Just looked at the website and the following probably fits under talent-search / innovative educational experiments. Apologies for the formatting (this is from a private doc of ideas some time ago, and I currently don’t have the time to reformat it / I’m also travelling with spotty internet).
Project 1:
Title:
Longtermist movement building via “cash transfers” (i.e. grants/fellowships) to talented (high-school) students (from developing countries) to support them to work on the world’s most pressing problems.
Idea:
Identify talented (e.g. top 0.01%) high school students (in developing countries) who demonstrate intelligence, altruism, ambition, etc.
Invite them to programs where they can learn about deep ideas (of which EA-aligned content is a non-trivial subset, but not everything) through project-based learning. Provide them with a small exploratory grant to see what they do / make them more ambitious (cf. Emergent Ventures: maximizing ambition per dollar).
After successively larger grants which are dependant on student performance/ their requirements (e.g. $1K, $2K, $10K, $25K), you have data on their performance, as well as having successively raised their ambition. Offer exceptional people $100K unrestricted for 2 years (cf. Thiel Fellowship: go build/ do something interesting with no-strings attached) from the ages of 17+, with mentorship/internships/support from people/orgs in EA-aligned spheres (e.g. orgs on 80K’s job board)
After the 2-year fellowship, evaluate their performance. Offer the most exceptional ones Bay-Area salaries/jobs and support (e.g. EA networks/friends) to pursue their most ambitious vision (their ambition having been increased by previous Emergent Ventures-style grants/networks).
How this could be funded in the long-run:
If necessary, a potential funding mechanism could be an ISA based on student earnings when legally permissible (potentially with an impact certificates/retroactive funding component) to ensure the program is well-incentivized to focus on impact rather than optimizing for students making the most money. Even without the impact certificates element, this’d probably be better incentivized than the current model (e.g. Universities)
Why this may be exciting:
Extremely talented students are being supported to work on the world’s most pressing problems (e.g. longtermist-focused/ x-risk reduction) without having to struggle for several years as they receive guidance (e.g. mentorship/internships). A potential win for longtermist causes.
The students selected may come from countries where avg. income is e.g. < $10K/year. If they’re earning >$100K/yr, this is a substantial cash transfer which they could decide to donate back home / set up initiatives to support individuals in their native countries. A potential win for near-termist causes (global health & development, increasing economic growth, etc.)
Word then gets back to students’ home countries about them entering these programs and becoming highly successful which incentivizes students back in their home countries to apply; this helps organically grow the movement and eventually lead to EA-aligned communities being formed in the native countries as more and more students apply (longtermist movement building in developing countries).
Next steps:
Speak to people about this at Feb 2020 Effective Giving Oxford party [done]
Project 2:
Title:
Identifying EA scriptwriters/substack authors through longtermist All Souls examinations.
Just looked at the website and the following probably fits under talent-search / innovative educational experiments. Apologies for the formatting (this is from a private doc of ideas some time ago, and I currently don’t have the time to reformat it / I’m also travelling with spotty internet).
Project 1:
Title:
Longtermist movement building via “cash transfers” (i.e. grants/fellowships) to talented (high-school) students (from developing countries) to support them to work on the world’s most pressing problems.
Idea:
Identify talented (e.g. top 0.01%) high school students (in developing countries) who demonstrate intelligence, altruism, ambition, etc.
Invite them to programs where they can learn about deep ideas (of which EA-aligned content is a non-trivial subset, but not everything) through project-based learning. Provide them with a small exploratory grant to see what they do / make them more ambitious (cf. Emergent Ventures: maximizing ambition per dollar).
After successively larger grants which are dependant on student performance/ their requirements (e.g. $1K, $2K, $10K, $25K), you have data on their performance, as well as having successively raised their ambition. Offer exceptional people $100K unrestricted for 2 years (cf. Thiel Fellowship: go build/ do something interesting with no-strings attached) from the ages of 17+, with mentorship/internships/support from people/orgs in EA-aligned spheres (e.g. orgs on 80K’s job board)
After the 2-year fellowship, evaluate their performance. Offer the most exceptional ones Bay-Area salaries/jobs and support (e.g. EA networks/friends) to pursue their most ambitious vision (their ambition having been increased by previous Emergent Ventures-style grants/networks).
How this could be funded in the long-run:
If necessary, a potential funding mechanism could be an ISA based on student earnings when legally permissible (potentially with an impact certificates/retroactive funding component) to ensure the program is well-incentivized to focus on impact rather than optimizing for students making the most money. Even without the impact certificates element, this’d probably be better incentivized than the current model (e.g. Universities)
Why this may be exciting:
Extremely talented students are being supported to work on the world’s most pressing problems (e.g. longtermist-focused/ x-risk reduction) without having to struggle for several years as they receive guidance (e.g. mentorship/internships). A potential win for longtermist causes.
The students selected may come from countries where avg. income is e.g. < $10K/year. If they’re earning >$100K/yr, this is a substantial cash transfer which they could decide to donate back home / set up initiatives to support individuals in their native countries. A potential win for near-termist causes (global health & development, increasing economic growth, etc.)
Word then gets back to students’ home countries about them entering these programs and becoming highly successful which incentivizes students back in their home countries to apply; this helps organically grow the movement and eventually lead to EA-aligned communities being formed in the native countries as more and more students apply (longtermist movement building in developing countries).
Next steps:
Speak to people about this at Feb 2020 Effective Giving Oxford party [done]
Project 2:
Title:
Identifying EA scriptwriters/substack authors through longtermist All Souls examinations.