I’m reading this as you saying something like “I’m trying to build a practical org that successfully onramps people into doing useful work. I can’t actually do that for arbitrary domains that people aren’t providing funding for. I’m trying to solve one particular part of the problem and that’s hard enough as it is.”
Yes to all this, but also I’ll go one level deeper. Even if I had tons more Manifund money to give out (and assuming all the talent needs discussed in the report are saturated with funding), it’s not immediately clear to me that “giving 1-3 year stipends to high-calibre young researchers, no questions asked” is the right play if they don’t have adequate mentorship, the ability to generate useful feedback loops, researcher support systems, access to frontier models if necessary, etc.
I’m reading this as you saying something like “I’m trying to build a practical org that successfully onramps people into doing useful work. I can’t actually do that for arbitrary domains that people aren’t providing funding for. I’m trying to solve one particular part of the problem and that’s hard enough as it is.”
Is that roughly right?
Fwiw I appreciate your Manifund regrantor Request for Proposals announcement.
I’ll probably have more thoughts later.
Yes to all this, but also I’ll go one level deeper. Even if I had tons more Manifund money to give out (and assuming all the talent needs discussed in the report are saturated with funding), it’s not immediately clear to me that “giving 1-3 year stipends to high-calibre young researchers, no questions asked” is the right play if they don’t have adequate mentorship, the ability to generate useful feedback loops, researcher support systems, access to frontier models if necessary, etc.