Metascience: improving the way research is managed and funded, or just directly funding good research that can’t easily be funded through traditional channels. Orgs in this theme include PARPA, Convergent Research, New Science, Arcadia Science, and Arc Institute.
Policy: regulatory reform to remove roadblocks and improve incentives for progress. The Institute for Progress and the Center for Growth and Opportunity do good work here.
Culture: studying and communicating the idea that progress is possible and desirable. This is what The Roots of Progress is doing. Our World in Data plays a similar role, in a more neutral and fact-based way.
I could imagine a fund on any of these themes, making grants to orgs like the ones mentioned, or smaller grants directly to individual projects on these themes. I could also imagine a fund covering two or all three of them.
The Roots of Progress does take donations from the public, as does Our World in Data; I’m not sure about the others.
PS: One challenge is that there isn’t a single “QALYs/$” metric that you can quantify and stack-rank all opportunities on. So grant decisions need to rely on vision, strategy, and judgment. This probably means that it makes more sense for there to be multiple funding organizations, rather than just one. (Fitting with a general theme I have noticed that progress studies is more pluralistic, federated, and bottom-up; vs. EA which is more centralized, technocratic, and top-down.)
Great question, what form could this take? I can think of a few themes for funds, based on the three drivers of progress I laid out in this post:
Metascience: improving the way research is managed and funded, or just directly funding good research that can’t easily be funded through traditional channels. Orgs in this theme include PARPA, Convergent Research, New Science, Arcadia Science, and Arc Institute.
Policy: regulatory reform to remove roadblocks and improve incentives for progress. The Institute for Progress and the Center for Growth and Opportunity do good work here.
Culture: studying and communicating the idea that progress is possible and desirable. This is what The Roots of Progress is doing. Our World in Data plays a similar role, in a more neutral and fact-based way.
I could imagine a fund on any of these themes, making grants to orgs like the ones mentioned, or smaller grants directly to individual projects on these themes. I could also imagine a fund covering two or all three of them.
The Roots of Progress does take donations from the public, as does Our World in Data; I’m not sure about the others.
PS: One challenge is that there isn’t a single “QALYs/$” metric that you can quantify and stack-rank all opportunities on. So grant decisions need to rely on vision, strategy, and judgment. This probably means that it makes more sense for there to be multiple funding organizations, rather than just one. (Fitting with a general theme I have noticed that progress studies is more pluralistic, federated, and bottom-up; vs. EA which is more centralized, technocratic, and top-down.)