I felt deserted by the very community I’d given so much to. Nobody reached out; nobody seemed to care. It was a profound isolation I had never anticipated.
I’ve felt that too. I didn’t have the exact same scenario of losing funding; I lost a job. I hadn’t yet built a support network, and without the income from that job I couldn’t afford to live in big expensive city. Former colleagues who had previously been friendly never contacted me again; they never said “hey, I saw this job posting that I think you would be good for.” People I had interacted with at EA social events didn’t contact me. People who had reached out to me for one-on-ones at conferences no longer did so. I assume that they only reached out to me previously because I was associated with a prestigious institution, which made me feel used as a means to an end rather than as an end in myself.
It makes me think about “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” There were plenty of “parties” that I was able to access (conferences, Slack workspaces, chat groups), but I wasn’t “asked to dance.”
What I perceive as the lack of welcomingness has made me pretty sad at times.
Sending you virtual hugs.
It looks a little suspicious and I think the optics are bad that the girlfriend of Manifold’s founder is getting $50,000 to give away. It might just be a situation in which power grants special privilidge, and being close to power also grants some special privilidge. I wouldn’t object to this to much if she had an impressive track record or if she had some special merit that made me think she had earned the privilidge, but as far as I am aware she doesn’t have a history of being a well-calibrated or successful grant giver. In fact, she is young and inexperienced, hasn’t graduated from college, and as far as a few minutes of Google searches reveals, has never had a “real” job (although has had internships and has run a student organization at her college). In fact, her only qualification seems to be that she is dating Manifold’s founder. Are you just choosing regrantors from people you know and like? Giving sinecures and special privilidge to friends seems… kind of corrupt.
I think this comment might be interpreted as harsh and mean, and that isn’t my intention. I have actually met her in real life and she seems like a nice person. I’m really worried that posting this comment will make the founder and her upset, and I’m purposely excluding the names to make it ever-so-slightly less transparent, and ever-so-slightly harder for other people to Google around and figure out details. The main problem I perceive is simply that she is young and hasn’t had much experience yet; the ability and status she is given here seems out of proportion to her level of skill/experience. I don’t have any inside information to suspect that there is anything malicious going on here. It is also possible that she is a brilliant thinker with excellent judgement, and that I just haven’t seen any evidence of it. But the situation just seems… is “corrupt” too strong of a word?