What is the role of public discussion for hits-based Open Philanthropy causes?

This is my best attempt at summarizing a reasonable outsider's view of the current state of affairs. Before publication, I had this sanity checked (though not necessarily endorsed) by an EA researcher with more context. Apologies in advance if it misrepresents the actual state of affairs, but that's precisely the thing I'm trying to clarify for myself and others.

I just want to note that I think this question is great and does not misrepresent the actual state of affairs.

I do think there's hope for some quantitative estimates even in the speculative cases; for example Open Phil has mentioned that they are investigating the "value of the last dollar" to serve as a benchmark against which to compare current spending (though to my knowledge they haven't said how they're investigating it).

I was really confused by your post because it seemed to ask for normative rules about not talking about philanthropy and grants to EA causes, which doesn't seem reasonable.

Now, after reading your comments, I think what you meant is closer to:

“It seems unworkably hard to talk about grants in the new cause areas. What do we do?”

I’m still not sure if this is what you want, but since no one has really answered, I want to try to give thoughts that might serve your purposes.

From your comment:

We consider AI Safety to be very important
A trusted advisor is excited
Everything checks out at the operational level
 

As far as I can tell, these are not the kinds of issue we are (or should be) discussing on EA Forum

I don't understand the statement this "these are not the kinds of issue we are (or should be) discussing". 

To be specific:

We consider AI Safety to be very important

This is a cause area question and this seems totally up for discussion.

For example, someone could criticize a cause area by pointing to a substantial period of time, like 3 or 5 years where progress in a cause area is low or stagnant, or that experts say this, or that it is plausibly funded or solved.

(This seems possible but very difficult this is because of the moral and epistemic uncertainty but also because cause areas are not non-zero sum games.) 

On the positive side, people can post new cause areas and discuss why they are important.

This seems much more productive, and there may even be strong demand for this.

It seems unlikely that an EA forum discussion alone will establish a new cause area but such a discussion seems like an extremely valuable use of the forum.

A trusted advisor is excited

It seems reasonable to say that existing advisors are low in value or that new advisors can be added. This can be done diplomatically:

• "EA has really benefited from increase in Longtermism community, I wonder if the pool in Open Phil’s advisors has been expanded to match?"
• "Here are a list of experts who are consistently highly valued by the community. Has Open Phil considered adding them as advisors?"
• "I see that person A was an advisor for this grant. I understand Person B who is also an expert has these beliefs that [plausible for these reasons] that seems to suggest different views for this intervention."

Everything checks out at the operational level (“application prototyping, testing, basic organizational set-up, and public talks at Stanford and USC”)

It seems easy to unduly pick holes in new orgs, but there are situations where things are very defective and the outlook is bad, and it’s very reasonable to point this out, again diplomatically:

• “I think this org had several CEOs over a 2 year period. This is different from what I've seen in other EA orgs and clarification about [issues with tangible output] is useful.
• “I heard the founder talk at Stanford. During the talk, person A pointed out that X and Y were true. I think person A is an expert and their concerns weren't addressed. Here is a summary of them...”

(Note that I think I have examples of most of the above that actually occurred. I don't think it's that productive or becoming to link them all.)

In the above, I tried to focus on criticism, because that is harder.

I think your post might be asking for more positive ways to communicate meta issues—this seems sort of easy (?). 

To be clear, you say:
 

I could be wrong, but it's hard to imagine endorsing a norm where many top EA Forum posts are of the form "I talked to Alexey Guzey from New Science, it seems exciting" or worse "I talked to Adam Marblestone about New Science, and he seems excited about it".

But it's not totally clear to me which of these are both useful and appropriate. For example, I could write a post on whether or not the constructivist view of science is correct (FWIW I don't believe Alexey actually holds this view), but it's not clear that the discussion would have any bearing on the grant-worthiness of New Science.

I think a red herring is that in the “Case for the grant”, the wording is very terse. But I don't think this terseness is a norm outside of grant descriptions, or necessarily the only way to talk or signal the value of organizations.

For example, a post, a few pages long, with a perspective about New Science that point out things that are useful and interesting would certainly would be well received (the org does seem extremely interesting!). For example, it can mention tangible projects, researchers and otherwise write truthful narratives that suggest they are attracting and influencing talent or otherwise improving the Life Sciences ecosystem.

I might have more to say but I am worried I still "don't get" your question.

It seems to me that the problem isn't just with Open Phil-funded speculative orgs, but with all speculative orgs.

To give some more specific examples, it's unclear to me how someone outside of Open Philanthropy could go about advocating for the importance of an organization like New Science or Qualia Research Institute.

I think it's just as unclear how someone inside Open Phil could advocate for those. Open Phil might have access to some private information, but that won't help much with something like estimating the EV of a highly speculative nonprofit.

Open Phil only has so much energy and cognitive diversity to spend evaluating your project, and if you project is too weird for that, they just can't fund it. Instead, you can donate/work/volunteer for weird projects yourself, and convince others on the forum to do the same. There are even other billionaires out there, and ways to get your charter cities or whatever without enormous philanthropic funding. If you're the only one who believes, maybe you need to bet.

I think the EA forums have an important role in being a platform where EA leaders can make oaths of fealty to the appropriate Open Phil staff member in their cause area. 

(Important Reminder!—have you remembered to upvote this week's Cold Takes post?)

Given that so much of the decision making process for these causes is private, what are we actually debating when we talk about them on the EA Forum?
 

More seriously, can you elaborate on the nuances or thought of what you think makes the new ("HOP") cause areas private compared to any other cause area? 

Taking the opposing perspective to your post, and using examples from the "Global Health and Well Being" space:

• I know of one cause area that is critical, well known, yet that no one really discusses here for compelling reasons, even though we would really want to.
   
• Other cause areas have powerful, historic, non-EA aligned wings, which makes discussion difficult. I would argue AI and x-risk are freer from these spectres and enjoy more open discussion.
   
• Also, I think it’s very likely that "GiveWell"-style interventions, whose epistemics might be viewed as prosaic, could have been equally difficult to discuss or promote. Even if something seems well rated and has strong evidence now, it doesn’t mean the marginal decision to fund it was opaque and difficult in the time it was created (e.g. concerns with RCT scaling up). Whole subdomains of development have risen and fallen with an epistemology that can seem impenetrable and often social/politically motivated.
   
• If you think that intangible qualities such as technical depth make "HOP" causes impenetrable, the same criticism applies to the large Open Phil spending on specific scientific bets.

It's unclear how we would expect a public forum discussion to substantially influence any of the scientific granting above.
 

To give some more specific examples, it's unclear to me how someone outside of Open Philanthropy could go about advocating for the importance of an organization like New Science or Qualia Research Institute.
 

(I just found these new orgs from your post. These are really interesting!). 

I think it’s reasonable to pattern match Qualia Research Institute to orgs like OpenAI or MIRI. 

MIRI has active Lesswrong-style forums and their work is literally discussed on Lesswrong and here. 

As you know, AI interested folks are also usually associated with the applied rationality community, which is exceptionally open to debate and direct reasoning. 

New Science has a website (which is a little polemical) with perspectives and critiques that I think are fairly easy to understand:

With quotes like “And let's make science advance one young scientist at a time, not one funeral at a time.”, it seems to have something like a constructivist view of science (?). 

This worldview and explicitness of its mission seems promising for open discussion of itself and other meta issues.

Also, New Science explicitly models itself on Cold Spring Harbor. I have a small sample size, but the one scientist I know who went there is welcome to skeptical about science and is open to discussion. 

Using discussion or openness as a good proxy for your question, the following suggests these orgs would be easy to talk about.

There are objections that aren’t addressed here, but these can be discussed in other comments.

I think your post is great honestly, and this comment only touches on one facet, is a little devil's advocate and moderate in quality.