Meta: Funding

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2 responses to “Meta: Funding”

1. 

   Jason

   June 23, 2024

   I’m curious in your reasoning that failure to disgorge the $2,000 would constitute “continuing to benefit financially from Manifund’s support.” Mainly, I’m interested in your real-life dilemma as sort of a natural experiment for EAs and EA organizations who ended up with FTX fraud monies. At the risk of some wordplay, we could view this as Manifund having just declared _moral_ bankruptcy. In the spirit of Manifold, I think we can say that the involvement of $2,000 gives the natural experiment a touch of verisimilitude that a mere thought experiment lacks.

   My understanding is that the grant was to cover out-of-pocket expenses like hosting. It doesn’t seem that having out-of-pocket blog expenses covered would be a personal financial benefit, given that the blog is not for your personal benefit. As I’ve mentioned to you offline before, I think there’s generally a strong ethical obligation to disgorge FTX monies . . . but I wouldn’t apply it to the extent that an individual grantee had already performed the grant labor prior to discovery of the fraud.  Like FTX’s electric company and its janitorial staff, those individuals gave up something equal in value to what they got and thus haven’t been unjustly enriched. A fortiori, I wouldn’t apply it to an individual grantee’s out-of-pocket expenses. I generally take a firmer stance with charities, because the accomplishment of charitable ends should ordinarily count as a gain to the charity in a way that it ordinarily shouldn’t to an individual.

   From a virtue-ethics standpoint, I can see three plausible applications of “liv[ing] in integrity with [one’s] own values.” The least demanding standard would be to not take any more money from a source that is now known to be ethically unacceptable, but to not retroactively apply new information to morally invalidate past grants. Under the middle standard, using unacceptable-source money from past grants that had not yet been spent or committed would be inconsistent with integrity, but one need not reverse past expenditures/commitments. You’ve chosen the most demanding standard of full disgorgement.

   As an aside, I think your grant was funded by a third-party donor who re-granted to various individuals, who then selected grant recipients on the Manifund platform. So I would not have considered you to have accepted Manifund money in the first place. That being said, the re-grantor who fulfilled your grant request was a senior official at Manifund and Manifold at the time. 

   So, from my view, all signs point to your choice to disgorge the entire $2,000 being a supererogatory action, rather than morally compelled. But I’d be curious if you thought otherwise, as that might be illuminating for those who took FTX money. [Note: I am not one of them and have never been a professional EA.] Your complete disgorgement is, of course, morally admirable either way. 

   Finally, if you’re now out of pocket for blog expenses (either past or anticipated future), I hope you’ll publicize that and take small donations.

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   1. 

      David Thorstad

      June 23, 2024

      Thanks Jason!

      I greatly appreciate your support for the NAACP fundraiser and your suggestion of support for the blog.

      At the moment, I would strongly encourage anyone interested in supporting the blog to instead direct their donations to the NAACP. Serious harm has been done to a vulnerable group, and it is important to make this harm right.

      I think you are correct that returning this money was supererogatory. I don’t know that I would go so far as to suggest that returning Manifund money is morally obligatory for all grantees, as some have suggested that returning FTX money is morally obligatory for those who received it suitably late in the tenure of the company. For that reason, I am a bit hesitant to see myself as setting precedent for what should be done with FTX money, or even with Manifund money. The money granted by Manifund was not stolen, and there are no debtors with a weighty claim to it. I just do not want to benefit from it.

      If I were to take a stronger moral stance, it probably would be the weakest that you suggest. That is, I might argue that others should not take further money from Manifund. So far, I have not even argued for this conclusion. I have been, and continue to be willing to engage with and take funding from those whose actions I disagree with, and I do not want to legislate my precise level of aversion to bad behavior as a standard for others.

      I think you may have a point in your aside, when you mention that Manifund money does not come directly from Manifund, but rather from third-party donors regranting money on the platform. For that reason, I might be open to future funding on the Manifund platform, provided the original source of the money is one I can stand behind.

      At the same time, as your aid, my regrant came from a founder of Manifold, and in fact from the very same individual who has taken responsibility for the invitations at Manifest 2024. I think that framing this donation as a grant from that individual, rather than a grant from Manifund, probably would not improve the moral case for keeping the money.

      One way of framing why I see this grant as a financial benefit is that I had never expected to benefit financially from this blog. I was not actively seeking funding until I heard about the Manifund funding. I threw up a quick grant request, went to sleep, and was, to my amazement, fully funded by the time I woke up. I view this as an unexpected windfall towards an investment that I had intended to make myself. I already reap more than enough reputational benefit from the blog to make up for the costs of running it.

      I may seek funding for the blog after the Manifund grant expires in 2024. I have considered options such as a Patreon page or an optional subscription that would allow for small donations. Both make me a bit uncomfortable, since it is standard to offer additional content to subscribers, and I recoil at the idea of charging for knowledge when it is not absolutely necessary. But I may do this.

      Honestly, right now I am in the process of seeking much larger amounts of funding (6 figures, rather than 4) for projects such as my book manuscript criticizing longtermism. I think that I probably want to prioritize larger grants for projects of this sort over smaller grants for my blog. I’m not exactly averse to having my blog funded, but it is common for platforms such as this one to be a “loss leader” towards more substantial work. I have a secure tenure-track position now, and I can afford to operate in this way.

      If readers do know of someone who might be interested in funding a larger book manuscript criticizing longtermism, I would not complain about a referral.

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