They both show up as 2:23 pm to me: is there a way to get second level precision?

Thanks for sharing this, Aaron!

I agree the "Rationale for Public Release" section is interesting; I've copied it here:

Releasing this report inevitably draws attention to a potentially destructive scientific development. We do not believe that drawing attention to threats is always the best approach for mitigating them. However, in this instance we believe that public disclosure and open scientific discussion are necessary to mitigate the risks from mirror bacteria. We have two primary reasons to believe disclosure is necessary:

1. To prevent accidents and well-intentioned development If no serious concerns are raised, the default course of well-intentioned scientific and technological development would likely result in the eventual creation of mirror bacteria. Creating mirror life has been a long-term aspiration of many academic investigators, and efforts toward this have been supported by multiple scientific funders.1 While creating mirror bacteria is not yet possible or imminent, advances in enabling technologies are expected to make it achievable within the coming decades. It does not appear possible to develop these technologies safely (or deliberately choose to forgo them) without widespread awareness of the risks, as well as deliberate planning to mitigate them. This concern is compounded by the possibility that mirror bacteria could accidentally cause irreversible harm even without intentional misuse. Without awareness of the threat, some of the most dangerous modifications would likely be made for well-intentioned reasons, such as endowing mirror bacteria with the ability to metabolize ᴅ-glucose to allow growth in standard media.

2. To build guardrails that could reliably prevent misuse There are currently substantial technical barriers to creating mirror bacteria. Success within a decade would require efforts akin to those of the Human Genome Project or other major scientific endeavors: a substantial number of skilled scientists collaborating for many years, with a large budget and unimpeded access to specialized goods and services. Without these resources, entities reckless enough to disregard the risks or intent upon misuse would have difficulty creating mirror bacteria on their own. Disclosure therefore greatly reduces the probability that well-intentioned funders and scientists would unwittingly aid such an effort while providing very little actionable information to those who may seek to cause harm in the near term. Crucially, maintaining this high technical barrier in the longer term also appears achievable with a sustained effort. If well-intentioned scientists avoid developing certain critical components, such as methods relevant to assembling a mirror genome or key components of the mirror proteome, these challenges would continue to present significant barriers to malicious or reckless actors. Closely monitoring critical materials and reagents such as mirror nucleic acids would create additional obstacles. These protective measures could likely be implemented without impeding the vast majority of beneficial research, although decisions about regulatory boundaries would require broad discussion amongst the scientific community and other stakeholders, including policymakers and the public. Since ongoing advances will naturally erode technical barriers, disclosure is necessary in order to begin discussions while those barriers remain formidable.

When to work on risks in public vs private is a really tricky question, and it's nice to see this discussion on how this group handled it in this case.

Here's the actual answer, @Denkenberger🔸: https://www.jefftk.com/p/historical-net-worth

Without running the numbers, I think our net worth is decreasing as we pull from savings to donate, but much less then you'd guess from analysis like this that excludes unrealized capital gains.

The biggest factor here is our highly leveraged purchase of our house, which has appreciated dramatically (despite needing a lot of money for resolving long-deferred maintenance).

I should calculate and share our mark-to-market net worth over time, though getting the historical data together may be challenging...

It looks like they have one person in common: StopAI team ∩ PauseAI team is Guido Reichstadter. But he's listed on the former as "protestor" and on the latter as "volunteer", and I think "separate outfit" is right.

People who prioritize x-risk often disregard animal welfare (or the welfare of non-human beings, whatever shape those beings might take in the future). ... This isn't universally true—I know some people who care about animals but still prioritize x-risk.

For what it's worth this hasn't been my experience: most of the people I know personally who are working on x-risk (where I know their animal views) think animal welfare is quite important. And for the broader sample where I just know diet the majority are at least vegetarian.

Thanks for trying this!

Reviewing its judgements:

• I think YIMBY is not very left or right. Here's how Claude put it:

  JK: Where does the YIMBY movement fall on the left-right spectrum in the US? The YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement tends to fall on the center-left to center-right of the political spectrum in the US. YIMBYs generally support increasing housing supply and density to address housing affordability, which aligns with liberal/progressive goals. However, their support for market-based solutions and property rights puts them at odds with some further left positions. Overall, YIMBY is considered a centrist or "third way" approach to housing and urban development issues.

• I don't know much about the CHAI or ASG, but given that they were founded by politicians on the US left it seems reasonable to guess they're left of center. Like, I think if OP were recommending grants to equivalent international orgs founded by US right politicians we'd count that the other way? Though I think "political think tank or organization within the United States" doesn't really apply.

• It seems like it thinks animal advocacy and global health are left coded, which on one hand isn't totally wrong (I expect global health and animal advocates to be pretty left on average), but on the other isn't really what we're trying to get at here.

Since the GPT-o1-preview response reads to me as "these grants don't look politically coded" I'd be curious if you'd also get a similar response to:

Here is a spreadsheet of all of Open Philanthropy's grants since January 2024. Could you identify whether any of them might meaningfully constitute a grant to a "left of center" political think tank or organization within the United States?

I really appreciate you writing up the Voting Norms section! Making it clear when you see "tactical" participation as beneficial vs harmful is very helpful.

if somebody thinks Open Phil is underinvesting in longtermism compared to the ideal allocation, then they should give to longtermist charities- the opportunities available to Open Phil might be significantly stronger than the ones available to donors

"Topping up" OP grants does reasonably well in this scenario, no?