One semester living expenses for MIT/Harvard-based researcher

Hi Vikram, thanks for applying for a grant! The projects you're working on (especially LimbX) look super cool. I'm offering $500 for now to get this proposal past its minimum funding bar; some notes as we consider whether to fund it more:

This kind of deep tech is a bit outside of our standard funding hypothesis (which tends to be more longtermist/EA), and also outside my personal area of expertise (software)
I would be excited about Manifund supporting young, talented individuals (similar to Emergent Ventures); but it's possible this represents a dilution in our focus? My grant to Sophia was similar in size/thesis, but in that case I was personally familiar with Sophia.

I'm also just curious: how did you find out about Manifund?

Hey Austin,

Thanks so much for your support!

I heard about Manifund from Sophia actually! @spunge and I met at a rationality camp in New Hampshire last week and exchanged a ton of amazing ideas and resources.
On the topic of relevance to EA, I feel like human augmentation is an overlooked part of longtermism compared to popular fields like biosecurity and AI alignment. I believe it's just as important to improve the comfort and longevity of future humans as it is to consider the longevity of humanity as a species. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
Just for fun since you're a software person, you might be interested in projects like this and this which I had a small hand in last year :)

Cheers, Vik