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.)
I’d say the donation legibility is a concern here. The best progress-related institutions aren’t set up in a way where low dollar denominated donations make obvious helpful marginally valuable improvements. When I donate five hundred dollars to vaccines acquisition and distribution in Angola, that’s believably a marginal difference that matters.
Under what models of progress does a marginal $500 provide a lot of value? I think in the context of microgrants to young people and young ideas, it is great! But I’m having trouble for something like New Science.
Maybe the marginal 500 dollars should be spent on youtube advertising for channels that are PS aligned? I can find that somewhat believable.… particularly because I have my eye on a certain Nigerian youtuber who is criminally undersubscribed.
On the Policy point, I often wonder what occurs after the research and writings done by e.g. Institute for Progress (and yes a QALYs/$ metric seems near impossible). How could one better discern the outcomes of the Policy work, and that the research and recommendations for Policy isn’t shouting into a void?
Another way of thinking about it is if one were to put money or time into Policy, what would those actions look like?
Not only you don’t have QALY, but you cannot RCT easily things in progress studies.
The most progress-adjacent idea that EA has debated is the against Randomista post and to have more focus on economic growth. But right now I think the consensus is that QALYs and RCTs will still dominate.
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.)
I’d say the donation legibility is a concern here. The best progress-related institutions aren’t set up in a way where low dollar denominated donations make obvious helpful marginally valuable improvements. When I donate five hundred dollars to vaccines acquisition and distribution in Angola, that’s believably a marginal difference that matters.
Under what models of progress does a marginal $500 provide a lot of value? I think in the context of microgrants to young people and young ideas, it is great! But I’m having trouble for something like New Science.
Maybe the marginal 500 dollars should be spent on youtube advertising for channels that are PS aligned? I can find that somewhat believable.… particularly because I have my eye on a certain Nigerian youtuber who is criminally undersubscribed.
On the Policy point, I often wonder what occurs after the research and writings done by e.g. Institute for Progress (and yes a QALYs/$ metric seems near impossible). How could one better discern the outcomes of the Policy work, and that the research and recommendations for Policy isn’t shouting into a void?
Another way of thinking about it is if one were to put money or time into Policy, what would those actions look like?
Not only you don’t have QALY, but you cannot RCT easily things in progress studies.
The most progress-adjacent idea that EA has debated is the against Randomista post and to have more focus on economic growth. But right now I think the consensus is that QALYs and RCTs will still dominate.