This is a special post for quick takes by harfe. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Consider donating all or most of your Mana on Manifold to charity before May 1.
Manifold is making multiple changes to the way Manifold works.
You can read their announcement here.
The main reason for donating now is that Mana will be devalued from the current 1 USD:100 Mana to 1 USD:1000 Mana on May 1. Thankfully, the 10k USD/month charity cap will not be in place until then.
Also this part might be relevant for people with large positions they want to sell now:
One week may not be enough time for users with larger portfolios to liquidate and donate. We want to work individually with anyone who feels like they are stuck in this situation and honor their expected returns and agree on an amount they can donate at the original 100:1 rate past the one week deadline once the relevant markets have resolved.
Thanks for sharing this on the Forum! If you (the reader) have donated your mana because of this quick take, I'd love it if you put a react on this comment.
I can't imagine it helped in winning allies in Oxford, but relationship with Faculty/University was already highly dysfunctional. (I was consulted as part of a review re: FHI's position within Oxford and various options before said personal controversies).
By the end, the line between genuine scientific inquiry and activistic 'research' got quite blurry at FHI. I don't think papers such as: 'Proposal for a New UK National Institute for Biological Security', belong in an academic institution, even if I agree with the conclusion.
For the disagree voters (I didn't agreevote either way) -- perhaps a more neutral way to phrase this is might be:
Oxford and/or its philosophy department apparently decided that continuing to be affiliated with FHI wasn't in its best interests. It seems this may have developed well before the Bostrom situation. Given that, and assuming EA may want to have orgs affiliated with other top universities, what lessons might be learned from this story? To the extent that keeping the university happy might limit the org's activities, when is accepting that compromise worth it?
I also didn't vote but would be very surprised if that particular paper - a policy proposal for a biosecurity institute in the context of a pandemic - was an example of the sort of thing Oxford would be concerned about affiliating with (I can imagine some academics being more sceptical of some of the FHI's other research topics). Social science faculty academics write papers making public policy recommendations on a routine basis, many of them far more controversial.
The postmortem doc says "several times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be received" which suggests it might be internal messaging that lost them friends and alienated people. It'd be interesting if there are any specific lessons to be learned, but it might well boil down to academics being rude to each other, and the FHI seems to want to emphasize it was more about academic politics than anything else.
Consider donating all or most of your Mana on Manifold to charity before May 1.
Manifold is making multiple changes to the way Manifold works. You can read their announcement here. The main reason for donating now is that Mana will be devalued from the current 1 USD:100 Mana to 1 USD:1000 Mana on May 1. Thankfully, the 10k USD/month charity cap will not be in place until then.
Also this part might be relevant for people with large positions they want to sell now:
I just donated $65 to Shrimp Welfare Project :)
Sadly even slightly worse than 10x devaluation because 1,000 mana will redeem for $0.95 to cover "credit card fees and administrative work"
That Notion link doesn't work for me FYI :) But this one did (from their website)
Thanks for sharing this on the Forum!
If you (the reader) have donated your mana because of this quick take, I'd love it if you put a react on this comment.
Forum post saying the same thing, with some discussion: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SM3YzTsXmQ6BaFcsL/you-probably-want-to-donate-any-manifold-currency-this-week
FHI has shut down yesterday: https://www.futureofhumanityinstitute.org/
Seems a shame. My understanding was they did good work.
more discussion at forum post
Based on the timing, how likely is it that this was a partial consequence of Bostrom's personal controversies?
I can't imagine it helped in winning allies in Oxford, but relationship with Faculty/University was already highly dysfunctional. (I was consulted as part of a review re: FHI's position within Oxford and various options before said personal controversies).
Thank you! I framed it as a question for this reason ❤️
Nick Bostrom's website now lists him as "Principal Researcher, Macrostrategy Research Initiative."
Doesn't seem like they have a website yet.
Except they should maximize confusion by calling it the "Macrostrategy Interim Research Initiative" ;)
I think I'm sympathetic to Oxford's decision.
By the end, the line between genuine scientific inquiry and activistic 'research' got quite blurry at FHI. I don't think papers such as: 'Proposal for a New UK National Institute for Biological Security', belong in an academic institution, even if I agree with the conclusion.
For the disagree voters (I didn't agreevote either way) -- perhaps a more neutral way to phrase this is might be:
Oxford and/or its philosophy department apparently decided that continuing to be affiliated with FHI wasn't in its best interests. It seems this may have developed well before the Bostrom situation. Given that, and assuming EA may want to have orgs affiliated with other top universities, what lessons might be learned from this story? To the extent that keeping the university happy might limit the org's activities, when is accepting that compromise worth it?
I also didn't vote but would be very surprised if that particular paper - a policy proposal for a biosecurity institute in the context of a pandemic - was an example of the sort of thing Oxford would be concerned about affiliating with (I can imagine some academics being more sceptical of some of the FHI's other research topics). Social science faculty academics write papers making public policy recommendations on a routine basis, many of them far more controversial.
The postmortem doc says "several times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be received" which suggests it might be internal messaging that lost them friends and alienated people. It'd be interesting if there are any specific lessons to be learned, but it might well boil down to academics being rude to each other, and the FHI seems to want to emphasize it was more about academic politics than anything else.