All of LukeDing's Comments + Replies

Thanks for the post, and I appreciate it is a lot of work to work through so many applications especially on a volunteer basis. I note that the examples are mostly quite small. It may also be useful to have more information and reasoning on the largest grants from a donor perspective?

This resonates with my experience in the financial markets especially in the derivative markets. Quite often the financial market is quite efficient in the first order, but less efficient in second and third order where it is more neglected. And further down the orders the significance diminishes even if neglected.

I think this is a very good summary.

Given the shortage of funding for existing EA organisations,  there is clearly not a lot of money at the moment. But I think if there is a new $1m/yr+ movement building project with exceptional risk adjusted expected impact  it could probably get funding from non-op sources, but that will be at least partially at the expense of existing projects. 

Hi Will,

Thanks for the post. I think the below statement is inaccurate

• A single funder (Open Philanthropy, “OP”) allocates the large majority (around 70%^[2])  of funding that goes to EA movement-building. If you want to do an EA movement-building project with a large budget ($1m/yr or more), you probably need funding from OP, for the time  being at least. Vaidehi Agarwalla’s outstandingly helpful recent post gives more information.

Whilst I agree OP is the large majority as you mention and the concentration of decision making within that could... (read more)

This looks useful, thanks!

Thanks Vaidehi. I will take a look when I get a chance and let you know.

Thanks for compiling this. I have asked for access to the spreadsheet. Amongst others  I like to check how much of SFF funding is EA community building vs funding AI and ex-risk research. Also there is a lot of funding from Jane Street donors in addition in Matt Wage just want to make sure they are counted. These are particularly significant in the earlier period.

Yes I think the above is correct. Thanks for that. It is possible GWWC moved to cause neutrality before the review. I think perhaps the point I want to make is that there was a lot of strategic thinking at that time which led to a number of actions including those mentioned in the post.

I am not sure if anything was published officially but I remember being ‘interviewed’ at the time and views were sought from a number of EAs and there were dedicated resources from CEA, a bit like the governance review being conducted at the moment but on strategic focus.

The review’s remit was perhaps more on the future strategy of CEA but given the role played by CEA at the time which included 80,000 hours and GWWC, and other meta organisations were still quite young, quite significant. It led to the reorganisation of CEA and the rephrasing of GWWC pledge from health and poverty to more cause neutral as we have today. Others involved at the time will have more information.

One observation is that the first transition from 1st to 2nd wave was deliberate in that it was after a strategic review conducted by CEA, whilst the second transition was imposed by events. Perhaps the consequence of the first transition also has a influence (not sure how strong) on the trajectory of the second transition which is still unfolding.

Thanks so much for a great post Luke. I have been a strategic supporter of EA from the early days, both meta and longtermism organisations. As you elude to I remember the strategic review in EA in 2015/2016 which led to the pivot and emphasis on career contribution and longtermism. Whilst I agree that existential risks and longtermism are very important and should be empathised, I wholeheartedly agree with your thinking that it should be as well as rather than instead of giving. There is no reason imho that the two should be exclusive, but rather they are ... (read more)

Thanks, I was told about this by a psychologist.

Thanks so much Julia.

Thanks Julia and Ozzie. A few questions if I may.

Would you announce who is on the task force in due course?

I note that the form does not assume one could suggest oneself. Is that deliberate?

Also I note that the form does not have a section for the (relevant) bio of the person suggested so how do you decide how useful the person is unless you know the person very well already?

I also just want to mention the obvious that although there is some relevant expertise within the EA community in areas you are looking at, there is a lot of professional expertise in these areas outside the community too.

Thanks for that Michelle.

Hi Ben, will the EV boards announce who are on the search committee?

I don’t think the update is just one data point. Some of the issues with FTX - over reliance on alignment over domain expertise, group think, poor governance, overemphasising speed over robust execution at times straying into recklessness also exist within part of EA. FTX brings that into very sharp focus but is not the only example.

Sad to hear this Max but also so glad to hear you are looking after your mental health. I think you did a great job building CEA in the last few years with a great team and consistent execution.

I wonder if the word “Precipice” relates to Toby Ord’s book and the publicity around it, and following advocacy work by for example Longview?  We know there has been impact of the book at the UN at the highest level.

The Elders also present a different demographic and it is good to see.

Great point. And also for organisations with international presence to be careful with exchange rate risks and match currency holdings with expected currency expenses unless there are good reasons not to, sounds really basic but I have seen this overlooked even with large well run organisations.

Having been a hedge fund manager and supporter of EA for many years I think this is really good write up including legal and practical considerations. I think there is no easy solution except working hard to diversify the donor base, and perhaps for EA orgs not to take on even more correlated risks unless there are very good reasons to do so.

I think the case of OP and SBF are very different.Alameda was set up with a lot of help from EA and expected to donate a lot if not most to EA causes. Whereas Dustin made his wealth without help from EA.

Hi Gideon, do you mean me? I have very very little detailed knowledge of xrisk and do not believe my risk management expertise would be relevant. But happy to chat. May be you can pm me?

I empathise with this from my own experience having been quite actively involved in EA for 10 years and within my own area of expertise which is finance and investment, risk management and to a lesser extent governance ( as a senior partner and risk committee member of one the largest hedge fund in Europe), that sometimes we ignore ‘experts’ over people who are more value aligned.

It doesn’t mean I believe we should always defer to ‘experts’. Sometimes a fresh perspective is useful to explore and maximise potential upside , but sometimes ‘experts’  are... (read more)

How much professional advice on the cost and resource requirements on refurbishing and maintaining the property did Owen obtain? I note this is a Grade 1 listed building.

This is quite interesting and reminds me of a short option position as a previous hedge fund manager - you earn time decay or option premium when things are going well or stable, and then once in a while you take a big hit (and a lot of of people/orgs do not survive the hit). This is not a strategy I follow from a risk adjusted return point of view on a longer term perspective. I would not like to be short put option but rather be long call option and try to minimise my time decay or option premium.  The latter is more work and time consuming but I ha... (read more)

I agree and I am also concerned about this. I have witnessed this many times. I do think there are tremendous merits in vigorously thinking from first principal on some subject matters. But others such as risk management and regulation for example do require experise as we have now seen in the case of FTX.

Thanks for the summary and repost. I do think that this saga also has lessons for the EA community. I have seen many incidences whereby we overemphasise  EA alignment over subject matter expertise , especially when subject expertise is more practical and mission critical, for example in operation and risk management. This supports your comment on ‘This might leave the remaining group less able to identify weaknesses within group beliefs or course-correct, or "steer". 

I also think that advisory board could be a good way to get advice from experienced people who may not have the time or want to take the responsibility of being a trustee.

I think this is a great initiative. It is great to see what you are looking for and why and try to bring on more relevant professional expertise. I hope more EA organisations follow your example.

Thank you Michelle for such a compassionate post.

I think this is a very helpful post.

I think some of the larger, systemically important organisations should either have a balance of trustees and/or a board of advisors who have relevant mission critical experiences such as risk management, legal and compliance, depending on the nature of the organisation. I appreciate senior executives and trustees in these organisations do seek such advice; but often it is too opaque who they consult and which area the advice covers; and there could be a lack of accountability and risk of the advisors lacking sufficient ... (read more)

Great thanks for this and the link. I am still trying to understand this more as it evolves. I guess as the monitoring and control is now much stronger hopefully Ro will come down also.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

I find the analysis from this link very interesting. It suggests that Ro is higher than initially estimated at 3-4 (rather than 1.4-2.5 by WHO) but the national China mortality rate drops to 0.3% if the province of Hubei is excluded (the reported mortality rate of Wuhan alone is 5.5%). This would be consistent with the theory that the number of cases are underreported in Wuhan, due to a shortage of testing capacity and perhaps under reporting. A recent Lancet report by Professor Gabriel Leung from University of Hon... (read more)

Hi Peter, thanks for such a detailed post. I think there could be a misunderstanding in Founders Pledge numbers as their pledge numbers are growing very quickly and significantly higher than in 2015. (They have also been making great effort in increasing the impact of deployment including into far future.)

Also in the commitment section there is Effective Giving which is a relatively new and making significant progress.

These could point to a somewhat different picture in the commitment section to the one described above.

Perhaps we can review this and provide an update if necessary?

Thanks for that. As you mentioned in your guide I only recently realised that as I submit self assement return, I don’t need to donate by April 6 tax year end, but can do so before I submit the self assement return in following January which gives me an extra 9 months to work out how much I can donate.

Thanks for the question and the opportunity to clarify (I think I may have inadvertently overemphasised the negative potentials in my post.)

Yes there is a feedback loop, but it doesn’t have to result in a correction.

I think cryptocurrencies and bitcoin could be a good example. You have a new product with a small group of users and uses initially. The user base grows and due to limited increase in supply by design the price rises. As the total value of bitcoin in circulation rises the liquidity or the ability to execute larger transactions also rises, and t... (read more)

I hate posting as I worry a lot about saying ill-considered or trivial things. But in the spirit of Eliezer’s post I will have a go.

This post reminds me of some of my experiences, and I really like the $20 note on the floor analogy.

I was a derivatives trader for over 20 years and was last at a large hedge fund. In the early days I was managing new types of currency options at a relatively sleepy British investment bank focusing on servicing clients. After a while I thought some of these options were underpriced by the market due to inadequacy of the models... (read more)

Even though I have supported many EA organisations over the years (both meta, ex-risks and global poverty and some at quite early stages) and devote a great deal of time to try to do it well, I feel the EA funds could still be really useful.

There is a limit to how much high quality due diligence one could do. It takes time to build relationships, analyse opportunities and monitor them. This is also the reason I have not supported some of the EA Venture projects not necessarily because of the projects but because I did not have the bandwidth.

I am really imp... (read more)