One slight problem I see is that several FHI staff don’t seem to be focused on existential-risk-reduction. Therefore the overall number of citations could be misleading.
Thanks for the pointer! For those too lazy to click on it, Nick Bostrom comments in that thread:
Much of the dispersion is caused by the lack of unrestricted funds (and lack of future funding guarantees). Since we don’t have enough funding from private philanthropists, we have to chase academic funding pots, and that then forces us to do some work that is less relevant to the important problems we would rather be working on. It would be unfortunate if potential private funders then looked at the fact that we’ve done some less-relevant work as a reason not to give.
and
A high fraction. “A dollar’s worth of research” is not a well-defined quantity—that is, the worth of the research produced by a dollar varies a lot depending on whom the dollar is given to. I like to think FHI is good at converting dollars into research. The kind of research I’d prefer to do with unrestricted funds at the moment probably coincides pretty well with what a person with SIAI-typical estimates would prefer, though what can be researched also depends on the capabilities and interests of the research staff one can recruit. (There are various tradeoffs here—e.g. a weaker researcher who has a long record of working in this area or taking a chance with a slighly stronger researcher and risk that she will do irrelevant work? headhunting somebody who is already actively contributing to the area or attempt to involve a new mind who would otherwise not have contributed? etc.)
There are also indirect effects, which might lead to the fraction being larger than one—for example, if discussions, conferences, and various kinds of influence encourage external researchers to enter the field. FHI does some of that, as does the SIAI.
There are also several informative comments from Carl Shulman, who mentions a cost of about $200k per 2 year postdoc, and estimates FHI getting something like 1 Sandberg or Ord equivalent per 2-3 hires.
But then how did FHI spend £460,000 in 2008-2009 ? ( See this comment )
The salary for James Martin research fellows and is around £45,000, and for Director Nick Bostrom around £50,000 according to the page 77 of this document..
And for James Martin project officers it’s around £20,000. Thus the overall salary budget is approximately £180,000.
So there remain around £280,000.
Is it possible that FHI just doesn’t spend it’s whole budget? E.g. in 2006- 2007 their budget was £263,113 but their actual expenditure was only £135,815!
And who gets the surplus? Can FHI effectively use that much more money?
“taxes” to the university and the department for use of facilities, perhaps including high rent for the office space in the philosophy building (they also get a cut of many grants)
FHI not spending all its budjet seems unlikely, since the comments in the subthread steven0461 linked are saying that FHI would hire more staff if only it had the money.
The research associate positions are not paid, as far as I know (e.g. Robin draws his salary from GMU, Toby from an Oxford college where he taught, etc). In some cases, in fact, the financial flow goes the other way.
However, Eric Mandelbaum was a paid postdoc at FHI before he left for a regular philosophy job.
One slight problem I see is that several FHI staff don’t seem to be focused on existential-risk-reduction. Therefore the overall number of citations could be misleading.
FHI consists of 3 regular research staff members: Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong. Bostrom and Sandberg are of course very cool. I don’t know much about Armstrong.
But furthermore FHI employs 5 research associates, who apparently aren’t that interested in existential risk reduction:
Former research associate Eric Mandelbaum is mainly interested in philosophy of mind and writes papers like: Locke’s Answer to Molyneux’s Thought Experiment. Other publications of Mandelbaum are also rather ivory-tower.
Similar things can be said for former research associate Rebecca Roache.
The work of Milan Ćirković seems mainly focused on theoretical physics.
But I don’t know how much money research associates get and how much money the normal research staff receives, so maybe donating to FHI is the more effective x-risk-reduction-strategy after all. ( E.g. the budget for Rebecca Roache was almost as high as that for Nick Bostrom back in 2005-2007 (page 77). )
See also this subthread.
Thanks for the pointer! For those too lazy to click on it, Nick Bostrom comments in that thread:
and
There are also several informative comments from Carl Shulman, who mentions a cost of about $200k per 2 year postdoc, and estimates FHI getting something like 1 Sandberg or Ord equivalent per 2-3 hires.
Page 4 of the 2008-2009 annual report says that research associates are unsalaried.
Thanks!
But then how did FHI spend £460,000 in 2008-2009 ? ( See this comment ) The salary for James Martin research fellows and is around £45,000, and for Director Nick Bostrom around £50,000 according to the page 77 of this document.. And for James Martin project officers it’s around £20,000. Thus the overall salary budget is approximately £180,000. So there remain around £280,000.
Is it possible that FHI just doesn’t spend it’s whole budget? E.g. in 2006- 2007 their budget was £263,113 but their actual expenditure was only £135,815! And who gets the surplus? Can FHI effectively use that much more money?
FHI must pay for:
“taxes” to the university and the department for use of facilities, perhaps including high rent for the office space in the philosophy building (they also get a cut of many grants)
substantial costs for conferences and workshops
travel costs for staff and perhaps visitors
non-salary compensation (pension contributions, perhaps employer payroll taxes, etc for staff
Odd.
FHI not spending all its budjet seems unlikely, since the comments in the subthread steven0461 linked are saying that FHI would hire more staff if only it had the money.
It’s really odd, maybe I’m misreading the budget tables.
The research associate positions are not paid, as far as I know (e.g. Robin draws his salary from GMU, Toby from an Oxford college where he taught, etc). In some cases, in fact, the financial flow goes the other way.
However, Eric Mandelbaum was a paid postdoc at FHI before he left for a regular philosophy job.