it’d be an interesting experiment to add a “democratic” community-controlled fund to supplement the existing options
The idea seems intuitively appealing, an option for those who want to try it, see how it works. But I wonder whether the people who would fund this would actually prefer to participate in a donor lottery?
Curious to hear from anyone who would be excited to put their money a community-controlled fund.
I would probably donate a small amount, not because I think the EV would be higher, but because I assign some utility to the information value of seeing grant decisions by a truly independent set of decisionmakers. If there were consistent and significant differences from the grant portfolio of the usual expert decisionmakers, I would entertain the possibility that the usual decisionmakers had a blind spot (even though I would predict the probability as perhaps 25 percent, low confidence). If the democratic fund were small enough in comparison to the amount of expert-directed funding, and could be operated cheaply enough, losing a little EV would feel acceptable as a way to gain this information.
I think this year’s donor lottery is likely to go to the benefactor, especially the higher dollar amounts, so will produce zero information value.
The idea seems intuitively appealing, an option for those who want to try it, see how it works. But I wonder whether the people who would fund this would actually prefer to participate in a donor lottery?
Curious to hear from anyone who would be excited to put their money a community-controlled fund.
I would probably donate a small amount, not because I think the EV would be higher, but because I assign some utility to the information value of seeing grant decisions by a truly independent set of decisionmakers. If there were consistent and significant differences from the grant portfolio of the usual expert decisionmakers, I would entertain the possibility that the usual decisionmakers had a blind spot (even though I would predict the probability as perhaps 25 percent, low confidence). If the democratic fund were small enough in comparison to the amount of expert-directed funding, and could be operated cheaply enough, losing a little EV would feel acceptable as a way to gain this information.
I think this year’s donor lottery is likely to go to the benefactor, especially the higher dollar amounts, so will produce zero information value.