All of markm's Comments + Replies
1a. Has Open Phil set any aggressive org-wide goals or timelines for 2018?
1b. The published plan for 2018 says that OPP expects to give "well over $100 million" [1]. What is this expectation based on? Or is it a goal?
2a. Other than current funders, who considers the research coming from Open Phil RAs to be reputable, credible and useful? (ie. government?)
2b. Does it matter that RAs aren't PhDs or that Open Phil isn't directly affiliated with any educational institution?
[1] https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/our-progress-2017-and-plans-2018
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6y
Quick replies to each:
1a. Our goals for 2018 are laid out in the post you linked to.
1b. The expectation is based mostly on the fact that we gave well over $100 million last year, and we're devoting similar time and effort to grantmaking in 2018.
2a. Open Phil is still a fairly new organization, and I don't think many know much about us yet. Probably we are best known in the effective altruism community, where we seem to have a strong reputation.
2b. Does it matter for our reputation, do you mean? I'm not sure. I'm not aware of us having received critiques about that.
The purpose of these questions was to better estimate if an RAs impact can be expected to increase, decrease, or remain the same in the coming years.
An aggressive measurable goal (ie. increase estimated QALYs gained by a factor of x) would indicate to me that an RAs expected impact would increase. (It's possible that a measurable goal might be trivial to set because the error bars might be too large. I don't know enough to know.)
If other funders (esp. big funders such as government) considered Open Phil research credible enough to base their decisions on... (read more)