Former professional poker player
Crypto enthusiast
Aspiring hedonic utilitarian
10% Pledge #6396 with GivingWhatWeCan
Mckiev đ¸
Karma: 65
@Brad Westđ¸ , thanks for sharing your thoughts! This is what I thought of initially, but then âpivoted toâ the complete non-profit framing, mainly because winning in the actual casino would mean that you are in effect taking money from charities. Probably even more important is the legal advantage of my proposal
Non-Profit Casino
I use many of the same subscriptions, but also monica (refferal link), only for itâs ui basically: when highlighting the text on a webpage you can press âexplainâ among other options, and it elaborates on a term/âphrase/âsentence, I didnât feel like I understood enough. As with perplexity you can customize which model to use under the hood
Thank you for the helpful webinar, Emma and Steve! Would you mind to share the recording?
I find tax codes in the US (and basically every other country) very frustrating, not because the tax is big, but for all the bureaucratic burden
I thought I could circumvent the whole problem by putting most of my hard-to-deal-with assets into a charitable fund, and then not worry about taxes there at all. However, DAFs donât quite solve the issue since they are very limited in where I can invest. There are also options such as âCharitable Trustsâ and âPrivate Foundations,â but they seem to create lots of overhead.
Is there an option that Iâm missing? In an ideal case, I would like to have fully functioning brokerage and crypto exchange accounts where I can make any transactions tax-free, given that all of the money I earn must be donated in the end.
How did the first run go? Are you planning to do more groups?
I meant real projects, so that potential donors could fund them directly. Both Manifund and Nonlinear Network gathered applications, but evaluating them remains a challenging task. Having a project publicly endorsed by LTFF, would have been a strong signal to potential funders in my opinion
Iâd love to see a database of waitlisted grant applications publicly posted and endorsed by LTFF, ideally with the score that LTFF evaluators have assigned. Would you consider doing it?
By waitlisted, I mean those that LTFF would have funded if it wasnât funding constrained.
sismo.io has a working opensource implementation that allows proving your inclusion into groups of choice without revealing anything else. (Iâm not associated with them to be clear) User knows exactly what he proves and can easily determine the list of people who could prove the same statement. (this is my dilettante understanding)
Probably it can be implemented with a more efficient algorithm, but Iâm not sure whether this optimization is worth the time to implement.
Do you know about groups who would be interested?
sismo.io has an opensource implementation based on zero knowledge proofs and ethereum wallets. I think ethereum wallets are a more convenient asymmetric cryptography implementation then e.g. pgp, hence it would probably be easier to get people to use them.
I have an interested-user-level knowledge of internals, but Iâd be very keen to dive deep in case it could be useful.
Do you know of a group that is actively interested in such a system? I doubt itâs possible to convince people to do it otherwise, since key management remains painful if done safely.
Zero Knowledge Proofs allow proving that you are a part of a certain group without revealing who exactly. This can allow credible whistleblowing. For example, if some ML company issues a list of itâs employees linked to ethereum wallets (or any other cryptographic key pair of choice), then any of itâs employees would have an option to whistleblow on unsafe practices, while being 100% sure itâs impossible to know who made this post.
This seem awesome to me and I wonder if anyone else shares my fascination and think this could be useful
Glad to hear that you are increasing capacity! In regards to understanding donor concerns and pitching them: seems like it should be relatively easy to hire someone for this role (unlike hiring a grant evaluator)
Thank you for pointing me to this post, now I better understand the situation. I hope youâll figure out how to distribute approved grants faster, and also how raise more fundsâIâd love to see most net-positive longtermist grants funded, and believe itâs achievable.
I think you laid out a very compelling reason to donate to LTFF and Iâm sorry I didnât see it earlier. Am I unusual in this regard? What share of current LTFF donors do you think are up to date on this?
Judging by the stats page LTFF currently has 2M in the bank, which is an evidence against being funding constrained. If LTFF have distributed ~all the funds and managers put up a post saying e.g. : âhere are 20 more grants totalling 10M weâd really like to see fundedâ, the argument would have sounded more persuasive, and i would predict the funding gap could get closed relatively quickly by some crypto magnate.
I appreciate the author starting this conversation and would really love to see comment from LTFF here
It was heartwarming to read the shoutout, I appreciate it!
Did LTFF decline you grant application? Have you applied to manifund.org?
Iâm sorry I didnât express myself clearly. By âselect people carefullyâ, I meant selecting for correct motivations, that you have tried to filter for using the subsistence salary. I would prefer using some other selection mechanism (like references), and then provide a solid paycheck (like MIRI does).
Itâs certainly noble to give away everything beyond 30k like Singer and MacAskill do, but I think it should be a choice rather than a requirement.
Well, such a low pay creates additional mental pressure to resist temptation to get 5-10x money in a normal job. Iâd rather select people carefully, but then provide them with at least a ~middle class wage
Did anyone consider ELOing the longtermist projects for âRetrospective grant evaluationsâ. Seems like it could be relatively fast by crowdsourcing comparisons, and orthogonal to other types of estimates
I meant that my version of casino could operate in all states legally (vs 8 states for regular casinos)
Also: have you used Daffy? Itâs really easy to set up (to your point about friction of setting up accounts)