@joel_bkr Sorry for missing this before! In response to "Could you possibly expand on what roping in dedicated policy advocates would involve?": Yes, looks like writing a policy report, possibly including reasonable policy recommendations, and socializing the report/publishing it in a place that media and policymakers are more likely to see. To be fair, any possible partners would have existing priorities and I can understand the difficulty of finding anyone who has serious time to dedicate to this.

Offering a grant at this point after Vivian reached out to me and told me about a couple of customers for the estimate that are excited to have this sooner rather than later.

None of the possible conflicts of interest really gave me reservations but for the sake of disclosure: Joel and I are friends, and (although Vivian and Richard aren't the direct recipients), Vivian and I collaborate closely, and I am likely to begin working with Richard soon on a related project. As mentioned in my comment below, this estimate is, in fact, something that I might wind up using.

Preemptively pledging $5k for when Greg accepts the transfer and I'm able to add to Joel's existing offer (at which point I'll write up my thoughts in more detail).

@NeelNanda thanks for weighing in! Manifund doesn't have a UK entity set up, unfortunately. One thing that might be possible would be to figure out a donation swap where eg you commit to donating $10k via Givewell UK and some US-based person who was planning on giving to Givewell instead donates $10k to this project, and you both take tax deductions for your respective countries.

@vandemonian Are you currently constrained by more funding? Do you have the capacity to put in more effort if you get more funding?

In case anyone is wondering, I've seen this competitor. I don't have any strong opinions yet.

@Brent It's not clear to me what successful examples are... which have been impactful for you? I think foreign language and MCATs are two domains where SRS have proven its worth, but outside of that those memorization-heavy domains, the flashcard approach hasn't become popular. It's also damning that most successful people don't rely on SRS, afaict.

I think there's something definitely interesting about the core observation of SRS - "learning happens via repeated exposures to the subject, and we can program that to our benefit." But it also seems to me that "flashcards" are a dead end, UX-wise, given all the research that has gone into them for relatively little adoption. I think there's a lot of space for innovating on other interaction models -- eg in what ways are social feeds like Twitter a spaced repetition system? Or Gmail?

One other random note - for a while, I've wanted a SRS/anki thing that helps me stay on top of my various personal contacts (friends, acquaintances, etc). "Making friends" is a domain which lines up neatly with exponential backoff, I think -- it's easiest to make a friend by spending a lot of time with them in the beginning, and then staying in touch gradually less and less over time.

@Austin Hey Austin! I definitely hold some of the same reservations as you here, and have been similarly skeptical. Yet, I have to admit that a few of them have actually been very impactful on me / the world. I'm curious what you think makes the difference between the projects that succeed and those that don't or if you have more to add there.

This grant falls outside of our more established pathways, but I'm excited to approve it anyways, as a small bet on a people-first funding approach (where I think the regranting mechanism shines).

I'm a bit baseline skeptical of SRS/anki, having seen tools-for-thought people push for it but fairly unsuccessfully -- eg I was very excited for Quantum Country but it doesn't seem to have gotten wider adoption, nor personally helped me very much. However, I would be excited to be wrong here, and it's possible that LLMs change the game enough for there to be a good angle of attack!

Approving this project as in line with our mission of advancing technical AI safety.

Thanks to Vincent for getting this project past its initial funding bar!

Lawrence is great, very experienced with alignment, and I trust his judgement, this seems like a great thing to fund! I would donate myself if this was tax deductible in the UK (which I don't think it is?)

I have identified an engineering bottleneck in scaling this approach that I am currently working through. I am going to provisionally accept the project, but may return the funds if I am unable to address this bottleneck within the project timeline.

@NeoOdysseus Hi Giuseppe, I've pushed back your funding deadline by a month to Jan 21!

This is a great idea at a great valuation. Bought remaining equity.

I am very excited to fund "high school juniors". There is no reason they can't do cool valuable projects already.

This seems like a great initiative for a couple reasons:

• A lot of potential to bring new users to the site, if the markets get posted in the comments of the originals.

• Making Manifold more accurate in the long run: If some people trade based on the most accurate numbers from other platforms, Manifold will gravitate towards the better numbers as mana flows towards them.

Of the various Manifold Community Fund projects, I thought this one was the best for its valuation. Isaac has a good track record of creating cool things for manifold in the form of Manifold Search. The iterated prisoners dilemma tournament seemed pretty successful, and like it could be a good draw for new users to the site.

@IsaakFreeman I'm chipping away at it in my spare time. Currently at 4.5k followers on Twitter

Awesome work! One of the most exciting areas of alignment in my view!

require some additions to the Manifold API

I would be happy to help with adding/extending the Manifold API to support you doing Multiple Choice!

This sounds like it'll be a huge contribution to Manifold, especially when paired with arbitrage bots that keep the market prices on Manifold in line with those on real-money platforms or any other platform that anyone might think of as a more authoritative source of predictions.

My thinking is that you start with arb bots that force the market prices on Manifold to match the mirrored markets. If those bots make mana, great! Free mana. As soon as those bots start losing mana, that's even better. You can pull the plug on the bots and also shout it from the rooftops that Manifold's market probabilities are provably more accurate than where the markets are mirrored from.

Approving this project, as Lawrence's work falls squarely within Manifund's cause of advancing technical AI safety!