SH

Steen Hoyer

6 karmaJoined Mar 2022

Bio

PhD in computational and systems biology; plant virus evolutionary biologist

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1338-8900

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AWRhHlsAAAAJ

CassavaVirusEvolution.org

I don't care for the term “effective altruism”, because to me it implies a contrast with ineffective altruism. It is great that others like the term but I have trouble relating to it, perhaps because I find evaluating the effectiveness of altruistic efforts so challenging. (Related: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i24sXY8v6FXLyJKXF/why-ea-groups-should-not-use-effective-altruism-in-their?commentId=RJFEjYETpQT7qCjT8 and https://briantomasik.com/fastidious-vs-relaxed-approaches-goals)

Comments
6

CEO Nick B wrote that “funding applications will not be made public”, for what its worth. 

Are you not asking about the first question in the ‘Other’ section at the end?

I.e. “one-minute video (unlisted Youtube video). Please follow the Y Combinator application video guidelines: https://www.ycombinator.com/video/ ”.

It appears that they want applicants to upload a video, set it to private, and then paste in a link (rather than sharing a video file directly).

Under the first FAQ question on the Apply page: “In order to distribute labor and keep ourselves focused, we don’t accept applications seeking less than $100,000.”

The email with the responses eventually came through, after a delay, so I am all set. Sorry for the noise.

Semirelated question: Do you expect to provide explicit rejection notifications for projects that you choose not to fund?

I see from your FAQ that you “usually don’t provide feedback because we have a small team and face capacity constraints”, which makes total sense. I also see that you anticipate making a ‘revise and resubmit’ decision on some proposals. I am rather asking about sending applicants a ‘Sorry not interested’ note.

It might be nice to do this, though I understand it may end up being logistically impossible.

I submitted a proposal on someone's behalf today. It all seemed straightforward and I really appreciate the simplicity of the process!

However, the form said that “A copy of your responses will be emailed to the address you provided” and no such email was received.  (It did not get caught in a spam filter, as far as we can tell. I'm part of a team and pasted in the email address of the designated leader.)

I got the ‘Your response has been recorded’ screen, so I am pretty sure that submission worked, but I cannot help wondering if I made some strange error entering the email address or if there was some other glitch. If there is some good way to further confirm that our application was received and is complete that would be welcome.