Will the project "Longtermist Animal Incubation Project" receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?

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Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.

Why the applicant thinks we should fund this project

There are compelling arguments that one of the best ways to do good is to focus on the long-term future, and there are compelling arguments that one of the best ways to do good is to focus on improving the lives of non-human animals. Therefore, improving the lives of non-human animals in the long-term future has the potential to have an astronomical scale, and it is currently an area that is completely neglected. This project would take advantage of this high-scale, neglected opportunity and, hopefully, identify some interventions in this space that can do an immense amount of good.

Here's the mechanism by which the applicant expects their project will achieve positive outcomes.

Using this grant, we will hire a researcher to conduct prioritisation research to identify the 3-5 ideas for new organisations that look most effective at reducing long-term animal suffering. This will provide us with the evidence-base to then apply for larger grants, which will be used to hire staff to begin incubating these ideas. This will lead to the creation of new organisations working on reducing the risk of extreme-scale animal suffering in the future (e.g. through space colonisation, AI, and so on). These organisations would then become self-sufficient and continue to produce research, advocate for specific policies, etc, leading to a concretely reduced risk of animal suffering in the future.

How much funding are they requesting?

Our baseline request is $55,000 USD to fund a full-time researcher for 12 months. This is a standard annual salary for a postdoctoral researcher (e.g. NIH-NSRA benchmark).

As a stretch goal, we could use up to $110,000 USD, as this would allow us to hire either a second full-time researcher or a second part-time researcher and a part-time operations and communications specialist.

What would they do with the amount just specified?

Pay for the salary of one researcher full-time to conduct the research process. In the case of our stretch goal, we would pay for the salary of 1-2 researchers to conduct the research process, and possibly the salary of one non-research staff member to provide operations and communications support for the project.

Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kXB6Jo_iCYs1tYbP4IkvOGtVg8rM2RbK4SXKw7t__mc/edit#

Sep 20, 3:46pm:

Close date updated to 2022-10-01 2:59 am