The Nonlinear Library EA - Review of Past Grants: The $100,000 Grant for a Video Game? by Nicolae
Jun 3, 2024
03:54
Welcome 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: Review of Past Grants: The $100,000 Grant for a Video Game?, published by Nicolae on June 3, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes.
Some of the findings were quite unexpected, particularly for the Long-Term Future Fund and the EA Infrastructure Fund.
The case involving a $100,000 grant for a video game
In July 2022, EA approved a $100,000 grant to Lone Pine Games, LLC, for developing and marketing a video game designed to explain the Stop Button Problem to the public and STEM professionals.
Outcomes from looking into Lone Pine Games, LLC:
1. After almost two years, there are no online mentions of such a game being developed by this company, except for the note on the EA Funds page.
2. Lone Pine Games released only one game available on multiple gaming platforms back in 2020 called NewCity, a city-building simulator, similar to SimCity from the 1990s.
3. After a few updates, the development of NewCity was abandoned last year, and its source code was made public on GitHub.
Video trailer for the game NewCity, which was highly likely the primary track record in the grant proposal for the development of the Stop Button Problem video game.
Despite the absence of any concrete results from this grant, let's entertain the idea that the Stop Button Problem game was produced and that it was decent. Would such a game "positively influence the long-term trajectory of civilization," as described by the Long-Term Future Fund? For context, Rob Miles's videos (1) and (2) from 2017 on the Stop Button Problem already provided clear explanations for the general public.
It seems insane to even compare, but was this expenditure of $100,000 really justified when these funds could have been used to save 20-30 children's lives or provide cataract surgery to around 4000 people? With a grant like this one, Steven Pinker's remarks on longtermism funding seem increasingly accurate. Training guide dogs for the visually impaired, often highlighted in EA discussions, stands out as a highly effective donation strategy by contrast.
I selected this example because it involves a company rather than individual recipients. However, I found numerous other cases, many even worse, primarily involving digital creators with barely any content produced during their funding period, people needing big financial support to change careers, and independent researchers whose proposals had not, at the time of writing, resulted in any published papers.
As Yann LeCun recently said, "If you do research and don't publish, it's not science." These grants are not just a few thousand dollars distributed here and there; in many instances, they amount to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
While many people, myself included, strongly support funding people's passion projects, because some of these grants really look that way, this approach seems more akin to Patreon or Kickstarter and not to effective giving. I believe many donors, who think they are contributing effectively, may not be fully aware of how their money is being utilized.
Donors contribute to these funds expecting rigorous analysis comparable to GiveWell's standards, even for more speculative areas that rely on hypotheticals, hoping their money is not wasted, so they entrust that responsibility to EA fund managers, whom they assume make better and more informed decisions with their contributions.
With seven full years of funding on record, I believe a thorough evaluation of previous grants is needed. Even if the grants were provide...
Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes.
Some of the findings were quite unexpected, particularly for the Long-Term Future Fund and the EA Infrastructure Fund.
The case involving a $100,000 grant for a video game
In July 2022, EA approved a $100,000 grant to Lone Pine Games, LLC, for developing and marketing a video game designed to explain the Stop Button Problem to the public and STEM professionals.
Outcomes from looking into Lone Pine Games, LLC:
1. After almost two years, there are no online mentions of such a game being developed by this company, except for the note on the EA Funds page.
2. Lone Pine Games released only one game available on multiple gaming platforms back in 2020 called NewCity, a city-building simulator, similar to SimCity from the 1990s.
3. After a few updates, the development of NewCity was abandoned last year, and its source code was made public on GitHub.
Video trailer for the game NewCity, which was highly likely the primary track record in the grant proposal for the development of the Stop Button Problem video game.
Despite the absence of any concrete results from this grant, let's entertain the idea that the Stop Button Problem game was produced and that it was decent. Would such a game "positively influence the long-term trajectory of civilization," as described by the Long-Term Future Fund? For context, Rob Miles's videos (1) and (2) from 2017 on the Stop Button Problem already provided clear explanations for the general public.
It seems insane to even compare, but was this expenditure of $100,000 really justified when these funds could have been used to save 20-30 children's lives or provide cataract surgery to around 4000 people? With a grant like this one, Steven Pinker's remarks on longtermism funding seem increasingly accurate. Training guide dogs for the visually impaired, often highlighted in EA discussions, stands out as a highly effective donation strategy by contrast.
I selected this example because it involves a company rather than individual recipients. However, I found numerous other cases, many even worse, primarily involving digital creators with barely any content produced during their funding period, people needing big financial support to change careers, and independent researchers whose proposals had not, at the time of writing, resulted in any published papers.
As Yann LeCun recently said, "If you do research and don't publish, it's not science." These grants are not just a few thousand dollars distributed here and there; in many instances, they amount to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
While many people, myself included, strongly support funding people's passion projects, because some of these grants really look that way, this approach seems more akin to Patreon or Kickstarter and not to effective giving. I believe many donors, who think they are contributing effectively, may not be fully aware of how their money is being utilized.
Donors contribute to these funds expecting rigorous analysis comparable to GiveWell's standards, even for more speculative areas that rely on hypotheticals, hoping their money is not wasted, so they entrust that responsibility to EA fund managers, whom they assume make better and more informed decisions with their contributions.
With seven full years of funding on record, I believe a thorough evaluation of previous grants is needed. Even if the grants were provide...