the tension between job, career, and the actual work you think is important
- I spend a lot of my time thinking about what my soon-to-be patrons might want to fund.
- Recently this has been Anthropic employees, which is weird and stressful in a bunch of ways (“Anthropic employees” are not a single coalition; many are friends and asking them for money is icky; all are busy, and already being swarmed by other people seeking their money, and therefore defensive).
- But historically it’s also been various potential funders, maybe OP/CG as the biggest of them. Which, on reflection, feels a bit insane given that OP/CG have never actually funded any of my work (and mostly haven’t funded the people funding my work!)
- I also think I have a pretty good track record of just, doing the thing and believing that money will come. We shipped Manifold v0 before we got the first grant; Manifest and Mox were internally funded first.
- I’m really tempted to give advice like “do great work and the money will follow”, and it’s kind of true, but also maybe generates a lot of bycatch?
- Probably my biggest patron by total $ was FTX Future Fund. That’s probably part of why I’m so defensive of them, even now. Maybe, half of Manifund is just keeping the spirit of the Future Fund alive.
- One way to avoid the downsides of patronage is to go direct, make your own money. Substack is the classic example. (But then, paying subscribers on Substack or the general internet landscape has its own set of preferences and downsides)
As a patron myself?
- on a small scale, I do enjoy funding stuff (mostly weird software or meta projects)
- and institutionally, Manifund sponsoring Inkhaven is an (indirect) way of supporting the arts. (supporting the supporters of the arts, I guess)
- beyond money, there are other ways to support creators, which a lot of my recent career has been about. For example, building tools for them (Manifold), events (Manifest), and operational support (ACX Grants).
Patronage vs other funding mechanisms
- I get the feeling patronage is kinda “cool”. Emergent Ventures was cool, Erik Hoel has a writeup on it, it was cool when Gwern got $100k from some startup founder.
- Maybe like 2021-2023ish there was a lot more “no strings attached microgrants are awesome” discourse. Beyond FTX stuff this was ACX Grants, Francisco San, Moth Fund, AI Grants. It feels somewhat out of fashion now.
Funding writing, specifically: If you have money (and maybe, a lot of money), how should you cause good writing and art to exist?
- Most directly, you can do the kind of patronage Jenn talks about, give money directly to good writers. Somehow this seems a lot rarer than it ought to be? Is there a missing product or norm here? - You can just commission pieces. (Many times, I’ve tried to hire people to write for the Manifold or Manifund substack. Mysteriously this hasn’t worked out that well eg, no essay that hit top of Hacker News).
- Another approach is to farm writers. Get a bunch of people writing at once, and see the winners. Which is the Inkhaven or other residency/fellowship/batch approach.
- Another is to start a journal or publishing outfit. Stripe Press, Asterisk Mag, Asimov Press.
- Orgs can also just sponsor fulltime writers. Sometimes this is a “fellow”, loosely affiliated. (Anthropic/OpenAI writing fellowship when?)
- Some thinktanks are just orgs that just write, Forethought, Institute for Progress feels like this.
- Unfortunately a lot of great writing is locked in the heads of people who have extremely high opportunity costs. It seems like OpenPhil basically just paid Joe Carlsmith to write stuff for a while, which seemed great. Also somehow Holden Karnofsky stopped running OP to write stuff for a while, which also seemed great. I’m always happy when Oli Habryka takes a break from running Lightcone to drop some new essays. (see also https://aarongertler.com/too-good/.)
- And essay competitions are a thing, ofc.
Essay competitions:
- Writing has the nice property of being cheap to assess, which is possibly why competitions are a reasonable structure
- EA is somehow: blessed with an abundance of great writers, and also really into prizes/competitions, and also has a terrible track record of the competitions working well. IMO, the Blog Building fellowship fell apart for ??? reasons, Cause Exploration Prizes didn’t turn out anything good, the best EA Fiction Contest submission was written by a judge. The best EA Red Teaming entries were not really submitted for the competition, iirc they were Scott’s and Holden’s.
- (though, it sure seems like I’m just anchored to my existing favorite writers) - Lesswrong does a cool yearly “best of” retrospective voting/judging thing of writing from 2 years ago? Maybe that’s the true good cadence to judge things on.
- I’m really tempted to give advice like “do great work and the money will follow”, and it’s kind of true, but also maybe generates a lot of bycatch?
what you have in quotes is literally a passage I had in a draft, stared at for 30 seconds, and then removed
One way to avoid the downsides of patronage is to go direct, make your own money.
endorsed; my funding for work I find important is >50% self-funded. Some things are genuinely very inconvenient to fund and illegible! I am paying more rent for a nicer place in Toronto so I have access to a better default event venue. But it’s hard to get anyone to give you money to uh live in a nicer house.
no essay that hit top of Hacker News
multiple (like, 2-3) people in my cohort of Inkhaven had a habit of submitting the best stuff to HN for karma, because they liked HN karma. My suspicion is that no one is doing this in Inkhaven 2, nor in most blog writing retreats. There should be someone whose job it is to read all the posts and post the top 5% or something like that. If you want to make it in the world as a writer you will need to come to terms with the fact that you will occasionally go viral, so my hot take is that you should not be able to opt out of having your work posted and going viral. (I would have said no to additional visibility on certain pieces, and this would have been incorrect.)
blessed with an abundance of great writers, and also really into prizes/competitions, and also has a terrible track record of the competitions working well.
unless the writers already want to write about the very precise thing you want them to write about, it’s actually no fun at all to write. that’s why the LW best of is much better. people thought that this job posting would be almost exactly my bag, but I much prefer my current job!
- I spend a lot of my time thinking about what my soon-to-be patrons might want to fund.
- Recently this has been Anthropic employees, which is weird and stressful in a bunch of ways (“Anthropic employees” are not a single coalition; many are friends and asking them for money is icky; all are busy, and already being swarmed by other people seeking their money, and therefore defensive).
- But historically it’s also been various potential funders, maybe OP/CG as the biggest of them. Which, on reflection, feels a bit insane given that OP/CG have never actually funded any of my work (and mostly haven’t funded the people funding my work!)
- I also think I have a pretty good track record of just, doing the thing and believing that money will come. We shipped Manifold v0 before we got the first grant; Manifest and Mox were internally funded first.
- I’m really tempted to give advice like “do great work and the money will follow”, and it’s kind of true, but also maybe generates a lot of bycatch?
- Probably my biggest patron by total $ was FTX Future Fund. That’s probably part of why I’m so defensive of them, even now. Maybe, half of Manifund is just keeping the spirit of the Future Fund alive.
- One way to avoid the downsides of patronage is to go direct, make your own money. Substack is the classic example. (But then, paying subscribers on Substack or the general internet landscape has its own set of preferences and downsides)
As a patron myself?
- on a small scale, I do enjoy funding stuff (mostly weird software or meta projects)
- and institutionally, Manifund sponsoring Inkhaven is an (indirect) way of supporting the arts. (supporting the supporters of the arts, I guess)
- beyond money, there are other ways to support creators, which a lot of my recent career has been about. For example, building tools for them (Manifold), events (Manifest), and operational support (ACX Grants).
Patronage vs other funding mechanisms
- I get the feeling patronage is kinda “cool”. Emergent Ventures was cool, Erik Hoel has a writeup on it, it was cool when Gwern got $100k from some startup founder.
- Maybe like 2021-2023ish there was a lot more “no strings attached microgrants are awesome” discourse. Beyond FTX stuff this was ACX Grants, Francisco San, Moth Fund, AI Grants. It feels somewhat out of fashion now.
Funding writing, specifically: If you have money (and maybe, a lot of money), how should you cause good writing and art to exist?
- Most directly, you can do the kind of patronage Jenn talks about, give money directly to good writers. Somehow this seems a lot rarer than it ought to be? Is there a missing product or norm here?
- You can just commission pieces. (Many times, I’ve tried to hire people to write for the Manifold or Manifund substack. Mysteriously this hasn’t worked out that well eg, no essay that hit top of Hacker News).
- Another approach is to farm writers. Get a bunch of people writing at once, and see the winners. Which is the Inkhaven or other residency/fellowship/batch approach.
- Another is to start a journal or publishing outfit. Stripe Press, Asterisk Mag, Asimov Press.
- Orgs can also just sponsor fulltime writers. Sometimes this is a “fellow”, loosely affiliated. (Anthropic/OpenAI writing fellowship when?)
- Some thinktanks are just orgs that just write, Forethought, Institute for Progress feels like this.
- Unfortunately a lot of great writing is locked in the heads of people who have extremely high opportunity costs. It seems like OpenPhil basically just paid Joe Carlsmith to write stuff for a while, which seemed great. Also somehow Holden Karnofsky stopped running OP to write stuff for a while, which also seemed great. I’m always happy when Oli Habryka takes a break from running Lightcone to drop some new essays. (see also https://aarongertler.com/too-good/.)
- And essay competitions are a thing, ofc.
Essay competitions:
- Writing has the nice property of being cheap to assess, which is possibly why competitions are a reasonable structure
- EA is somehow: blessed with an abundance of great writers, and also really into prizes/competitions, and also has a terrible track record of the competitions working well. IMO, the Blog Building fellowship fell apart for ??? reasons, Cause Exploration Prizes didn’t turn out anything good, the best EA Fiction Contest submission was written by a judge. The best EA Red Teaming entries were not really submitted for the competition, iirc they were Scott’s and Holden’s.
- (though, it sure seems like I’m just anchored to my existing favorite writers)
- Lesswrong does a cool yearly “best of” retrospective voting/judging thing of writing from 2 years ago? Maybe that’s the true good cadence to judge things on.
this braindump brought to you by the MANIFUND ESSAY PRIZE https://manifund.org/essay, submit by Fri Apr 24!
what you have in quotes is literally a passage I had in a draft, stared at for 30 seconds, and then removed
endorsed; my funding for work I find important is >50% self-funded. Some things are genuinely very inconvenient to fund and illegible! I am paying more rent for a nicer place in Toronto so I have access to a better default event venue. But it’s hard to get anyone to give you money to uh live in a nicer house.
multiple (like, 2-3) people in my cohort of Inkhaven had a habit of submitting the best stuff to HN for karma, because they liked HN karma. My suspicion is that no one is doing this in Inkhaven 2, nor in most blog writing retreats. There should be someone whose job it is to read all the posts and post the top 5% or something like that. If you want to make it in the world as a writer you will need to come to terms with the fact that you will occasionally go viral, so my hot take is that you should not be able to opt out of having your work posted and going viral. (I would have said no to additional visibility on certain pieces, and this would have been incorrect.)
unless the writers already want to write about the very precise thing you want them to write about, it’s actually no fun at all to write. that’s why the LW best of is much better. people thought that this job posting would be almost exactly my bag, but I much prefer my current job!