Astral Codex Ten

George Mason University

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George Mason University

Article

George Mason University is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between October 18, 2022 and May 29, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Alex Tabarrok , GMU and Marginal Revolution”; “much of the administrative work that would be counted under “overhead” … is covered by George Mason University”; “George Mason University, but that under normal federal grant rules”. It most often appears alongside Marginal Revolution, Hell, PEPFAR.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: October 18, 2022
  • Last seen: May 29, 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.

22
October 18, 2022 · Original source
...along with Nuno Sempere, Linch Zhang, Ozzie Gooen, and other rationalist/EA forecasters. - Jason Crawford from Roots of Progress - Sam Altman , OpenAI and Y Combinator - Alex Tabarrok , GMU and Marginal Revolution - Robin Hanson , prediction markets pioneer - Dustin Moskovitz , Facebook co-founder and effective altruist - A former chief innovation officer at the CFTC’s labs who no...
Contra MR On Charity Regrants
May 22, 2025 · Original source
Maybe Cowen thinks that 30% is too high an overhead? I asked o3 to estimate the overhead for the Mercatus Center, the libertarian charity that Cowen runs. It said that it was hard to give an apples-to-apples number because much of the administrative work that would be counted under “overhead” in other charities is covered by George Mason University. But it estimated that if the federal government gives a dollar of research funding to Mercatus, about 40% would go to combined university and Mercatus overhead - higher than the average USAID charity.
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID
May 29, 2025 · Original source
In my original post, I quoted o3 saying that Mercatus took about 8% as direct overhead, and that many other administrative expenses that a normal charity would have to charge as overhead were instead covered by George Mason University, but that under normal federal grant rules these would count for about 30%. I didn’t mean to imply that Mercatus actually took federal funding or charged these numbers (which is why I used the hypothetical “if” on that statement) and if it came off this way, I’m sorry. But other than that, I’m not sure what Tyler is objecting to.