“Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones?”
This may have changed, but AIM did at least previously let candidates pitch their own ideas—I know of at least one person in my cohort that came in with their own project. Admittedly, this is rare, but that is probably what we should expect if as an applicant with an idea, you are up against a team of researchers with a cumulated expertise and experience of decades who have done several of these investigations, can compare ideas, have privileged access to data about how likely it is to find the right founders, obtain funding etc.
I’d be interested in something like “Here is where I donated” but for epistemics: “Here is where I have changed my mind”. This could be a post under which anyone can comment or a series of guest posts from thought leaders from different cause areas giving their recent (or older) updates.
Why?
I think this could be a good incentive for people to ask themselves that question and simultaneously a good way to celebrate and positively reinforce the virtue of changing one’s mind in the face of new evidence.
Personally, I have often found discussions are much less likely to become hostile or otherwise unproductive if they begin with this as the starting point, as people are given the chance to show vulnerability, explain their opinion as the result of an unfinished trajectory, etc.
In some cases, this could even be a good preventive measure to something that definitely happened to me when I first got involved: you read some old post from someone senior or respected and—because you haven’t been around for long and so you (rightly) defer a lot—you take this as gospel, only to later find out that that person doesn’t endorse that particular viewpoint anymore.