"Grant applications and grand narratives" by Elizabeth

The Lightspeed application asks:  “What impact will [your project] have on the world? What is your project’s goal, how will you know if you’ve achieved it, and what is the path to impact?”

LTFF uses an identical question, and SFF puts it even more strongly (“What is your organization’s plan for improving humanity’s long term prospects for survival and flourishing?”). 

I’ve applied to all three grants of these at various points, and I’ve never liked this question. It feels like it wants a grand narrative of an amazing, systemic project that will measurably move the needle on x-risk. But I’m typically applying for narrowly defined projects, like “Give nutrition tests to EA vegans and see if there’s a problem”. I think this was a good project. I think this project is substantially more likely to pay off than underspecified alignment strategy research, and arguably has as good a long tail.  But when I look at “What impact will [my project] have on the world?” the project feels small and sad. I feel an urge to make things up, and express far more certainty for far more impact than I  believe. Then I want to quit, because lying is bad but listing my true beliefs feels untenable.

I’ve gotten better at this over time, but I know other people with similar feelings, and I suspect it’s a widespread issue (I encourage you to share your experience in the comments so we can start figuring that out).

I should note that the pressure for grand narratives has good points; funders are in fact looking for VC-style megabits. I think that narrow projects are underappreciated, but for purposes of this post that’s beside the point: I think many grantmakers are undercutting their own preferred outcomes by using questions that implicitly push for a grand narrative. I think they should probably change the form, but I also think we applicants can partially solve the problem by changing how we interact with the current forms.

My goal here is to outline the problem, gesture at some possible solutions, and create a space for other people to share data. I didn’t think about my solutions very long, I am undoubtedly missing a bunch and what I do have still needs workshopping, but it’s a place to start.

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FNPXbwKGFvXWZxHGE/grant-applications-and-grand-narratives

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