Marcus Abramovitch 🔸

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 28 Apr 2026 5:51 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: david_re­in­stein’s Shortform

  Actually, the set of things you want to apply electricity to is far smaller than the set of things you dont want to. For example, if your baby is crying, please dont use electricity.

  The problem side should do the searching since they have the shape and exact know-how of the problem

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 27 Apr 2026 17:51 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Man­i­fund’s Fal­con Fund

  I am very open to funding research on the sentience of nematodes.

  Regarding intensities of pain, I’m open to it, but would be surprised.

  Welfare comparisons across species are also in scope. I consider Bob Fischer to be one of our best people who has a strong hunch for making his research useful, and as much as is practicable/​possible, he should have free rein to do the work he finds most valauble. This talk in 2023 is responsible for a lot of my thinking around smaller animals and very much cemented the idea that helping non-human animals was going to be far more cost-effective.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 27 Apr 2026 17:21 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SofiaBalderson’s comment on: Man­i­fund’s Fal­con Fund

  Strong agree. I’m doing a lot of writing over the next month, some of which will tackle ways I think the EA funding system needs fixing. I think speed is crucial to grantmaking both in the strict monetary sense (interest rates) and in building momentum.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 27 Apr 2026 1:58 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JamesN’s comment on: Fore­cast­ing is Way Over­rated, and We Should Stop Fund­ing It

  Appreciate the correction. I simply did totals I saw from Open Phil/​CG spreadsheets. Ill correct the post.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 26 Apr 2026 20:15 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Denkenberger🔸’s comment on: Man­i­fund’s Fal­con Fund

  Thanks

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 26 Apr 2026 19:57 UTC

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Fore­cast­ing is Way Over­rated, and We Should Stop Fund­ing It

  I’m not a paid sub to Nuno so I can’t see.

  I had this post in my drafts for 3 years. I was happy to see the Forecasting Fund close down, I don’t expect we will see less than $5M of forecasting grants done by CG in 2026 or 2027 though.

  I don’t have an opinion on if I would rather the forecasting grants be made within or separate from the forecasting fund so long as the grants are still being made. I see pros and cons.

  I think Holly’s post you linked is awesome and is in my Mount Rushmore of posts (top 4 all time).

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 26 Apr 2026 2:25 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Fore­cast­ing is Way Over­rated, and We Should Stop Fund­ing It

  The problem is that prediction markets on useful questions, many years out, suffer from problems due to capital lockup/​interest rates, among other things.

  Also, I just don’t think the wisdom of the crowds emerges as much as you’d want. I think you can just ask 3 smart people what they think, and this will elicit more useful info.

Fore­cast­ing is Way Over­rated, and We Should Stop Fund­ing It

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 25 Apr 2026 10:06 UTC

  14 points

  4 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Noah Birnbaum’s comment on: Noah Birn­baum’s Quick takes

  I think the other thing is that we’ve tucked away the “community section”. People used to come for the drama and stay for well, partly drama and partly other stuff they saw. I think its fine if they come for the drama and read other stuff.

  I think Substack isn’t great for comments and the forum is much better for comments.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 25 Apr 2026 1:27 UTC

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Man­i­fund’s Fal­con Fund

  I wouldn’t say I “nudged” him. He was doing it. I invested since I thought it was a good investment (it has been). They had no problem raising money, and my investment replaced (some of) one of the other investors.

  I wouldn’t have included this, but Austin really wanted to.

  I have donated a lot of money recently, to animal welfare (~$450k in the last 5 months), I would have donated less if I had did not have this investment.

Man­i­fund’s Fal­con Fund

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 27 Mar 2026 23:59 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The joys of cash benchmarking

  This was a great piece and I have it saved now as one of my “go-tos” for global health stuff. It makes a lot of great points about why cash benchmarking is great and the instances you might expect it to underperform

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 26 Mar 2026 5:52 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AGI & An­i­mals: Dis­cus­sion Thread

  Not by default. I think humans by in large, don’t care much about animals enough for this to work

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 12 Jan 2026 20:28 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: AI Risk timelines: 10% chance (by year X) should be the head­line (and dead­line), not 50%. And 10% is _this year_!

  I obviously can’t prove I am not biased in such a way, but I don’t think that is a fair assumption.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 11 Jan 2026 22:48 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: AI Risk timelines: 10% chance (by year X) should be the head­line (and dead­line), not 50%. And 10% is _this year_!

  I don’t think my reasoning is around wanting to stay sane at all. Most of my reasoning revolves around base rates, examining current systems, and assessing current progress.

  I think I’m in this peculiar position where I have ~medium (maybe many reading this would consider them to be long) timelines and fairly low “p(doom)”, and I still think AI risk is among the most important things to work on.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 5 Jan 2026 22:10 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: AI Risk timelines: 10% chance (by year X) should be the head­line (and dead­line), not 50%. And 10% is _this year_!

  I’m not sure. I definitely think there is a chance that if I earnestly believed those things, I would go fairly crazy. I empathize with those who, in my opinion, are overreacting.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 5 Jan 2026 20:03 UTC

  11 points

  7 ∶ 3

  on: AI Risk timelines: 10% chance (by year X) should be the head­line (and dead­line), not 50%. And 10% is _this year_!

  I don’t think the probability of AGI this year is above 10%, nor do I think that doom, given AGI is above 10%

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 15 Nov 2025 20:05 UTC

  21 points

  7 ∶ 1

  on: High-im­pact pro­jects fight­ing bio­di­ver­sity loss

  I made a similar comment here so I wont re-hash all of it but I still haven’t seen a compelling case for caring about biodiversity. I dont want the EA community to be closed off, especially to people who are trying to do good in the world, but I think there needs to be a much stronger reason to care about biodiversity inherently. Otherwise, it feels hard to distinguish this from high impact projects to improve the Toronto Raptors and talking about basketball analytics.

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 3 Nov 2025 19:34 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: abrahamrowe’s comment on: Some sur­pris­ing hiring prac­tices I fol­low (as a hiring man­ager and grant­maker in EA)

  Nice comment. One follow-up.

  The only cases I see where I deviated heavily from the process and it went well was when I had worked extensively with the person before and knew them quite well

  Do you think this basically supports “hiring people you know to be good” and using your network and previous interactions with people not in an interview setting to seek out good candidates?

• Marcus Abramovitch 🔸 29 Oct 2025 6:03 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dicentra’s comment on: Con­sider donat­ing to Alex Bores, au­thor of the RAISE Act

  I feel like I might pull back on (1) by maybe 20% or so but the general ethos I still want to convey.

  The part I didn’t do as good a job of conveying is that most people won’t donate out of risk aversion or keeping their options open and I think people are also far overestimating their odds of pivoting their career into a government role, especially in the next 3 years.

  Even if you accept that the Trump administration wouldn’t hire anyone who has ever donated to a Democrat, this is the first time this has happened and thus you shouldn’t assume this type of thing is going to be common.

  All in all, I think it’s going to be quite rare that someone shouldn’t make political donations.