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I think it's somewhat of a happy coincidence so far that most breakthroughs have been good. To say, I see a breakthrough on the horizon. Is that good… - Holden Karnofsky
" "I think it's somewhat of a happy coincidence so far that most breakthroughs have been good. To say, I see a breakthrough on the horizon. Is that good or bad? How can we prepare for it? That's another thing academia is really not set up to do. Academia is set up to get the breakthrough. That is a question I ask myself a lot is here's an intellectual activity. Why can't it be done in academia? These days, my answer is if it's really primarily of interest to a very cosmopolitan philanthropist trying to help the whole future, and there's no one client and it's not frontier advancing, then I think that does make it pretty plausible to me that there's no one doing it. We would love to change that, at least somewhat, by funding what we think is the most important work.
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About Holden Karnofsky
Holden Karnofsky is an American nonprofit executive. He is a co-founder and co-chief executive officer of the research and grantmaking organization Open Philanthropy. Karnofsky co-founded the charity evaluator GiveWell with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 and is vice chair of its board of directors.
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Additional quotes by Holden Karnofsky
I model the world as having most of the impact from extreme cases, 'home-runs'. I think that's true in business, science and social impact. If you have good personal fit, your chances of being that extreme case are dramatically better – you climb the ladder, you get to see and do things that other can't, and you get to make unique contributions.
I update negatively on people who mislead (including expressing great confidence while being wrong, and especially including avoidable mischaracterizations of others' views); people who do tangible damage (usually by misleading); and people who create little of value despite large amounts of opportunity and time investment.
Regarding (b) <nowiki>[</nowiki>"checking boxes I want to check for considering myself a personally moral/ethical person, which is related but not identical to trying for maximum expected positive impact on the world"<nowiki>]</nowiki>: every year, I want to give a significant amount to "charity" as conventionally construed, straightforwardly helping the less fortunate. I generally believe in trying to be an ethical person by a wide variety of different ethical standards (not all of which are consequentialist). And I wouldn't feel that I were meeting this standard if I were giving nothing (or a trivial amount) to known, outstanding opportunities to help the less fortunate, for purposes of saving as much money as possible for adversarial projects (such as political campaigns) and/or more speculative projects (such as work related to artificial intelligence). I think the best giving opportunities in this category are GiveWell's top charities, so I will be giving a portion of this year's donation there, following the recommended allocation.
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