTFF (at least in the case of CLTR and Jakob Lohmar).
A big part of the reason was simply that CLTR and Jakob Lohmar happened to apply to the EAIF, not the LTFF. Referring grants takes time (not a lot, but I donāt think doing such referrals is a particularly good use of time if the grants are in scope for both funds). This is partly explained in the introduction of the grant report.
I recognise there is admin hassle. Although, as I note in my other comment, this becomes an issue if the EAIIF in effect becomes a top-up for another fund.
FWIW, itās not just admin hassle but also mental attention for the fund chairs thatās IMO much better spent on improving their decisions. I think there are large returns from fund managers focusing fully on whether a grant is a good use of money or on how to make the grantees even more successful. I therefore think the costs of having to take into account (likely heterogeneous) donor preferences when evaluating specific grants are quite high, and so as long as a majority of assessed grants seems to be somewhat āin scopeā itās overall better if fund managers can keep their head free from scope concerns and other āmetaā issues.
I believe that we can do the most good by attracting donors who endorse the above. Iām aware this means that donors with different preferences may want to give elsewhere.
(Made some edits to the above comment to make it less disagreeable.)
I think of climate change (at least non-extreme climate change) as more of a global poverty/ādevelopment issue, for what itās worth.