Astral Codex Ten

COVID-19 pandemic

30 min read

COVID-19 pandemic

Article

COVID-19 pandemic is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between April 30, 2021 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “giant clusterfuck that is the COVID-19 pandemic response”; “during the Covid-19 pandemic, there were critical oxygen shortages in India”; “a very unusual year with the Covid-19 pandemic”. It most often appears alongside India, California, China.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: April 30, 2021
  • Last seen: June 18, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Wizard And The Prophet
April 30, 2021 · Original source
If you look around, you’ll see lots of other COVID-like problems out there that are quietly but inexorably claiming lives and dragging down average utility worldwide – poverty, homelessness, economic stagnation – that Wizards haven’t found good solutions for. I don’t think it’s from a lack of trying; I think we may have hit a carrying capacity limit on our ability to deal with complexity. Systems in the modern world are complex. No, really complex. No, even more complex than that. Consider all of the different systems that interacted to form the giant clusterfuck that is the COVID-19 pandemic response: local politics, global politics, scientific knowledge production, scientific knowledge dissemination, the media, social media, business, regulations, logistics chains. Each of these contain multitudes of factors that no single human on earth, not even the Normanest of Borlaugs, could keep straight in his or her head and "fix" with a single quick hack like a better strain of wheat. And these complex systems aren’t just statically complex – they seem to be getting more complex over time in their interactions with each other. In the 1960s, Borlaug’s new wheat strain was used by virtually all Mexican farmers a year after it was released commercially; if it had been created today, it probably would have sat on a shelf for a decade while various global FDA-like agencies dickered over whether it was safe or not and anti-GMO groups launched a thousand frankenwheat memes; you’d definitely never be able to buy it at Whole Foods.
Inline links: really complex, even more complex than that
I was a Wizard once, but then I took an arrow to the knee. I mean… then COVID-19 happened. If you had asked me before March 2020 whether I thought we could science our way out of a slow-grind, long-term disaster scenario like climate change, I would have said categorically yes. As long as we have some Borlaugs out there laser-focusing on the problem, there’s no actual danger that we’ll be constructing Waterworld-style life rafts over the flooded remnants of our formerly glorious civilization. But, uh, I’m no longer so sure.
ACX Grants ++: The Second Half
February 10, 2022 · Original source
#89: A Wiki For Rebuilding Civilization After Disaster My name is Jehan, I've created the site Wikiciv.org as a guide to rebuilding civilization in case of global catastrophe. Its editing is crowdsourced like Wikipedia because a project this large is far too much for one person, or even a team. Technologies and raw materials are linked so both upstream and downstream technologies are easily accessible. There are other projects with similar goals, but they are 1) Not publicly accessible 2) The wrong scale. Books such as "The Knowledge" and "How to Invent Everything" are too cursory to be a practical guide for recreating critical technologies like steel, fertilizer and antibiotics. Meanwhile the "Manual for Civilization" from the Long Now Foundation is 3500 paper books in one corner of San Franciso. Wikiciv fully open and available for database downloads. Distributed backups are encouraged to ensure resiliency during a disaster. WikiCiv could be be helpful even for regional supply-chain disruptions. For example during the Covid-19 pandemic, there were critical oxygen shortages in India. It turns out that a reasonable oxygen generator can be made from zeolite and an air compressor. Wikiciv aims to be a single, interconnected database of "from scratch" manufacturing instructions for situations like these. It is the eventual goal of Wikiciv to be accepted as a Wikimedia Foundation project (like Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage etc). The better Wikiciv becomes, the more likely this is. Get in touch at admin@wikiciv.org
#114: Analyze Policy Failure In The COVID Pandemic In Germany The management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany revealed some classical modes of policy failure, but also some rather new or underexplored ones. I want to analyze those in-depth in a type of study that has a minimum of societal reputation. In a second step, if results will be interesting, I want to feed them back into the political process to induce change. I’m a mid-career person with a background in science, including working with a Nobel prize winner, and in project management. I have enough contacts in the ‘Kanzlermeile’, the political center of Berlin, to make the results relevant for change. I’m looking either for seed funding between 5000 and 20000 Euro for finding funds through grants or others or for 75000 Euro total to finalize the whole study and if relevant take first steps for exploiting results. If you can support this in any way, please contact me at policy.failure.analysed at gmail.com. If you’re working on similar topics, please also feel free to get in touch.
#106: Undercover Hospital Boss Program If everyone who worked in hospitals had to spend a night in theirs as a pretend patient every six months, the experience ought to get much better fast. Imagine a place optimized for healing, rest, calm, and happiness and you'd be hard-pressed to name anything you'd imagined that's present in most hospitals. Yet the people who can bring the vision and reality closer together often are blinded, or blind themselves, to what's happening in their places of work. To get started: Create a pilot program in one department of one hospital. Start with the top administrators. Don't proceed until COVID-19 isn't a significant risk for the program. And, to start gently, everyone knows the "patient" is really a boss. Then they report back to everyone what they experienced and saw. Budget is for an outside consultant to design and run the program, record impressions, facilitate discussion, and outline possible expansion of the program. The work will be in finding the hospital department and consultant. The budget will be to pay for the consultant and some amount for the hospital's time and bed. hospitalmysteryshopper@protonmail.com
What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?
June 29, 2022 · Original source
Above all, though, experts caution it’s simply been a very unusual year with the Covid-19 pandemic. That makes it difficult to say what, exactly, is happening with crime rates.
The first priority should be to end the pandemic — ending its potential ripple effects on crime . . . In this sense, Trump’s failures to address Covid-19 may be leading to more violence.
Your Book Review: Viral
July 30, 2022 · Original source
Alina Chan and Matt Ridley’s Viral is a book about the investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In case you haven’t been following, there’s been a shift in the scientific consensus on this topic. For about the first year of the pandemic, it was widely accepted that SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, had a natural origin, meaning that it first spread to humans naturally from an animal (also called a zoonotic origin). Any suggestion that it could have come from a lab was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Then, sometime around spring 2021 something changed. Well-known, respected scientists began to voice the opinion that SARS-CoV-2 might have come from a lab, or that it’s at least a plausible hypothesis that deserves an investigation. The scientific consensus abruptly shifted from “definitely natural origin” to “both natural origin and lab origin are viable hypotheses that should be investigated.”
Inline links: Well-known, respected scientists
Viral is a deep dive into this issue from all angles, covering the basics of virology, the history and epidemiology of the COVID-19 pandemic, the response of scientific and governmental institutions, and various pieces of evidence for both hypotheses. It doesn’t contain any new, bombshell revelations, but it’s a neat, accessible summary of the scattered bits of information that have been uncovered since the start of the pandemic. In this review I’ll try to distill some of the most important information and discuss my own interpretation of it.
Smallpox escaped from research labs in the UK three times from 1966-1978. In fact, the last ever case of smallpox occurred after it had already been eradicated, when it escaped from a medical laboratory in 1978 and infected a medical photographer, who eventually died from the illness. These are only a few of many examples. According to the US Federal Select Agent Program, which oversees the possession and handling of dangerous biological agents and toxins, there were 219 accidental releases of these “select agents” in 2019. So, while accidental lab leaks are uncommon, they’re not unheard of. When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, it still makes sense to have a strong prior in favor of the natural origins hypothesis, but the idea that a pathogen can be accidentally released from a lab isn’t some wild, ridiculous idea like believing in alien abductions or Bigfoot or something. 3. The outbreak location in Wuhan appears to be relevant There’s a famous psychology experiment [1] in which participants were told to wait in a room, and their reactions were recorded as the room gradually filled with smoke. In some cases, participants waited alone, while in other cases they waited with a group of people who, unbeknownst to the participant, were actors who had been instructed to ignore the smoke. Of the participants who waited alone, 75% reported the smoke. However, of the participants who waited with the group, only 10% reported the smoke. Photograph of the famous Latané and Darley experiment, cerca 1968. So, what could those participants have been thinking? Maybe something like: Hmm, why’s the room filling up with smoke? Is this a problem? *looks around the room* Well nobody else seems to care, so I guess not. Looking back at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think maybe this is why so many of us didn’t think twice about the location of the initial outbreak. Hmm, is it kinda suspicious that this virus broke out near a major virology institute that works on bat coronaviruses? Should we maybe look into that? *looks around* Well nobody else seems to think so, so I guess not. I can’t speak for everyone else, but this was at least my mindset. I had vaguely heard something about how there was a virology research institute close to where the pandemic broke out, and that some conspiracy theorists were claiming it was the source of the virus. I looked around and noticed that nobody was really taking this idea seriously, so I figured I didn’t need to take it seriously either. Also, I was thinking something like: Eh, probably every major city has labs and research institutes doing this kind of research. And I’ll bet they purposely built the virology institute close to where these viruses occur in nature, to give them easy access for sampling. Well, it turns out both of these things are wrong. The type of research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is pretty rare and specialized. It includes things like creation of chimeric coronaviruses [1, 2], infecting humanized mice with bat coronaviruses, and other types of gain of function research, which Chan and Ridley devote a chapter to. The WIV is one of only a few institutions in the world doing this type of research. It’s not the case, as I had assumed, that every major university has a couple labs doing similar work. So it does seem like a pretty remarkable coincidence that the outbreak happened in Wuhan. But maybe they purposely built the Wuhan Institute of Virology close to where these viruses are found in nature? Well, this also turns out to be wrong. The areas where viruses most similar to SARS-CoV-2 are found in nature are Yunnan province and Laos, which are more than a thousand kilometers away from Wuhan. The authors put this distance in perspective by noting that it’s more than the distance between Orlando and NYC. Image source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-30/china-is-making-it-harder-to-solve-the-mystery-of-how-covid-began If SARS-CoV-2 originated in an animal somewhere around the Yunnan / Laos area, how did it make it all the way to Wuhan without leaving a trail along the way? 4. The story of RaTG13 Although I enjoyed the book, I do have one pretty major criticism. The authors repeatedly make the claim that a virus called RaTG13, which was being studied at the WIV before the pandemic, is the closest known genetic match to SARS-CoV-2. But this claim is outdated and no longer correct. In September 2021 researchers identified a virus called BANAL-52 in Laos that’s a 96.8% match to SARS-CoV-2, closer than RaTG13’s 96.2% match. (Important note: a 96.8% match is still a long way off in genomic space, and does not imply that this is the same virus as SARS-CoV-2, or even necessarily a progenitor.) At first I thought maybe the authors didn’t mention BANAL-52 because it was discovered after the book was published, but this isn’t the case – Viral was published November 16, 2021, nearly two months after the discovery of BANAL-52 was published. Although I’m writing an overall-positive review here, I don’t want to go easy on the book where serious criticism is warranted. It’s completely unacceptable that BANAL-52 wasn’t mentioned. Even if it would have been inconvenient from a publishing standpoint, the authors should have rewritten the RaTG13 chapter, or at least included an addendum about the discovery of BANAL-52. With that being said, I think the story of RaTG13 is still interesting and important, so I’ll give a quick summary here. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, SARS-CoV-2 was quickly sequenced, and the full genome sequence was published by Dr. Shi Zhengli’s team at the WIV. In this paper, they also briefly mentioned that the genome was a 96.2% match with another bat coronavirus called RaTG13 – the closest known match at the time. Oddly, the mention of RaTG13 did not include any reference, footnote, or link to any previously published sequence. Although the WIV didn’t provide details on this mysterious RaTG13 virus, a group of internet volunteers, including both amateurs as well as professional scientists working in their free time, began to investigate. This loose collection of open-source researchers, called DRASTIC, uncovered a medical thesis describing an outbreak of a mysterious disease in 2012. Six men who had been working in a bat-infested mine in Mojiang County, China, fell ill and were admitted to a hospital with symptoms including dry coughs, shortness of breath, fevers, muscle aches, headaches, and fatigue. Three of the men eventually died of this mysterious illness. In the years following this incident, teams of researchers (including a team led by Dr. Shi Zhengli of the WIV) were sent to investigate the cause of this illness and collect samples from the Mojiang mine. This sampling led to the discovery of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in 2013, and a part of its genomic sequence was published under the name BtCoV/4991 in 2016. The DRASTIC researchers discovered that RaTG13 was genetically identical to the BtCoV/4991 sequence from the Mojiang mine – it was the same virus, and had just been renamed for some reason, without any public record of the change. They also discovered that at least eight other closely related coronaviruses were also sampled from this mine and brought to the WIV. Although unhelpful throughout the investigation, the WIV eventually verified these facts when pressed on them, and an addendum was added to the original paper confirming DRASTIC’s account of the origin of RaTG13. So what should we make of this? Well, as I mentioned before, RaTG13 is no longer the closest known genetic match to SARS-CoV-2, so maybe the whole story is less important as it pertains to the origin of the pandemic. But the discovery of BANAL-52 doesn’t really resolve things either [2]. Laos is very far away from Wuhan (actually even further than Yunnan), so we’re left with the same question as before – how did SARS-CoV-2 make it all the way to Wuhan from such a distant natural reservoir without leaving a trail along the way? 5. Lack of institutional transparency and competence A lot of the book is devoted to criticizing the Chinese government’s lack of transparency during the pandemic. Some brief examples: In the early days of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, hundreds of people were investigated and punished for the crime of “spreading rumors”. This included whistleblowing doctors who attempted to warn others [3] about the spread of the disease and its human-to-human transmission, which was being denied by the Chinese government at the time.
Inline links: eventually died from the illness., psychology experiment, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mhjk!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8199936-a484-4951-b90e-8ea42a0a4ebc_1600x758.jpeg, 1, 2, infecting humanized mice with bat coronaviruses, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6khv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fac0a8f26-8f26-4712-b245-797d478ae385_1246x642.png, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-30/china-is-making-it-harder-to-solve-the-mystery-of-how-covid-began, virus called BANAL-52, published by Dr. Shi Zhengli’s team at the WIV., addendum
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
June 18, 2025 · Original source
Minnesota and Virginia also have legislation to enable cities to implement land value taxes. We are monitoring these efforts. There are a few other cities we are operating in. We have helped another organization prepare for a meeting in Tennessee by doing impact analysis of land value taxes in the city. We have presented to city officials in the City of South Bend who have expressed support for land value taxes. Finally, we are in conversation with a State Senator in Colorado who is a champion of land value taxes. Meanwhile, we have soft launched and developed the OpenAVMKit, which uses a unified schema to do assessment accuracy reports and automated valuation methods for any property tax data given. Valuation of land is the key binding constraint to successful implementation of land value taxes. We plan to be the leaders in this space with strong benchmarking capabilities and a repo that can enable the open-source community to make the best automated valuation methods. Along with these efforts, we have expanded the movement. We have posted to the Progress and Poverty Substack growing the subscriber base to around 5,000 subscribers. We have spoken to over 25 local advocates interested in working on land value taxes in their local communities. Yet, there is a long way to go. We need to start earning income through technical assistance contracts as our grant funding expires. We need to continue pushing for a state to implement, and we need to be prepared to tell the success story for when they do. 65: EN’s Work On Bacteriophage Therapy Our project is aimed at pioneering phage therapy in Nigeria, where limited resources/infrastructure have historically held back research in this field. Starting from the ground up, we are establishing the foundational systems needed to support a robust phage research ecosystem. So far, we’ve isolated 34 bacteriophages targeting Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an essential step toward building a comprehensive phage bank. This began with collecting a wide range of clinical Pseudomonas isolates, which we are now characterizing alongside the phages through genome sequencing and phenotypic assays including studies on phage stability across pH, temperature, and salinity ranges. Our long-term goal is to develop a phage-based hydrogel for treating diabetic wounds. On the regulatory front, we have secured approval from the Attorney General to register our nonprofit organization, the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics. Additionally, we’re expanding into vaccine development; following a research stay in Prof. Roderick's lab at the University of Waterloo, we have initiated the design of a phage-based universal Salmonella vaccine aimed at covering all major serotypes—an urgent need underscored by Africa’s reliance on external vaccine sources during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have signed an MTA agreement with Roderick to use his phage-based vaccine platform patents to enable us to design vaccines against any common disease affecting us. This is only the beginning, but we are proud to be laying the scientific and institutional groundwork for homegrown phage innovation in Africa. Emergent Ventures funded EN before we did and deserves a lot of credit here also. 66: Create An Artificial Kidney For an implantable artificial kidney, the first essential component is a hemofilter designed to emulate the glomerulus. Critical requirements for this hemofilter include high permeability (to maximize flow for a given area), selectivity (specifically, the retention of albumin), and robust blood compatibility (ensuring sustained function over time). Our initial strategy focused on using negative surface charge to reduce fouling. I began by testing polyelectrolyte (PE) coatings on 24nm pore membranes featuring a negative terminal charge, similar to the glomerular barrier. These initial static tests, assessing platelet adsorption in whole blood, yielded positive outcomes for some polyelectrolytes, indicating potentially desirable blood compatibility. However, static test setups are not truly representative of dynamic in-vitro conditions and don't provide data on key parameters like permeability, fouling progression, or changes in membrane selectivity. To address these limitations, I designed and built a blood filtration setup. This system sustains human whole blood in circulation for 20 minutes, allowing us to analyze all the aforementioned parameters, as well as platelet activation markers. This has resulted in a fairly high-throughput system for evaluating any surface coating. I'm pleased to report this setup has been accepted for presentation at this year's European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAIO) conference. I am also currently working on a full manuscript, as I believe this system offers a viable way to partially replace animal experiments in our early-stage research, requiring only 1.2ml of human blood per run. Working with a PhD student (hired to support both this research and work on membrane substrates), we have continued testing these PE coatings, alongside PEG coatings, on our membranes. Here, we're finding that optimization of the coating layer is crucial. With the current PE coatings, we observe a permeability drop of about an order of magnitude compared to the base membrane, making them unsuitable for an implantable device in their present form. This is likely due to the specific nature of the initial PE layer, which we can modify. We also suspect there may be ingress of PE into the pores, meaning we're not achieving just a surface coating (our goal), but rather a very thick coating, which would explain the flux loss. Optimizing the coating process to control penetration depth is now a primary focus of my ongoing work. I am currently aiming for a flux of 20ul/min (as this is cap introduced by the protein gel layer anyway) but for it to be at this 'steady state' permeability without drop in permeability. I am also imaging the membranes after contact with SEM to see if there is indeed any platelet adsorption etc. Tugrul has the dubious honor of maybe being "the only person to climb a 4000m peak with severe kidney failure". To raise money and awareness for his artificial kidney project, he is running Climb Against Time, where he will climb 41 mountains over 4000m (13000 ft) this summer. He is looking for donors and climbing partners. 67: Add Tardigrade Genes To Human Cells The goal of this one was to make hybrid cells that are more resilient for research and certain medical applications. They report: The grant was to synthesize vectors for the expression of humanized tardigrade proteins that can be targeted to different areas of the cell. All the vectors were designed, generated, and transposed into human cells. The proteins all localize successfully (e.g. they match the designed target), with one exception (we are still working on validating it). We've done some stress testing with the trangenic cells, but haven't reached firm conclusions yet. We've further generated some multigene designs but have not yet transposed them into cells, but should shortly. We're hoping to submit a manuscript on the first round later this year. 68: Teach Forecasting To EU Policy-Makers The original project didn't work out, but our grantee (who still prefers to remain anonymous) is now working with an EU think tank pursuing the same agenda, and has been teaching forecasting workshops to policy-makers for the past two months. 69: Platform For Single-Cell Imaging They ended up unable to accept this grant and returned the money. 70: Open Source Polygenic Predictor For EA/IQ They have an update here. They think they have a predictor that can explain 12% of variance in intelligence, and they’re working on validating it and creating an easy-to-use website. 71: Improve Flu Vaccines The grant mainly funded agent based modelling to demonstrate the benefit of pre-existing immunity to pandemic influenza if and when a future pandemic occurs (academic publication will result). The original proposal was to attempt to influence the WHO influenza strain selection process. After attending WHO meetings and a global influenza conference, I believe this is not feasible. Stakeholder feedback was the potential short term negative effect on vaccine hesitancy is believed to outweigh the less tangible future benefit. Given the conservative nature of decision makers, pandemic vaccines are likely to remain research only. There are still green shoots of research into pandemic preparedness/prevention that I am continuing to work on. I'm working under the "Australians for Pandemic Prevention" brand of Good Ancestors, another group that ACX funded in 2024. 72: Scenario Analysis For Developing World Agricultural Programs In addition to the research and analysis funded by the grant, I’ve learned to code with LLMs and have built an MVP of the project. The app is being considered for further development by staff at a large international organization. 73: Further C’s Political Career C’s political career is going well, but he continues to think it wouldn’t be strategic to give more information publicly at this time. Lessons Learned I'm most impressed with our lobbying/advocacy organizations. In particular, Good Ancestors has gotten the Australian government to sign onto an international AI safety declaration, partner with various x-risk-related organizations, and (possibly) extend charity tax deductions to some EA causes that previously didn't have it - I think this on its own goes a substantial way to paying back the cost of all ACX Grants. Coalition to Modify NOTA has a kidney donation bill in front of Congress that the (very illiquid) prediction markets give a 45% chance of passing; if it works, it could save thousands of lives. The Georgists are partly responsible for bills making land value taxes slightly easier to implement in a handful of states. Good Science Project seems to have significantly improved science. Are lobbying organizations a better bet than other types of nonprofit (within the constraints of ACX Grants)? I'm not sure. It could just be that lobbyists are (naturally) better at playing themselves up and sounding successful than (for example) scientists, or that politicians are good at people-pleasing and make people feel heard and encouraged in a way that might not change overall policy later. Also, I recently talked to some grantmakers who funded a lobbying organization that superficially seems excellent, but they expressed concern it was net negative (!) by taking away oxygen and spotlight from potentially more effective orgs. So I am encouraged but wary. Animal welfare organizations were another standout success. Again, I don't know how to think about this - while I think our grantees were exceptional, there's also an issue where the scale of animal welfare challenges is so great, and work on them so neglected, that lots of organizations can save a million chickens here, or a million fish there, without particularly making a splash. On the one hand, this is exactly what effective altruism should be doing - exploring grants that are very high in linear utility even if they don't feel satisfying. On the other, they're unsatisfying - and also hard to assess retroactively. How many chickens should a good animal welfare grant save? Any realistic number will both be overwhelmingly large in absolute terms and far too small in relative terms. I'm most ambivalent about our science grants. Many of them say they are successful and can point to published papers which explain the science they did. But it's hard to judge whether anything useful has changed based on the science getting done. I know it's important to fund basic research and not just last-mile technology startups, but it's hard for a mini-grants program like this one to evaluate these kinds of abstract interventions. One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits). For example, Innovate Animal Ag was in many ways overdetermined as a grantee - former Yale grad and Google engineer founder, profiled in NYT, already funded by Open Philanthropy - and they in fact did amazing work. On the other hand, there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering (although this also describes Manifold, one of our standout successes). One thing I still don't understand is that Innovate Animal Ag seemed to genuinely need more funding despite being legibly great and high status - does this screen off a theoretical objection that they don't provide ACX Grants with as much counterfactual impact? Am I really just mad that it would be boring to give too many grants to obviously-good things that even moron could spot as promising? Someone (I think it might be Paul Graham) once said that they were always surprised how quickly destined-to-be-successful startup founders responded to emails - sometimes within a single-digit number of minutes regardless of time of day. I used to think of this as mysterious - some sort of psychological trait? Working with these grants has made me think of it as just a straightforward fact of life: some people operate an order of magnitude faster than others. The Manifold team created something like five different novel institutions in the amount of time it's taken some other grantees to figure out a business plan; I particularly remember one time when I needed something, sent out a request to talk about it with two or three different teams, and the Manifold team had fully created the thing and were pestering me to launch a trial version before some of the other people had even gotten back to me. I take no pleasure in reporting this - I sometimes take a week or two to answer emails, and all of the predictions about my personality that this implies would be correct - but it's increasingly something that I look for and respect. A lot of the most successful grants succeeded quickly, or at least were quick to get on a promising track. Since everything takes ten times longer than people expect, only someone who moves ten times faster than people expect can get things done in a reasonable amount of time. In almost every case where I thought to myself “this is a cool idea, but I don’t know how it’s going to really pay off, as opposed to reaching a cool intermediate accomplishment and then stagnating”, this was a correct criticism, and I should have taken it more seriously. But I can’t rule out that these were good in vague and hard-to-measure ways that I should take more seriously. This one is really self-serving, but in general when people were good communicators (or even bloggers) and wowed me with the writing-composition of their application, they turned out to be a good bet. And when people were hard to understand and annoying to communicate with, even if their ideas seemed good, they were less likely to pan out. Overall Thoughts The total cost of ACX Grants, both rounds, was about $3 million. Do these outcomes represent a successful use of that amount of money? Very naively, startups originating from ACX Grants have about $50 million in value1. If ACX Grants is equivalent to a pre-seed funder, and pre-seed funders usually get ~5%, then if we were VCs we would have a portfolio worth $2.5 million. About 1/5 of ACX Grants were attempting to be market-valued startups, so if we assume the charitable portion did about as well as the startup portion, then the charity portion is “worth” $10 million. There’s some reason to expect this is too high, since much of the startup value came from one successful outlier. But there’s another reason to expect this is too low, since we were aiming at charity rather than market cap, and any actual market cap that our grantees got was an unexpected side effect. I’m treating this as a sanity check rather than as a real number. It’s harder to produce Inside View estimates, because so many of the projects either produce vague deliverables (eg a white paper that might guide future action) or intermediate results only (eg getting a government to pass AI safety regulations is good, but can’t be considered an end result unless those regulations prevent the AI apocalypse). Because we tend towards incubating charities and funding research (rather than last-mile causes like buying bednets), achieved measurable deliverables are thin on the ground. But here are things that ACX grantees have already accomplished: Improved the living/slaughter conditions of 30 million fish.
Inline links: Progress and Poverty Substack, Climb Against Time, here, 1
We then responded to home investigation requests in 2022 for two residents: a) one hospitalized with COVID-19 and later diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease (a type of pneumonia and leading cause of waterborne disease and deaths in the US) in Harrisonburg, VA, and b) another with Acanthamoeba keratitis (a rare eye infection) in a South Carolina town. Specifically, we packed and shipped sampling kits, probes, and instruction booklets/videos, and remotely assisted residents with measuring relevant water quality parameters, taking accurate water and biofilm swab samples, and shipping those back to our laboratory. Our team used quantitative and digital droplet PCR (qPCR/ddPCR) to test for Legionella pneumophila and Acanthamoeba bacteria. We did not find these pathogens at meaningful levels, although in at least the Harrisonburg case, the resident had followed CDC Legionella prevention guidance after a prior positive Legionella detection by increasing their water heater temperature, which could have contributed to successful remediation. The results were published in the scientific journal ACS ES&T Water. ACX funding provided partial support for the lead PhD student, supplies, analysis, and shipping costs.
Inline links: published in the scientific journal ACS ES&T Water