EA - Some comments on recent FTX-related events by Holden Karnofsky

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Some comments on recent FTX-related events, published by Holden Karnofsky on November 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.It appears that FTX, whose principals support the FTX Foundation, is in serious trouble. We’ve been getting a lot of questions related to these events.I’ve made an attempt to get some basic points out quickly that might be helpful to people, but the situation appears to be developing quickly and I have little understanding of what’s going on, so this post will necessarily be incomplete and nonauthoritative.One thing I’d like to say up front (more on how this relates to FTX below) is that Open Philanthropy remains committed to our longtermist focus areas and still expects to spend billions of dollars on them over the coming decades. We will raise the bar for our giving, and we don’t know how many existing projects that will affect, but we still expect longtermist projects to grow in terms of their impact and output.Are the funds directed by Open Philanthropy invested in or otherwise exposed to FTX or related entities?No.The FTX Foundation has quickly become a major funder of many longtermist and effective altruist organizations. If it stops (or greatly reduces) funding them, how might that affect Open Philanthropy’s funding practices?If the FTX Foundation stops (or greatly reduces) funding such people and organizations, then Open Philanthropy will have to consider a substantially larger set of funding opportunities than we were considering before.In this case, we will have to raise our bar for longtermist grantmaking: with more funding opportunities that we’re choosing between, we’ll have to fund a lower percentage of them. This means grants that we would’ve made before might no longer be made, and/or we might want to provide smaller amounts of money to projects we previously would have supported more generously.Does Open Philanthropy also need to raise its bar in light of general market movements (particularly the fall in META stock) and other factors?Yes:Our available capital has fallen over the last year for these reasons. That said, as of now, public reports of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna’s net worth give a substantially understated picture of our available resources. That’s because, among other issues, they don’t include resources that are already in foundations. (I also note that META stock is not as large a part of their portfolio as some seem to assume.) Dustin and Cari still expect to spend nearly all of their resources in their lifetimes on philanthropy that aims to accomplish as much good per dollar as possible.Additionally, the longtermist community has been growing; our rate of spending has been going up; and we expect both of these trends to continue. This further contributes to the need to raise our bar.As stated above, we remain committed to our focus areas and still expect to spend billions of dollars on them over the coming decades.So how much might Open Philanthropy raise its bar for longtermist grantmaking, and what does this mean for today’s potential grantees?We don’t know yet — the news about FTX was sudden, and we’re working to figure things out.It’s a priority for us to think through how much to raise the bar for longtermist grantmaking, and therefore what kinds of giving opportunities to fund. We hope to gain some clarity on this in the next month or so, but right now we’re dealing with major new information and don’t have a lot to say about what it means. It could mean reducing support for a lot of projects, or for relatively few.(We don’t have a crisp formalization of “the bar”; instead we have general guidance to grantmakers on what sorts of requests should be generously funded vs. carefully considered vs. rejected. We need to rethink and revise this guidance.)Because of this, we are pausing mo...