In previous posts, I have: Laid out the view that in general, further economic development and general human empowerment are likely to be substantially net positive, and are likely to lead to improvement on many dimensions in unexpected ways. Listed possible global catastrophic risks that provide a potential counterpoint to this view, while also noting…
The GiveWell Blog
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Our landscape of the open science community
[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] We previously wrote about a decision to complete a “medium-depth investigation” of the cause of open science: promoting new ways of producing, sharing, reviewing, and evaluating scientific research. The investigation broadly fits under the heading of GiveWell Labs research, which we…
Grant to Center for Global Development (CGD)
Via the grantmaking process described previously, Good Ventures has decided – with GiveWell’s input – to make a grant to the Center for Global Development (CGD) for general operating support. The grant will be $300,000 paid evenly over the next three years. This post lays out the thinking behind this grant. As mentioned previously, this…
Near-term grantmaking
[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] As stated previously, we expect that it will take quite a long time for us to reach the point of issuing major recommendations based on our GiveWell Labs work. That said, there have been – and will be – situations in…
Meta-research update
As mentioned previously, we are currently conducting an in-depth investigation of meta-research, with the hopes of producing our first “medium-depth” report on the giving opportunities in a cause. Our investigation isn’t yet complete, but it has taken several turns that we’ve found educational, and our vision of what it means to investigate a “cause” has…
Refining the goals of GiveWell Labs
[Added August 27, 2014: GiveWell Labs is now known as the Open Philanthropy Project.] To date, our work on GiveWell Labs has been highly exploratory and preliminary, but we’ve recently been refining our picture of what we expect our output to look like in the reasonably near (~1 year) future. Our plans are still tentative,…