We need more philanthropic risk-taking.
This is particularly important in the world of science and technology research. With American public funding of science rapidly changing—or simply evaporating in real-time—one area that many people are looking to is private philanthropy. And yet it seems like we have the following situation: while wealthy people might have taken lots of risk to make their money, they often seem risk-averse when it comes to giving it away.
Of course, there are exceptions. For example, at the institutional level, you have organizations like Arcadia Science and Ink & Switch that are trying really exciting new models for scientific research. But can we get more risk-taking in philanthropy?
That’s why I was excited to see Stuart Buck’s new essay in Palladium titled “The Case for Crazy Philanthropy.”
Stuart admirably lays out the importance and gap here, from research projects to new organizations, all of which need to just be weirder:
Given the challenges of our times, we need to revitalize crazy philanthropy—that is, donations to unusual issues, to individuals outside the traditional university system, and to genuinely outside-the-box ideas that could lead to the creation of entirely new fields. Philanthropy can have much higher impact if it doesn’t just piggyback on existing institutions and ideas.
Further, he notes (bold is my addition):
Where is the crazy philanthropy today? Nat Friedman is perhaps the closest thing we now have. Friedman is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and, in early 2023, he and others launched the Vesuvius Challenge to see if modern machine learning experts could figure out how to decipher ancient scrolls from the Herculaneum Papyri that were mostly burnt in the ancient volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
In early 2024, the Vesuvius Challenge announced that three entrants had deciphered several passages and had won a $700,000 prize. Since then, he has advertised in a post that he wants to hire someone at $2,000 a week to work on the Shroud of Turin. In an interview, Friedman put it bluntly: “I think most rich people are boring, and they should do more cool things.” What remains in this domain? At least 2,800 square meters of scrolls, including possibly the location of Plato’s tomb and a copy of Aristotle’s Constitution of the Spartans.
And perhaps that is the key here: we must valorize the interesting and weird rich people, encouraging them to try even more of this kind of thing. There needs to be a shift in the philanthropic culture.
This is something that Nadia Asparouhova noticed several years ago as well:
We aren’t hard-wired to do this stuff. The default state of a suddenly wealthy person is to quietly buy the boat or the vineyard in Napa, raise a family, and avoid confronting the power they've been given. But the industrial wealth class, which preceded our digital wealth class, wasn’t hard-wired to do this stuff, either. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller deliberately campaigned to make philanthropy (initially called "scientific giving", to distinguish it from charitable giving) attractive to their peers.
If we don't talk about philanthropy, we risk repeating the mistakes of our European predecessors – recoiling into America's ancestral shell – instead of following in the footsteps that the industrialists so boldly laid out for us in the last great technological wealth boom. The failure mode of today’s ascendant wealth class would be a backslide into aristocracy, perpetuating the bloat and disquiet of generational wealth, instead of finding ways to discharge it back into society, further shaping how the world turns by increasing opportunities for others to succeed.
For as Nadia also notes:
The earliest modern philanthropists remind me of startup founders, driven less by benevolence and more by the hubris to believe they can shape the world to their liking. If venture capital is risk capital for private goods, philanthropy is risk capital for public goods.
We need more of this. This probably involves somehow making sure that credit goes to the philanthropists that make early bets and take big swings on weird and amazing projects that make an impact. Celebrate the Rockefeller Foundation for supporting Norman Borlaug’s work or creating the field of molecular biology, and whatever the more modern equivalent is today.
This also involves changing how we think about incrementalism as well. As Josh Foer notes (he is discussing Judaism-focused philanthropy, but the message is generally applicable):
There are certainly places that will write small checks, $30,000 checks, $50,000 checks, but to start a real ambitious venture requires more capital than that — like an order of magnitude more capital. And there aren’t addresses to go to for that kind of real risk capital, whereas there is a whole system in the for-profit world.
Nevertheless, I think the philanthropic culture can be shifted, ensuring that there is more experimentation, and with enough support to actually do such experiments properly. But whatever needs to be done, let’s make it happen. ■
If you are interested in exploring this cultural change in philanthropy, please reach out.
A few recent episodes of The Orthogonal Bet you might enjoy:
I also continue to do podcast interviews and other appearances about my new book The Magic of Code (please do get a copy!):
Here are some links worth checking out that touch on the complex systems of our world (both built and natural):
🜸 The Flower Designer: “A plant biologist’s quest to design and create 1,000 unique flowers, mostly in his spare time.”
🝤 Miyazaki Hates AI Art, But Should We? New deeply thoughtful video from Kirby Ferguson about AI art.
🜚 The Weight of a Cell: “A single yeast cell weighs about one million times less than a grain of sand. But how do we know this?”
🝳 A Rogue New Life Form: “A tiny microbe discovered by accident challenges the definition of cellular life”
🝤 When a Bug Saved the Company: “Compared to giving away two-plus weeks for free, this more strict limitation led to dramatically higher sales. We had unwittingly created a vastly superior trial.”
Until next time.
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