In the last two years, CFAR hasn’t done much outward-facing work at all, due to COVID, and so has neither been a MIRI funnel nor definitively not a MIRI funnel.
Yes, but I would predict that we won’t be the same sort of MIRI funnel going forward. This is because MIRI used to have specific research programs that it needed to hire for, and it it was sponsoring AIRCS (covering direct expenses plus loaning us some researchers to help run the thing) in order to recruit for that, and those research programs have been discontinued and so AIRCS won’t be so much of a thing anymore.
This has been the main part of why no AIRCS post vaccines, not just COVID.
I, and I would guess some others at CFAR, am interested in running AIRCS-like programs going forward, especially if there are groups that want to help us pay the direct expenses for those programs and/or researchers that want to collaborate with us on such programs. (Message me if you’re reading this and in one of those categories.) But it’ll be less MIRI-specific this time, since there isn’t that recruiting angle.
Also, more broadly, CFAR has adopted different structures for organizing ourselves internally, and we are bigger now into “if you work for CFAR, or are a graduate of our instructor training program, and you have a ‘telos’ that you’re on fire to do, you can probably do it with CFAR’s venue/dollars/collaborations of some sorts” (we’re calling this “platform CFAR,” Elizabeth Garrett invented it and set it up maybe about a year ago, can’t remember), and also into doing hourly rather than salaried work in general (so we don’t feel an obligation to fill time with some imagined ’supposed to do CFAR-like activity” vagueness, so that we can be mentally free) and are also into taking more care not to have me or anyone speak for others at CFAR or organize people into a common imagined narrative one must pretend to believe, but rather into letting people do what we each believe in, and try to engage each other where sensible. Which makes it a bit harder to know what CFAR will be doing going forward, and also leaves me thinking it’ll have a bit more variety in it. Probably.
Yes, but I would predict that we won’t be the same sort of MIRI funnel going forward. This is because MIRI used to have specific research programs that it needed to hire for, and it it was sponsoring AIRCS (covering direct expenses plus loaning us some researchers to help run the thing) in order to recruit for that, and those research programs have been discontinued and so AIRCS won’t be so much of a thing anymore.
This has been the main part of why no AIRCS post vaccines, not just COVID.
I, and I would guess some others at CFAR, am interested in running AIRCS-like programs going forward, especially if there are groups that want to help us pay the direct expenses for those programs and/or researchers that want to collaborate with us on such programs. (Message me if you’re reading this and in one of those categories.) But it’ll be less MIRI-specific this time, since there isn’t that recruiting angle.
Also, more broadly, CFAR has adopted different structures for organizing ourselves internally, and we are bigger now into “if you work for CFAR, or are a graduate of our instructor training program, and you have a ‘telos’ that you’re on fire to do, you can probably do it with CFAR’s venue/dollars/collaborations of some sorts” (we’re calling this “platform CFAR,” Elizabeth Garrett invented it and set it up maybe about a year ago, can’t remember), and also into doing hourly rather than salaried work in general (so we don’t feel an obligation to fill time with some imagined ’supposed to do CFAR-like activity” vagueness, so that we can be mentally free) and are also into taking more care not to have me or anyone speak for others at CFAR or organize people into a common imagined narrative one must pretend to believe, but rather into letting people do what we each believe in, and try to engage each other where sensible. Which makes it a bit harder to know what CFAR will be doing going forward, and also leaves me thinking it’ll have a bit more variety in it. Probably.