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2025-04-29 20:40:06
Bandwidth Rules Everything Around Me: Oliver Habryka on OpenPhil and GoodVentures
Published on April 29, 2025 8:40 PM GMTIn https://youtu.be/uD37AKRx2fg
of our podcast, Timothy Telleen-Lawton and I talk to Oliver Habryka of Lightcone Infrastructure about his thoughts on the Open Philanthropy Project, which he believes has become stifled by the PR demands of its primary funder, Good Ventures.
Oliver’s main claim is that around mid 2023 or early 2024, Good Ventures founder Dustin Moskovitz became more concerned about his reputation, and this put a straight jacket over what Open Phil could fund. Moreover it was not enough for a project to be good and pose low reputational risk; it had to be obviously low reputational risk, because OP employees didn’t have enough communication with Good Ventures to pitch exceptions. According to Habryka.
That’s a big caveat. This podcast is pretty one sided, which none of us are happy about (Habryka included). We of course invited OpenPhil to send a representative to record their own episode, but they declined (they did send a written response to this episode, which is linked below and read at end of the episode). If anyone out there wants to asynchronously argue with Habryka on a separate episode, we’d love to hear from you.
Transcript available https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VcLFI1MYv7WZbIUVj1eJ7xGBPXxCBZ_D/edit
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Links from the episode:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/foQPogaBeNKdocYvF/linkpost-an-update-from-good-ventures
(note: Dustin has deleted his account and his comments are listed as anonymous, but are not the only anonymous)
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yggjKEeehsnmMYnZd/announcement-on-the-future-of-wytham-abbey
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/careers/
https://web.archive.org/web/20250328184228/https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/centreforeffectivealtruism/685ec578-d411-46bc-9410-d9348014205b
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AFMRWvCCgRyys9JXP/has-your-organisation-lost-funding-due-to-the-good-ventures?commentId=uq78YkbedxpmbW6aA
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hCQwysXaAPdQDXygu/lukeprog-s-quick-takes?commentId=NSFmh8zGeQGTmj9Nk
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DdSszj5NXk45MhQoq/decision-making-and-decentralisation-in-ea
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-progress-in-2023-and-plans-for-2024/
https://www.businessinsider.com/chan-zuckerberg-initiative-employee-demands-zuckerberg-resign-report-2020-6
over failure to moderate Trump posts on Facebook
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/17/21294396/mark-zuckerberg-priscilla-chan-philanthropy-education-george-floyd-petition-czi
asking for more DEI within Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EYCMHa6_7Mudb4s1MDvppGMY5BmHEVvryGw9cX_dlQ8/edit?tab=t.0
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vpjDibeusXvQq4TCu/bandwidth-rules-everything-around-me-oliver-habryka-on