Though it’s the website which I find important, as I understand it, the majority of this money will go towards supporting Lighthaven.
I think this is backwards! As you can see in the budget I posted here, and also look at the “Economics of Lighthaven” section, Lighthaven itself is actually surprisingly close to financially breaking even. If you ignore our deferred 2024 interest payment, my guess is we will overall either lose or gain some relatively small amount on net (like $100k).
Most of the cost in that budget comes from LessWrong and our other generalist activities. At least right now, I think you should be more worried about the future of Lighthaven being endangered by the financial burden of LessWrong (and in the long run, I think it’s reasonably likely that LessWrong will end up in part funded by revenue from Lighthaven).
I originally missed that the “Expected Income” of $2.55M from the budget means “Expected Income of Lighthaven” and consequently had the same misconception as Joel that donations mostly go towards subsidizing Lighthaven rather than almost entirely toward supporting the website in expectation.
I think this is backwards! As you can see in the budget I posted here, and also look at the “Economics of Lighthaven” section, Lighthaven itself is actually surprisingly close to financially breaking even. If you ignore our deferred 2024 interest payment, my guess is we will overall either lose or gain some relatively small amount on net (like $100k).
Most of the cost in that budget comes from LessWrong and our other generalist activities. At least right now, I think you should be more worried about the future of Lighthaven being endangered by the financial burden of LessWrong (and in the long run, I think it’s reasonably likely that LessWrong will end up in part funded by revenue from Lighthaven).
Thanks for this! I just doubled my donation because of this answer and @kave’s.
FWIW a lot of my understanding that Lighthaven was a burden comes from this section:
I initially read this as $3m for three interest payments. (Maybe change the wording so 2 and 3 don’t both mention the interest payment?)
I originally missed that the “Expected Income” of $2.55M from the budget means “Expected Income of Lighthaven” and consequently had the same misconception as Joel that donations mostly go towards subsidizing Lighthaven rather than almost entirely toward supporting the website in expectation.
Aah, that makes sense. I will update the row to say “Expected Lighthaven Income”