I appreciate honest and direct feedback: https://admonymous.co/vollmer
I'm the Executive Director at EA Funds, based in Oxford. You can best reach me at jonas.vollmer@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
Previously, I was a co-founder and co-executive director at the London-based Center on Long-Term Risk, a research group and grantmaker focused on preventing s-risks from AI.
My background is in medicine (BMed) and economics (MSc). See my LinkedIn.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions are my own, not my employer's. (I think this is generally how everyone uses the EA Forum; others who don't have such a disclaimer likely think about it similarly.)
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I'm very interested in some of these ideas. If anyone would like to build a pilot version of one of these projects, EA Funds is interested in receiving your application and might fund good pilots with an initial $30k–$500k. Apply here.
(You can also email me at jonas@effectivealtruismfunds.org, though I prefer getting applications over getting emails.)
Sent you an email!
Here's a somewhat random and non-exhaustive selection of (in my view) excellent content that's not on the Forum (disclosure: a lot is by CLR, the org I used to co-run):
- http://globalprioritiesproject.org/2015/12/new-uk-aid-strategy-prioritising-research-and-crisis-response/, with the additional context that EAs were importantly involved in making this happen
- Something like this, but from pre-2021: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22331708/eggs-cages-chickens-hens-meat-poultry
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01179-x
- Something about https://www.sendwave.com/
- https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/moral-trade-1.pdf
- https://longtermrisk.org/gains-from-trade-through-compromise/
- https://longtermrisk.org/reasons-to-be-nice-to-other-value-systems/
- https://longtermrisk.org/reducing-risks-of-astronomical-suffering-a-neglected-priority/
- https://longtermrisk.org/a-dialogue-on-suffering-subroutines/
- https://www.lesswrong.com/s/p947tK8CoBbdpPtyK or https://longtermrisk.org/research-agenda
- https://longtermrisk.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/
- https://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/
- https://reducing-suffering.org/the-importance-of-insect-suffering/
- https://reducing-suffering.org/why-charities-dont-differ-astronomically-in-cost-effectiveness/
- https://longtermrisk.org/how-the-simulation-argument-dampens-future-fanaticism
- https://reducing-suffering.org/should-altruists-leverage-investments/
- https://longtermrisk.org/differential-intellectual-progress-as-a-positive-sum-project/
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.6437
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
- https://rationalaltruist.com/2014/05/14/machine-intelligence-and-capital-accumulation/
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-proxies-to-use-for-flow-through.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2012/09/spreading-happiness-to-stars-seems.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-portion-of-boost-to-global-gdp.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/08/population-ethics-and-inaccessible.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-is-brain-mass-distributed-among.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-migration-liberalization-might.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/05/migration-levies-and-unskilled-labor.html
- https://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/01/turning-log-consumption-into-measure-of.html
I'm noticing that the EA Forum contains a lot of 'meta-level' content (i.e. discussions about the community, announcements, and similar), but a lot of object-level content (e.g. research reports, other forms of intellectual progress, or reports about successful EA projects) has been posted elsewhere.
I mainly want to upvote object-level content (and in fact have long felt pretty unhappy with the Forum's emphasis of meta-level content). But I don't really have time to crosspost more content myself. If someone wanted to do this, I'd be excited.
I noticed that when I go to the voting dashboard, I can't see this post listed there – is that a bug?
Out of all the suggestions, this seemed the least bad one. If you have a better suggestion, we might rename it!
Though is that case, is the upshot that I should donate to EA Funds, or that I should tell EA Funds to refer weird grant applicants to me?
If you're a <$500k/y donor, donate to EA Funds; otherwise tell EA Funds to refer weird grant applications to you (especially if you're neartermist – I don't think we're currently constrained by longtermist/meta donors who are open to weird ideas).
Regarding Charter Cities, I don't think EA Funds would be worried about funding them. However, I haven't yet encountered human-centric (as opposed to animal-inclusive) neartermist (as opposed to longtermist) large private donors who are open to weird ideas, and fund managers haven't been particularly excited about charter cities.
This doesn't seem like it is common knowledge.
To me, it feels like I (and other grantmakers) have been saying this over and over again (on the Forum, on Facebook, in Dank EA Memes, etc.), and yet people keep believing it's hard to fund weird things. I'm confused by this.
Also, "weird things that make sense" does kind of screen off a bunch of ideas which make sense to potential applicants, but not to fund managers.
Sure, but that argument applies to individual donors in the same way. (You might say that having more diverse decision-makers helps, but I'm pretty skeptical and think this will instead just lower the bar for funding.)
Yeah, I agree. (Also, I think it's a lot harder / near-impossible to sustain such high returns on a $100b portfolio than on a $1b portfolio.)
Very cool, thanks a lot! :)