A heuristic I’ve previously encountered being thrown around about whether to donate to the MIRI, or the FHI, is to fund whichever one has more room for more funding, or whichever one is experiencing more of a funding crunch at a given time. As Less Wrong is a hub for an unusually large number of donors to each of these organizations, it might be nice if there was a (semi-)annual discussion on these matters with representatives from the various organizations. How feasible would this be?
This is worth thinking about in the future, thanks. I think right now, it’s good to take advantage of MIRI’s matched giving opportunities when they arise, and I’d expect either organization to announce if they were under a particular crunch or aiming to hit a particular target.
.impact is a volunteer task force of effective altruists who take upon projects not linked to any one organization. .impact deals in particular with implementing open-source software resources that are useful to effective altruists. Well, that’s what it’s trying to specialize in; the decentralized coordination of remote volunteers is very difficult.
Anyway, on the effective altruism forum, I was involved with a discussion about building an interactive visual map that updates on what the status of projects, and funding, for effective altruist organizations. Anybody trying to reduce existential risk would fall under effective altruism, so ostensibly, they’d be included on such a map, too. This would solve most of the problem I myself posed above.
I’ll update Less Wrong in the future if I get wind of any progress on such a project. Anyone: send me a private message if you want more information.
On that thread I provided information about FHI’s room for more funding (accurate as of start of 2014) plus the rationale for FHI’s other, less Xrisk/Future of Humanity-specific projects (externally funded). I’d be happy to do the same at the end of this year, but instead representing CSER’s financial situation and room for more funding.
A heuristic I’ve previously encountered being thrown around about whether to donate to the MIRI, or the FHI, is to fund whichever one has more room for more funding, or whichever one is experiencing more of a funding crunch at a given time. As Less Wrong is a hub for an unusually large number of donors to each of these organizations, it might be nice if there was a (semi-)annual discussion on these matters with representatives from the various organizations. How feasible would this be?
This is worth thinking about in the future, thanks. I think right now, it’s good to take advantage of MIRI’s matched giving opportunities when they arise, and I’d expect either organization to announce if they were under a particular crunch or aiming to hit a particular target.
.impact is a volunteer task force of effective altruists who take upon projects not linked to any one organization. .impact deals in particular with implementing open-source software resources that are useful to effective altruists. Well, that’s what it’s trying to specialize in; the decentralized coordination of remote volunteers is very difficult.
Anyway, on the effective altruism forum, I was involved with a discussion about building an interactive visual map that updates on what the status of projects, and funding, for effective altruist organizations. Anybody trying to reduce existential risk would fall under effective altruism, so ostensibly, they’d be included on such a map, too. This would solve most of the problem I myself posed above.
I’ll update Less Wrong in the future if I get wind of any progress on such a project. Anyone: send me a private message if you want more information.
I agree that this would be a good idea, and agree with the points below. Some discussion of this took place in this thread last Christmas: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/je9/donating_to_miri_vs_fhi_vs_cea_vs_cfar/
On that thread I provided information about FHI’s room for more funding (accurate as of start of 2014) plus the rationale for FHI’s other, less Xrisk/Future of Humanity-specific projects (externally funded). I’d be happy to do the same at the end of this year, but instead representing CSER’s financial situation and room for more funding.