A reread of 'Judicious Ambition' post from not so long ago is interesting:

"In 2013, it made sense for us to work in a poorly-lit basement, eating baguettes and hummus. Now it doesn’t. Frugality is now comparatively less valuable."

So, I guess, bring the hummus back?

Jokes aside, an explosion in funding changed EA from 'hedge fund for charity' into 'VC for charity'. This analogy goes a long way to explain shifts in attitude, decisions, exuberance. So perhaps going back to hedge-fundiness, and shifting the focus back from 'company builders' building the next big thing to less scalable but cost-effective operations is a good direction?

EA is constrained by the following formula:

Number of Donors x Average Donation = Number of Grants x Average Grant

If we lose a big donor, there are four things EA can do:

1. Increase the number of donors:
   
   1. Outreach. Community growth. Might be difficult right now for reputation reasons, though fortunately, EA was very quick to denounce SBF.
   2. Maybe lobby the government for cash?
   3. Maybe lobby OpenAI, DeepMind, etc for cash?
2. Increase average donation:
   
   1. Get another billionaire donor. Presumably, this is hard because otherwise EA would've done it already, but there might be factors that are hidden from me.
   2. 80K could begin pushing earning-to-give again. They shifted their recommendations a few years ago to promoting direct-impact careers. This made sense when EA was less funding-constrained.
   3. Get existing donors to ramp up their donations. In the good ol' days, EA used to be a club for people donating 60% of their income to anti-malaria bednets. Maybe EA will return to that frugal ascetic lifestyle.
3. Reduce the number of grants:
   
   1. FTX was funding a number of projects. Some of these were higher priorities than others. Hopefully the high-priority projects retain their funding, whereas low-priority projects are paused.
   2. EA has been engaged in a "hit-or-miss" approach to grant-making. This makes sense when you have more cash than sure-thing ideas. But now we have less cash we should focus on sure-thing ideas.
   3. The problem with the "sure-thing" approach to grant-making is that it biases certain causes (e.g. global health & dev) over others (e.g. x-risk). I think that would be a mistake. Someone needs to think about how to calibrate for this bias.
      
      Here's a tentative idea: EA needs more prizes and other forms of retrodictive funding. This will shift risk from the grant-maker to the researcher, which might be good because the researcher is more informed about the likelihood of success than the grant-maker.
4. Reduce average grant:
   
   1. Maybe EA needs to focus on cheaper projects.
   2. For example, in AI safety there has been a recent shift away from theoretic work (like MIRI's decision theory) towards experimental work. This experimental work is very expensive because it involves (say) training large language models. This shift should be at least somewhat reversed.
   3. Academics are very cheap! And they often already have funding. EA (especially AI safety) needs to do more outreach to established academics, such as top philosophers, mathematicians, economists, computer scientists, etc.

EA is constrained by the following formula:

Number of Donors x Average Donation = Number of Grants x Average Grant

If we lose a big donor, there are four things EA can do:

1. Increase the number of donors:
   
   1. Outreach. Community growth. Might be difficult right now for reputation reasons, though fortunately, EA was very quick to denounce SBF.
   2. Maybe lobby the government for cash?
   3. Maybe lobby OpenAI, DeepMind, etc for cash?
2. Increase average donation:
   
   1. Get another billionaire donor. Presumably, this is hard because otherwise EA would've done it already, but there might be factors that are hidden from me.
   2. 80K could begin pushing earning-to-give again. They shifted their recommendations a few years ago to promoting direct-impact careers. This made sense when EA was less funding-constrained.
   3. Get existing donors to ramp up their donations. In the good ol' days, EA used to be a club for people donating 60% of their income to anti-malaria bednets. Maybe EA will return to that frugal ascetic lifestyle.
3. Reduce the number of grants:
   
   1. FTX was funding a number of projects. Some of these were higher priorities than others. Hopefully the high-priority projects retain their funding, whereas low-priority projects are paused.
   2. EA has been engaged in a "hit-or-miss" approach to grant-making. This makes sense when you have more cash than sure-thing ideas. But now we have less cash we should focus on sure-thing ideas.
   3. The problem with the "sure-thing" approach to grant-making is that it biases certain causes (e.g. global health & dev) over others (e.g. x-risk). I think that would be a mistake. Someone needs to think about how to calibrate for this bias.
      
      Here's a tentative idea: EA needs more prizes and other forms of retrodictive funding. This will shift risk from the grant-maker to the researcher, which might be good because the researcher is more informed about the likelihood of success than the grant-maker.
4. Reduce average grant:
   
   1. Maybe EA needs to focus on cheaper projects.
   2. For example, in AI safety there has been a recent shift away from theoretic work (like MIRI's decision theory) towards experimental work. This experimental work is very expensive because it involves (say) training large language models. This shift should be at least somewhat reversed.
   3. Academics are very cheap! And they often already have funding. EA (especially AI safety) needs to do more outreach to established academics, such as top philosophers, mathematicians, economists, computer scientists, etc.

For Open Philanthropy it is responded in this post:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mCCutDxCavtnhxhBR/some-comments-on-recent-ftx-related-events

For other funders I guess the response will be simmilar.

I guess a short common sense answer for funders could be:
1st) put commitments on hold and wait until there is more clarity of the actual impact
2nd) identify gaps, assess by urgency/importance
3rd) reprioritize and balance portfolios

For workers and organizations relying on donors:
1st) do not assume you will not be impacted if you don't receive directly funds from FTX. The money you were relying on may be redirected in the future to other projects previously funded by FTX
2nd) put on hold financial decisions (hiring staff, buying, etc.) in the short term until you get a bit more clarity
3rd) reorganize your personal/organization budget