Dude! More people should know that you wrote your thesis - it's pretty awesome that you went deep to get an overview of the critique. That's something I would totally point people to.

Have you thought about making a post summarizing your main points?

this is awesome! Thanks for the share, I sent it to a friend who could benefit

I wonder if another solution for the grantmaker bottleneck could be a distributed, community-based version. Like Manifund, or how Wikipedia is run by volunteers. There are loads of very capable people in the EA/AIS/rationality space who I'm sure are very capable to make informed decisions and could contribute - but wouldnt do it as a full time thing.

Might there be an option to have a votes-based system of distributing funds to promising projects?

Thanks! Yeah I like replacing input with analog alternatives

1. You might be interested in the term "thrutopia", which tries to achieve a similar thing and is gaining traction in semi-adjacent circles

2. On flourishing v. surviving: 

   I heard this story from Joe Hudson about a tennis player doing practice. She could hit the basket smth like 6/10 times. One day her coach put a coin instead and told her to hit the coin. She never hit the coin, but she would have hit the basket 9/10 times. 

   Where we aim can matter a lot for the outcomes we get, even without reaching "the goal" (same as it matters what questions you ask). 

   Joe's point is also about what we get from 'looking through'. He's an exec coach in Silicon Valley and has done venture capital, and he says something similar about the people that manage to build billion$ companies.

   It's always about something more, not just making money or being big. (fx being the best, solving a problem, making a name for yourself, etc.)

It is possible to rationally prioritise between causes without engaging deeply on philosophical issues

It's really hard. But though intuition gets a bad rap, we at base have a sense of which things suck and how much. It can be inaccurate, but maybe wisdom of the crowds can help us pool together to estimate fx suffering weight to give to cluster headaches or losing a child. 

I have no idea how much this breaks down when things get more abstract i.e. longtermism/GCR. 

This was awesome. Thanks man. For trying, and for sharing.

I loved the point about "visceral altruism" - it reminds me of Nasim Taleb (antifragile)'s point about having 'skin in the game'. That it's actually very important for our decisions, especially when trying to do the right thing, that we stand to lose out if it fails. Well, Nasim, how about 1-up and putting our organs in the game!

I love this! I don't have capacity right now but I'm very interested and want to stay in the loop - how can I best do that?

I think it's a great idea!

I hear other commentors' recommendations to focus on pledging, but I don't think they need be counterfactually at odds. I could also see the fundraising lead to people getting more interested in effective giving - and as part of the fundraising you can also highlight both the 10% and trial pledge.

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge?c=header

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/trial-pledge 

Additonally, there's a post here outlining other low-cost projects people can run for impact:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eQgKyCQW4u5CCWHXt/idea-curated-database-of-quick-win-tangible-attributable 

More stuff about systems change! (complexity theory, phase shift, etc)

Being metacrisis aware and criticizing the whole "single cause area specialization" because many of the big problems are interweaving