Research into physical-world interventions to improve productivity and safeguard life.
Josh Jacobson applied for a grant to research physical-world interventions to improve productivity and safeguard life. He plans to brainstorm and research various interventions, such as improving air quality, preparing for nuclear war or earthquakes, or securing second citizenships. He also plans to help longtermists implement these interventions.
I overall voted in favor of this grant because:
- I agree with the basic premise: Improving the productivity of people working on important issues could be very valuable, and protecting their safety might be useful, too.
- I am aware that some longtermist organizations are currently researching some of these issues themselves. Josh may save these organizations time and circulate the results of his research beyond organizational boundaries.
- Josh's concrete ideas seemed relatively detailed to me, so I thought he was likely to make substantial progress on the project. His project plan and milestones seemed focused on delivering concrete output quickly, which I liked. He also previously worked with BERI on a related project that seemed successful.
- Josh seems very motivated to work on this project, such that I expect him to do a good job at it.
Some reasons against this grant that I considered:
- Overestimating the risks involved might lead to overspending on prevention. The potential benefits seem relatively limited (marginal reduction of a low risk), whereas the costs could grow large (many organizations could potentially spend a lot of time on this).
- For instance, I estimate that an earthquake in San Francisco has a ~2% annual likelihood of occurring, and would kill ~0.03% of the population in expectation. I estimate 30% of such deaths to be preventable. The resulting preventable risk seems tiny (just two micromorts per year). If longtermist organizations started taking measures to avert this risk for their staff as a result of this grant, that could be a poor use of their time.
- Detailed reporting on personal safety risks could lead to unhelpful anxiety about them. During the COVID pandemic, I frequently got the impression that some EAs and rationalists seemed anxious about catching COVID to a degree where their worries seemed to take a much bigger toll on their expected quality of life than the actual risk at hand. I worry that a similar dynamic might come into play here.
Josh applied for a $106,000 grant over a year. Because we don't yet know whether this project will be successful longer-term and the requested grant was relatively large, the LEF funding committee decided to make the grant in two installments: an initial $53,000 grant, and another $53,000 subject to a satisfactory progress report after the first six months. Half of each installment ($26,500) will be covered by the LTFF.