Based Camp - Why You Can Not Allow Nerds to Congregate with Austin Chen

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. We are very excited today to be joined by Austin Chen. He is one of the co-founders

00:00:05.480 of the prediction market, Manifold, though now he is transitioning to work on Manifund,

00:00:10.740 which is their sort of independent grant-making entity. We're just so excited. But what he's

00:00:15.560 doing right now as he's transitioning is prepping and ramping up for basically the conference of

00:00:21.220 the year for us. We're really excited for it, aside from Natalism Conference, which we're also

00:00:24.400 very excited for because of Pernatalism, right? But last year was the first ever Manifest

00:00:29.700 Conference. This is the flagship conference and the one and only of Manifold. And it was

00:00:36.340 one of the best gatherings we've ever been to in terms of the caliber of people, in terms of

00:00:41.460 execution. So you're planning for this. We wanted to bring you on to talk about this,

00:00:45.660 to talk about Manifold, to talk about Manifund. And I just wanted to kick this off with...

00:00:49.840 Why? No, hold on. We got to kick it off as a good question, okay? Not a generic question.

00:00:56.600 I think that was a great question. The good question is around the betting pool that was

00:01:01.740 put around when a sex party would form at last year's event. Oh my God. 0.61

00:01:06.340 An orgy, yes. Yeah, can you speak to that? What happened there? 0.98

00:01:10.120 Would you like to know more?

00:01:11.480 So this is, I think, an outgrowth of Manifold's very libertarian philosophy. To take very many steps

00:01:17.520 back about what is special about Manifold, right? We're a prediction market platform where anyone

00:01:21.140 can create any question. And this was basically, from the very beginning, we wanted to be a place

00:01:26.520 where instead of the more standard platforms, Metaculous, Polymarket, Cauchy, which all have

00:01:30.920 prediction markets or forecasts, but all of their forecasts and prediction markets are gatekept.

00:01:35.560 They're approved by the moderators of the platform. We were like, we don't want this.

00:01:39.580 We want more of a decentralized, anyone can ask any question kind of system. So I think even from

00:01:45.480 the very early days, we had a lot more of the out there, sketchy, raunchy, degenerate crowd of

00:01:50.800 people. But also a lot of people who are just very interested in prediction markets for their

00:01:54.360 own sake, like prediction market nerds. When you put those two together, you get all kinds of weird

00:01:58.060 questions. Will there be an orgy at Manifest? And I think the New York Times famously covered this

00:02:02.480 maybe in a little bit more depth than I would have hoped because me, I'm like, I'm so excited to be

00:02:06.760 on the New York Times, except that my name is now associated with this orgy that happened

00:02:09.540 in my comments. But yeah, I don't know if there's like too much more about that than what they

00:02:15.660 covered. It was like somebody who's one of our users was like, there's a bunch of like really

00:02:19.700 spicy things happening. The like rationalist EA crowd is famous for the very loose like norms on

00:02:24.020 like sexuality, like polyamory, that kind of thing. Maybe there'll be an orgy. It's a thing that has 0.95

00:02:28.600 probably ever happened before in like other rationalist parties or something like that.

00:02:32.200 And there's just like a market for it. And every prediction market can also be viewed as like an

00:02:37.220 incentive market, where if you have inside information, or especially if you have the

00:02:41.260 ability to make the outcome of the market happen in this case, if you have the ability to make an

00:02:44.620 orgy happen, then it's a very natural thing to bet up. Will there be an orgy and just arrange an orgy. 0.91

00:02:49.640 And I think that's basically what happened here. Some like enterprising like user in our community 0.97

00:02:53.860 was like, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get together with the minimum viable orgy. If we can get

00:02:58.120 three people to agree to come over and have sex. I think they did this off the Lighthaven campus, 0.89

00:03:03.300 then we can result this market correctly. So that's my best guess of what happened.

00:03:06.160 And Alo is one of the speakers. She's one of the speakers this year, too.

00:03:09.200 Yeah, that's right. And also before we go further to get this all at the beginning,

00:03:12.580 if you happen to live in the Bay Area, and you are a fan of ours, and you're not going to one of

00:03:16.820 the natal cons or something, because I think that's going to be in Austin again, this is a great place

00:03:20.040 to meet up because we're going to be there speaking and the types of conversations that were happening

00:03:25.060 at the event last year are very similar to what goes on in our discord with speaking of if you

00:03:29.960 haven't seen our discord, go check that out. With the one caveat that because you have people like

00:03:35.220 LAIs or Yukowsky again coming this year, you get more of the anti-AI side, whereas generally our

00:03:40.740 audience is very pro-AI accelerationist, which we also get a lot of accelerationists there.

00:03:45.300 Yeah, we have, for example, Brian Chow coming, who is of the Alliance for the Future 5.1c3 that's

00:03:49.760 established.

00:03:50.120 He's been on our podcast a number of times. And we've done his a number of times too. Yeah,

00:03:54.260 he's great. So Simone, you can now ask the question that you want.

00:03:57.000 Yeah, you've partially answered the question, which I think is, so we're getting there. And I think we need to

00:04:01.160 dig deeper here is a lot of the people who follow this podcast and who like this podcast are really starved

00:04:07.460 for intellectually interesting conversations, not just heterodox. There's a lot of people throw around

00:04:13.540 the word heterodox thinker a lot. And that tends to sometimes just mean that someone's a contrarian and

00:04:19.660 they just like to troll people or say things that sound controversial. Whereas the people who follow this

00:04:24.140 podcast who really love it are like, I just want to really discuss something from first principles with people

00:04:29.220 and really have an intellectual conversation. And these people are all over the place and manifest.

00:04:33.900 And one thing that you pointed out was that the people who are drawn to Manifold, because it's more

00:04:37.980 open, are like a mixture of like, very analytical people, like super autistic, and then like also

00:04:44.700 just degenerates and like people who are just willing to be very playful as well. So that seems to be one

00:04:51.200 element of this is that you have a bunch of people who are both fun and smart.

00:04:56.220 And I think the bigger element, Simone, is that prediction marketplaces create a status hierarchy

00:05:01.880 around real world information. Because a lot of quote unquote, being smart in our society today

00:05:07.840 is based around being able to parrot back a dominant societal narrative. Whereas in a prediction market

00:05:13.880 environment, your knowledge about the state of the world today actually has to be predictive of

00:05:18.240 future states. That's true.

00:05:19.900 Genuine intelligence. And so it sorts for genuine intelligence. And then within prediction marketplaces,

00:05:25.020 it sorts for degenerates with genuine intelligence, which is our audience.

00:05:29.980 So Austin, aside from those things, are there any other common characteristics of Manifold users and people

00:05:36.540 who attend Manifest? And as a second question to this, for those who are starved for these kinds of

00:05:42.640 interactions, who couldn't go to Manifest, and who just like really want to meet people like that,

00:05:46.880 where do you think these people congregate?

00:05:49.360 So the first question, what they have in common,

00:05:53.200 I think taking it back, like a lot of like, who comes to the conference is where does the

00:06:02.600 conference get marketed? And who does this seem appealing to? And then the next level, who,

00:06:07.520 like looking at the conference, thinks that like the kinds of people who would want to come to this

00:06:10.540 conference are the kinds of people I want to talk to, right? It's like a multi-level, like kind of

00:06:13.880 model, which is this the crowd for me vibe. And we're trying to position Manifest as really hard

00:06:19.780 to say. I sometimes say like Manifest is in one sense, like a conference that like, is like Austin's

00:06:23.780 like ideal, like dream conference, where I think like a lot of the like people who I follow online,

00:06:29.840 who like, I think are really interesting. I've tried to create a thing that they would very much

00:06:33.760 like to attend. And I think it's actually a borne out a little bit in that in a process of running

00:06:37.200 this conference, like I like try to invite a lot of them and a surprising number say yes.

00:06:39.920 I think like roughly like about half of the like speakers and guest honors who I've like asked to

00:06:44.760 come have accepted. And for me, this feels like, like incredibly like high. I'm like so happy that

00:06:49.900 they are all like interested in coming to this kind of thing. There's an effect where with Manifest,

00:06:54.040 I'm also trying to map out the boundaries of some different online communities. I think forecasting

00:06:57.940 it obviously, but also the natalism, fertility, culture crowd, which is you two, obviously,

00:07:03.700 and Richard Hanania and like Robin Hanson, who talked about these kinds of topics,

00:07:06.720 Alexander Tesla, people like that. They often talk to each other. I think there's some types

00:07:10.600 like reference each other. You like go on each other's podcasts all the time. Yeah. That's also

00:07:14.220 like a crowd of people who I like learn a lot from, and I think have some kind of like natural

00:07:18.760 affinity for like markets, economics, prediction markets, especially they're like, they're in full

00:07:23.180 force. Startup crowd, of course, the tech startups, the, I think there was one other.

00:07:28.060 There are tons of machine learning people also.

00:07:30.640 Machine learning people. I view that as a bit of an outgrowth of like startups slash

00:07:33.660 rationality. There's a biotechnology. Sorry. It was the one that was on my mind,

00:07:38.380 especially in the, like the polygenic screening.

00:07:40.740 Yeah. Lots of that. Yeah. We met the guy doing the tooth thing at the last one.

00:07:45.580 Yes. Yes, that's right. And he's coming again. I got the tooth thing on me personally, actually.

00:07:50.440 Lumen Bioworks is the name of the company. Yeah. It's Aaron who has, he's a friend of Ayla. He was

00:07:57.100 like one of her secretary type people, I think for a while.

00:07:59.860 Yeah. You know, they've worked together for a while, but for those who are not familiar with

00:08:03.260 Lumen Bioworks, this is basically a swab you can do on your teeth that should give you basically

00:08:09.620 a mouth macrobiotic environment that makes it less likely, severely less likely to get,

00:08:18.620 to develop cavities. So Austin, you're theoretically cavity free still, I take it?

00:08:22.960 Theoretically, it might take another like a few months because it takes about a year to fully

00:08:26.980 colonize your mouth. And the other thing is that we don't really know if it's taken yet. Cause I

00:08:30.740 haven't gone in and swabbed again to test it. So I think I got swabbed like about six months ago and

00:08:37.440 like now definitely I should be able to figure it out, but I haven't yet. I'm getting, going in for

00:08:41.760 a dental appointment, like in another week or so. So maybe I can tell you then if it like hasn't

00:08:45.400 worked. We'll check with you in with you at, at manifest. You should have a prediction market around

00:08:49.960 your dental. Oh, that definitely makes sense. Yes. I'll do that. So something I wanted to dig in here

00:08:56.480 is this nonprofit thing that you're building. Yes. Can you tell us more about ManaFund?

00:09:01.480 Sure. Oh, sorry. There's another question. I don't know if you want to go back to the question.

00:09:04.720 Oh no. Yeah. Where can people, yeah. Where else are these people congregating? In the Bay Area,

00:09:08.840 we've heard a lot of people say it's harder to find. On our Discord, Simone, on our Discord. And I'm

00:09:12.760 going to put the link below. But aside from our Discord, where can people find these people?

00:09:17.420 Especially when it comes to finding partners, because people email us all the time saying,

00:09:21.920 yeah, you know, this is great. Well, ManaFund tried to create that dating

00:09:24.780 market that we promoted on our podcast. Yeah. Yeah. But then there wasn't enough

00:09:28.700 people. It didn't have a big enough sample. So yeah. What are your thoughts there?

00:09:33.200 Yeah. And there's like two different questions, even like one is like a question for just hanging

00:09:37.400 out and finding a community. And one is like finding a partner. I guess there's a sense in which

00:09:41.160 like you don't necessarily want this to be different too. You might want them to be like pretty aligned.

00:09:44.340 It's like nicer to just find love like in your community that you're in anyways.

00:09:47.780 Also famously, we had like our own dating product, manifold.love and it still exists. You can go,

00:09:53.120 still go to the site. I think it's still a pretty good resource. The pitch for manifold.love right

00:09:56.720 now is it's like an open database of like date me docs, which is like pretty in-depth profiles with

00:10:03.480 like photos and rough like bios. And then like answers to a bunch of like questions about that,

00:10:08.120 like pretty key to like understanding the personality of a person. So check it out. If that's one place I

00:10:12.760 would immediately recommend people to look a little bit for potential partners, manifold.love.

00:10:16.900 But yeah, on the question of where to hang out, if you're looking to meet people like this in

00:10:21.460 person, I run like a event called taco Tuesday. And I actually haven't really advertised or pitched

00:10:27.040 it before to like people like broadly. So I I'm unsure if like, this is a good or bad thing to do.

00:10:31.600 But anyways, it's like every Tuesday at my house, more or less like cooked tacos, usually like 20 or

00:10:36.100 like 40 people will show up. We'll do some kind of event afterwards, like karaoke.

00:10:39.640 Your house where, what city people might.

00:10:41.620 I'm in Francisco.

00:10:42.280 I'll link to like a recent invite where the address is on so people can look at it and think

00:10:46.880 it was like close by. It's like basically middle of San Francisco. Yeah. I would love that Simone

00:10:50.300 Malcolm if you two are ever in town on a Tuesday to come free to come.

00:10:53.300 Oh, I would love that. Yeah. Next time I'm in the city, I was just there for my GSB reunion.

00:10:56.620 And yeah, I'd actually say that our audience, weirdly, we are at the stage of middling fame at

00:11:02.680 the moment where pretty much almost everyone I've met from our audience is really intellectual and

00:11:07.480 high quality. Like we haven't gotten that many idiots yet. A couple, but not a lot. 1.00

00:11:12.280 Which is fortunate in terms of not accidentally inviting too many weirdos to your house.

00:11:17.560 Yeah. For Taco Tuesday, I also put the invite on a Manifold market. Every week, it is like how many

00:11:22.280 people will show up and you can bet on more than 10, more than 20, more than 30. And it is just like

00:11:26.360 an open invite on the internet where my address is on there. But like the people who are Manifold users

00:11:30.360 who think, oh, I might enjoy coming to talk to you. They tend to also just be like quite like intellectual,

00:11:34.680 like fun to talk to. So that's why I would promote that as like maybe a great place to merge

00:11:39.480 the Manifold and the like Simone and Malcolm, like audience. Other places like this, I think

00:11:44.120 there's definitely like a, like rationality community in like Berkeley, which you're probably

00:11:47.960 like familiar with, or maybe your audience is in San Francisco. There's actually like less of one,

00:11:51.960 I'd say probably because San Francisco is a lot more like tech heavy. It's like bigger. So like the

00:11:57.960 rationalist EA people and people who are like interested in topics like this are just like less,

00:12:02.040 there's less of a concentration of them. They're drowned out by the like tech world, I'd say.

00:12:05.480 Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

00:12:08.840 One thing I'm picking up for from you though, which I think is underrated and which I'm sick

00:12:13.960 of people complaining about because we get this is you are making all this happen. You are hosting

00:12:21.720 Taco Tuesdays. You are organizing conferences. You are reaching out to your intellectual heroes and

00:12:28.040 the people whose content you like to consume and the people who you think would be interesting and

00:12:31.560 you're inviting them to your conference. And I think that is the key. Being popular isn't about

00:12:36.680 like somehow magically being popular. It is about being the one who organizes the thing and takes

00:12:42.200 the initiative and does the work. And it's a lot of freaking work. You're putting a lot of work into

00:12:45.640 all these things. So I think I just want to point that out to people that like, guess what? This is

00:12:51.080 going to involve a lot of legwork on your end. And if you just want to sit on your ass and show up to 1.00

00:12:54.680 something, you're not going to have any of this. Yeah. I very much agree with that. I want to 1.00

00:12:58.520 double down on that. I think a lot of people or a lot of like people I know, like friends, I want

00:13:03.080 to have a more vibrant social network. I want to go to the cool events. And I often try to tell them

00:13:07.400 like, you could just organize a cool event or you could just organize an event and it won't start

00:13:10.760 out cool, but that's okay. Like you'll get better at organizing better and better events. I think

00:13:14.680 Taco Tuesday started as like me and like two of my friends during COVID who are just like wanting to hang

00:13:19.880 out more often. So we're like, okay, we're going to show up and we're going to eat tacos. And we just kept

00:13:22.440 doing it and we did it for three years. And that's how it's grown to this thing at this point,

00:13:25.720 which like 40 people come to 30 people come to every single week. And yeah, I think like social

00:13:32.280 events, like starting from as small as like a gathering to as large as like a conference are

00:13:36.520 still like pretty under provided. Like the like market demand for them is a lot higher than like

00:13:41.720 the number of events that people can actually go to right now. So I think it would be a great thing if

00:13:45.000 people listen to this podcast and say, maybe I'll try and manifest to me was like last year,

00:13:49.240 can I put on a thing on the size of a hundred people, 200 people showing up?

00:13:53.320 And I never put a conference together before, but I think I learned a lot along the way. And

00:13:57.080 this year I'm like very excited for manifest the second time, right?

00:14:00.440 I actually, Simone, I'm going to take a side here and say that I think that people like Austin and

00:14:06.040 us are, it's a genetic thing. I really don't think you can motivate somebody to be this type of

00:14:11.640 person by just being like, Oh, if you, because I've seen what happens when I try to,

00:14:15.800 because like when I am mentoring young people or some fans, I'm like, Oh, you could put something

00:14:20.920 together. Like here's a market space where you can put something together and they'll do the initial

00:14:25.240 bit of work, but they don't really follow through. They don't really put in the effort to make it

00:14:29.720 actually happen on a big scale. And then when it's pitters out, they're like, that's why I never try

00:14:34.120 anything because they don't really immerse themselves in making it happen. But I think that's a

00:14:39.080 dispositional thing where if you're dispositionally one of those people, you're just going to do it anyway.

00:14:44.520 So it's a weird sort of a, it's optimistic perspective. And then I'm like, look, anyone

00:14:49.080 can do this, but not any, not everyone is anyone. And because of that, the people who have the

00:14:56.200 disposition to just tackle life this way are already going to be tackling life this way.

00:15:03.000 That's funny. I think that's exactly what actually I was going to say, or it was on my mind as well.

00:15:06.760 This brings me back to one of my favorite pieces from Scott Alexander, the Parable of the Talents,

00:15:11.320 I think. He went last year and he's coming again this year, by the way.

00:15:14.920 That's right. Yes. But I think it was this piece. If not, it was a different like Scott Alexander

00:15:18.760 piece that talks about Scott's own reflections on his ability to write really well. And conversely,

00:15:24.360 his ability to not be like really good. Like he barely got like a D in calculus. I think it goes

00:15:28.200 the piece. And this goes to show that different people are like very good at different things.

00:15:32.760 But most importantly for Scott, it's not like he like tried really hard to become a good writer.

00:15:36.680 It was more that like becoming a good writer came naturally. He was just like goofing up and then

00:15:40.440 his like random like English essays would become like the best essays or like win like state

00:15:44.760 competitions, that kind of thing. So maybe the way that like possibly me and possibly the two of you

00:15:49.640 are like feel more naturally drawn towards inviting people to things and hosting events well and make

00:15:54.840 people happy. I think empathy is probably like a really key point of like how to make a event like run

00:15:59.880 really well because you have to really understand how your participants are feeling and what like

00:16:04.120 changes you can make to give them a better experience. And I don't know if this is like

00:16:07.400 Oh, it's fascinating. We take the exact opposite perspective.

00:16:10.200 Oh, okay. Okay. Now go on.

00:16:11.400 You host events for the exact opposite reason you host events. So when we host events,

00:16:15.800 we generally do it because we do not like spending time around people. We do not like meeting people.

00:16:21.640 And I want to lower the amount of time in my year that I am spending socializing. And so to do that,

00:16:29.640 like one of the things we used to do is every other month, we'd put together

00:16:31.880 like a party or event in New York to do that. We were just like, Oh, we'll put together these

00:16:37.160 events because we need friends. We need a high powered social network to achieve the things we

00:16:42.440 want to in life. So that required some level of socializing. But what it meant is we basically

00:16:46.840 needed to condense our socializing to be as refined and pure as possible, not have to do it that frequently.

00:16:55.160 And that is what motivated a bit.

00:16:57.000 That is so interesting, actually. For me, my motivations came very differently. It's,

00:17:01.240 I'm also not an extrovert. I actually don't particularly enjoy spending time in social

00:17:04.760 situations. I think maybe this is similar to you two then.

00:17:07.160 Yeah.

00:17:07.960 So that's not why I put on events. I put on events actually, because

00:17:10.840 I think most other people are pretty extroverted, but also are bad at making their own events

00:17:15.480 happen or something like that. Or I just like egoistically think I can run a better event than you

00:17:19.320 can. So I'm going to run the event. I actually clearly can though.

00:17:21.800 Yeah. He's also in a unique time within the marketplace right now of events because the

00:17:28.280 EA community and the rationalist community have been overcome by AI apocalypticism and just gone

00:17:33.800 crazy. And so they're just not fun to be around. No one wants to be around that nihilistic BS.

00:17:38.280 And then the pro natalist communities, like the one fun community that's adjacent to those circles,

00:17:43.960 it's still not overcome with that. So they're too busy raising their kids. So they're not hanging out.

00:17:48.440 And then the many of them don't have kids, but they're just like, whatever. But your event,

00:17:54.600 because it's drawing on these marketplaces, it's able to take, if you're in this, and the reason I

00:18:00.120 talk about the EA community and the rationalist community is this community, regardless of how

00:18:04.840 polluted the overall ideology has become, is still collecting most of the world's highest agency,

00:18:11.640 highest intelligence people. There's just not a lot of good conferences anymore for high agency,

00:18:17.800 high intelligence people since the corruption of the old EA and rationalist communities,

00:18:22.200 which really only happened after Sam Bankman-Fried.

00:18:24.920 I don't know if I like agree with you, like all the way on the idea that like

00:18:28.360 EA rational had been like corrupted per se, or you definitely use like stronger words than I would

00:18:31.720 use. But I do think there's a true element, which is, I think EAG, for example, is not very fun.

00:18:35.720 It is like very automatic or that's not even the right word. Like it feels very good-hearted,

00:18:40.760 but EAG explicitly has like a metric around effective altruism global. This is like the premiere,

00:18:46.280 it runs like two or three times a year global conference of effective altruists, where a lot

00:18:50.120 of them like get together and talk about the different causes they're working on. It is

00:18:53.560 actually like a pretty good conference, like all, like all around, if that's like a thing that you're

00:18:57.720 interested in. I enjoyed going, but again, to me, going there feels like a chore, like a job, like

00:19:02.600 work. And I think most people who go feel this way. It is like a professional event, like focus

00:19:06.920 around networking and learning, but it's not fun. I think like when I was crafting manifest,

00:19:11.560 I tried to make it like halfway between the EAG effective altruism global and Vibecamp. I'm not

00:19:17.240 sure if either of you are familiar with Vibecamp. Yeah, we've been to Vibecamp. I was not a fan.

00:19:20.520 It was well organized, but I didn't, the people that it draws were not intellectually additive to me.

00:19:27.320 Interesting. So my disclaimer is that I've actually not been to Vibecamp. I was just like

00:19:31.720 using the vibes of Vibecamp, so to speak, like what it felt like people enjoyed from Vibecamp.

00:19:35.960 We were trying to combine those two out, have the intellectual caliber of people who go to an EAG,

00:19:40.840 but the like fun elements of Vibecamp. The playfulness of Vibecamp.

00:19:44.920 Playfulness. Yes. Yes, exactly. Those are the things that I wanted to have in full force

00:19:49.160 at Manifest. I think we did okay last year and hopefully we'll do even better this year.

00:19:53.000 Yeah. So now let's talk about the nonprofit before we end, because I really want to understand this

00:19:56.760 better. What is this? Yeah. Manifund is an independent 501c3 charity,

00:20:02.040 which primarily is like, like a grant maker and like a website that people can apply for grants on.

00:20:06.920 So it's a little bit similar to Kickstarter. You can like list your application there and like submit

00:20:11.560 and then it'll be hosted on the internet. So that's one thing that's pretty different between like

00:20:15.080 Manifund and most other grant makers, where like most other grant applications are done,

00:20:18.360 like like in private behind closed doors, like you'll fill out like a Google form or something,

00:20:21.800 and then somebody will read it. And like in a few weeks time, you'll get like a yes or no response.

00:20:25.240 Instead on Manifund where like you apply for a grant there, it goes, anyone can leave a comment,

00:20:29.640 like talk about what they like, what they didn't like about your application. And then anyone can

00:20:33.480 donate to it via our Kickstarter like platform. We've also received some amount of funding from

00:20:38.120 various like individual donors and other like EA sources so that some people who are on the site

00:20:42.600 just already have a pot of money like allocated to them to give out. For example, we have 1.5 million

00:20:47.240 dollars worth of AI safety regranting budget. Six different like experts in the field of AI safety

00:20:51.560 on our sites can choose to like directly fund applications that they find particularly compelling.

00:20:56.280 So yeah, this is the thing that I'm spending more of my time working on. And like, I'm like worried

00:21:01.160 like in your head, some of them are like, oh, this seems like just like worse than the Manifund thing.

00:21:05.240 Like, why are you like doing this instead? So I'm going to try to preempt that criticism.

00:21:08.600 So Manifund was like a really compelling idea around prediction markets. And we had a long time to

00:21:13.720 test out like specifically how good is a prediction market. And I think like we found it's good for

00:21:18.680 some classes of things, but it's not like the panacea that like we thought it could be, which is to say,

00:21:23.720 they're like often good for topics that like are very broadly popular because they can draw a lot

00:21:28.200 of attention to people like getting in and like asking, no, will Trump win the election? That's

00:21:31.800 like an example of a question. I was like, one, very popular, two, really easy to understand

00:21:35.800 and resolves like relatively soon. Three, these things make for one particular kind of good

00:21:39.480 prediction market. But I think when I started on Manifund, there was some idea that, oh, we can use

00:21:43.080 prediction markets for everything. I can make a hundred choices in my day-to-day life via prediction markets.

00:21:47.560 And I don't think we've quite gotten there. I think even in the like scope of trying to decide

00:21:51.960 what features Manifund should work on, which is like pretty important and has a high amount of

00:21:55.320 uncertainty and has a lot of trying to figure out what the future will hold, where it's pretty

00:21:59.480 hard to operationalize a prediction market to like get that question answered for us.

00:22:02.920 So I think at the end of that, I was like, oh, I think prediction markets might be like a good

00:22:06.760 business might be like very popular, but it might be a good business in the way that like the New York

00:22:10.840 Times is like a good business or something like that, but it's not like enough to change the world.

00:22:13.880 So now I'm like trying to find a thing that will change the world. And it's not exactly clear if

00:22:17.080 this grant making thing is like on the path there, but I'm hoping that it will be.

00:22:21.000 I actually think it's a good idea. I think it's a really good idea. And I think it's a better idea

00:22:24.360 than Manifest. So Manifold, Manifold. So I'll explain why. So it actually comes from what I was

00:22:29.480 saying. You have to look at the landscape of intellectually alive people and where young ones or

00:22:38.520 up and coming ones in the pipeline are aggregating. And there's just a, after the corruption of,

00:22:47.640 we have an episode that I haven't posted yet because I'm a little hesitant because it calls

00:22:50.680 out a little too many people on the death of the EA movement. But Sam Baikman-Fried,

00:22:57.160 because the EA movement like really over invested in appeasing Sam Baikman-Fried for a while,

00:23:02.600 because he was such a major donor. He was like 90% of all the funds in the space.

00:23:06.760 And because he was really just using the movement to support, like to the whitewash, 0.87

00:23:11.640 his reputation was democratic politicians. It meant that really everything that they were drawn

00:23:16.760 to was like mainstream and democratic. And it led to those sentiments growing and growing was in the

00:23:22.920 movement until recently, like even Nick Bostrom saying it, Oxford got shut down. Like you, what was

00:23:29.880 this Institute that got shut down? It was like a couple of weeks ago.

00:23:32.600 Yeah. Sorry, like very quickly note a disagreement, which I don't think that's

00:23:38.760 time to get into. I actually like strongly support Sam Baikman-Fried, like even now,

00:23:42.360 I don't know. I think I wrote, but yeah, it's like disagreement, but I don't care about him

00:23:47.480 as a person. So I guess what I'd say is I actually have no beef with him as a person,

00:23:51.560 but I think the downstream effects of his prioritization had a major memetic effect

00:23:58.600 on the movement as a whole. Not even his prioritization, just the fact that there was

00:24:02.440 any single entity in the space that was giving out what felt like infinite money at the time

00:24:07.160 caused a virtue signal spiral. And that's more what we're referring to.

00:24:10.520 Then when that one force disappeared from the movement as a motivator, the movements went off

00:24:17.240 filter, like it no longer had its ballast and then began to spin out into like weird culty side

00:24:23.720 projects, which we would argue, obviously you don't, like you are concerned about AI safety,

00:24:27.880 but we argue a lot of the more extreme AI safety stuff has become. And as a result,

00:24:32.520 there's a lot of intellectually active people who are like, I want to dedicate my life to making a

00:24:37.720 world a better place. But I don't feel that will be achieved by going through the mainstream EA

00:24:45.400 organizations. And as a result, you creating an alternative, which is prestigious, which is able

00:24:52.680 to host conferences that get people as diverse as us and Eliezer and Scott Alexander. And I think

00:25:01.080 like Richard Hanani or something like that in a recent one, like you, you are getting the huge spectrum

00:25:06.600 here, right? Which creates what otherwise doesn't exist, which is a mainstream nonprofit fund that is

00:25:16.600 not ideologically captured for the intellectually active in our society. And so I don't actually

00:25:22.680 think that you're like, however your fund works, of course, it would need to work through some sort of

00:25:27.720 selective, weird mechanism, or it wouldn't appeal to this crowd. But I think that really more what

00:25:33.320 you're capturing here is just a hole in the market right now that was created by the current position.

00:25:39.640 You can say, why don't you guys in the Pernatalist Foundation fit that hole? It's because we are too

00:25:44.120 explicitly right leaning for somebody who wants to stay vanilla to donate to. That's why yours doesn't

00:25:51.880 directly compete with ours either. I hadn't quite put it in those words before or, but I think like

00:25:58.120 the way you just said things right now, like Malcolm, it all fits into place. I do think

00:26:01.640 there's a lot of things. I think I'd probably disagree with you on the like causes of like

00:26:06.120 why the EA movement is the way it is. But I like roughly agree with your like assessment. It is

00:26:09.480 the case that like, I think there's lots of like really smart, agentic, like cool people who are

00:26:13.320 just looking at what the EA movement is right now and be like, that's not exactly the place for me.

00:26:16.920 And I would very much like Manifon to be the place where like they come and try to work on the 1.00

00:26:20.440 cool projects.

00:26:20.920 Well, I like that too. It seems like one of the most common elements of someone who's

00:26:26.440 associated with effective altruism is that they first very vehemently insist that they're not

00:26:30.600 effective altruists. And so there's this kind of need for a community and affiliation, but there's

00:26:37.080 not yet one that seems to adequately represent things. And I, what I like about Manifold associated

00:26:42.600 projects and events and things is that they're very much for, they're, they're independently driven.

00:26:48.600 They're in this case, we're looking at largely crowdsourced grants, which is really cool.

00:26:53.960 And I know we have to wrap up soon, but I didn't want to ask like how the mechanics work. So if

00:26:59.400 someone is interested in once this goes live, and I'd love a timeline from you on that too,

00:27:03.880 if possible, putting their project on this, how does it work? Is there a threshold that has to be

00:27:09.400 met before they could get a grant? And do you think it's going to end up just being kind of an AI

00:27:14.520 safety platform? Because that's something I worry about with all EA adjacent grant making platforms.

00:27:20.040 Absolutely. So to answer your question one, it's already live and it's actually been live for a

00:27:23.800 year and a half. We've already moved about a couple of million dollars, I think about

00:27:28.680 two million dollars worth of like grants to date. How it works, the most basic version is anyone can

00:27:34.360 come on and submit an application for like any project that they want to. We have a lot of AI safety

00:27:39.880 products, but we're interested in variety. For example, Lumina, the like we funded, we were one

00:27:44.600 of the like earliest funders for Lumina. And that was as a result of them applying on our platform.

00:27:49.160 And I think that's actually how Aaron, actually that's not true. Aaron was originally a investor

00:27:53.480 in Manifold as well. So, and sometimes like this, like people who are interested in like similar things

00:27:57.400 get to know each other already, but anyways, we're interested in finding things like Lumina

00:28:00.680 probiotics and a lot of other cool, like techie. I would love to find like somewhat more like

00:28:04.760 pronatalist like initiatives. They don't really apply for Manifold. So hopefully some of your listeners

00:28:08.280 will look at this and think, oh, so you can go to manifund.org, M-A-N-I-F-U-N-D.org, 0.87

00:28:12.920 to check it out, look at some of the existing applications and apply for funding. So again,

00:28:17.800 go for it. I was going to say, there was actually a number that got funded recently

00:28:21.480 and they were all out of the Scott Alexander Fund. That's right. And that was a little bit

00:28:26.440 different. We have a two standard grant. One was direct grants, which is the more typical 501c3

00:28:30.440 funding. Another are impact certificates. Impact certificates, I'm not sure if you're familiar

00:28:34.280 with or your audience is they're like equity for charitable projects. A very rough sketch is that

00:28:38.840 somebody might put up like a large prize, let's say a hundred thousand dollars for the best

00:28:42.360 pronatalist products. Maybe if you want to do a pronatalist impact search to be awarded at the

00:28:45.640 end of 2024. And then in the meantime, somebody can put up a project saying, I'm going to work on this

00:28:50.040 project. I think it has a good chance of winning. If you think, if you agree, my project has a good

00:28:53.960 chance of winning, you can invest. I will sell you 20% of my project for a thousand dollars. And then if I

00:28:58.680 end up winning $5,000 or more, your investment will have made it like a return on investment. That's like

00:29:02.920 roughly an impact certificate. It's a separate out the, like assessing whether the project was

00:29:07.560 good, which is done at the end of the year to the upfront funding, the job of something like

00:29:11.080 an angel investor, as opposed to a grant maker. That's a system that we ran for Scott Alexander

00:29:14.840 on our platform. And it's like a concept that we're very excited about, which I don't think

00:29:19.160 I'll go into more detail now, but that's a impact certificate. I love that. That's super cool.

00:29:24.280 Yeah, that is super cool. And if you are looking for people to be like experts, like you said,

00:29:28.200 you had the AI experts. If you want pronatalist people to help distribute dollars on the platform,

00:29:32.680 let us know. And we're happy to take those roles. Absolutely.

00:29:37.000 Oh, this is really cool. Okay. Where should people go if they want to register for Manifest

00:29:42.200 while there's still time? There is still time. It is manifest.is is the website. You can go there,

00:29:47.960 check out who's coming to speak. We'll have a schedule up, like probably in the next couple of

00:29:51.800 weeks. You can buy your tickets now and save a hundred dollars. You'll, it'll be a great time.

00:29:55.160 And Manifest is not just like the two and a half day conference that was last year. Manifest,

00:29:58.840 beyond the like two and a half day conference, there's also a summer camp, a week long, like

00:30:02.760 people like us just hanging out and like working by day and talking with each other that night.

00:30:06.600 And then it starts with a two and a half day, like unconference. That's like mostly just like

00:30:10.360 online bloggers. I don't know if you two are going to be attending the rest of those.

00:30:13.720 Less online, right? Yeah. Alas, no. It's hard to get away from the kids that long.

00:30:17.800 Yeah.

00:30:18.840 Yeah.

00:30:19.320 I think we're offering childcare. It's a thing for less online summer camp and Manifest itself.

00:30:26.920 So in case you two want to bring your kids, I would love to meet your kids, but I don't know

00:30:30.760 if that's like practical for you two. I'd be, we're getting close to the stage where

00:30:34.760 we might start bringing our oldest to things, but I don't think we're going to this time,

00:30:37.960 probably next year, because I do want them to, as they are developing to be able to go,

00:30:43.240 I actually think it'd be really fun. Like when they hit seven or so, and they can talk

00:30:48.520 to be giving speeches at some events like this. Um, it would be not like a speech,

00:30:54.200 but like an audience questioning. Cause I think being able to interact with the mind of a young

00:30:59.480 person growing up in the next generation can provide people with a perspective that cannot

00:31:05.320 be easily gained from other avenues in our society right now.

00:31:10.120 Yeah. There's actually a conference or retreat series called Renaissance weekend that was first

00:31:14.200 popularized because the Clintons attended it back in like the Clinton era. And it had,

00:31:20.040 it was always very family. It was a very pro natalist, very family oriented, and it was

00:31:24.040 oriented invite only focused more on elite intellectuals. And they had a kid portion of

00:31:29.880 it where they did have childcare. They'd have a camp Renaissance thing that went on and both luminaries

00:31:35.800 from the main events would come out and do sessions for the kids, but also kids were

00:31:39.960 encouraged to be involved in not just attending.

00:31:42.920 One of the most popular things was all the kids would get together and they would, uh,

00:31:47.960 prep for a speech they were going to give as a group. And then they would be grilled by

00:31:51.960 famous people. And actually, uh, my responses were so good that Bill Clinton did an entire speech

00:31:57.640 just about me at one of the Renaissance weekends saying that if this is what the future is going to

00:32:02.440 be, our country is going to be great. If we have more people like this, but the

00:32:07.000 first ever Malcolm Collins.

00:32:08.680 The important thing about this is that it helps kids like Malcolm normalize that they can aspire

00:32:14.680 to be like presidents. They can aspire to be like these leaders, these people who start these amazing

00:32:19.720 startups and who do these incredible technical things and who are in biotech and AI and all these

00:32:24.040 other. So I really love that you already are doing childcare. I love that you're doing that. And I strongly

00:32:28.440 encourage you to continue because you will produce kids who end up like Malcolm, who have the balls 0.87

00:32:33.560 to do stuff that other people aren't willing to do. It has been fantastic catching up with you.

00:32:40.680 And I hope we draw some traffic to this event and we'll meet some fans when we go this time.

00:32:45.320 Yeah, exactly. So everyone, please remember to check out you basically now, if you don't know about

00:32:49.720 these things already have three amazing things to check out, not just manifest, which is happening

00:32:53.960 2024, June 7th to June 9th. So hopefully you see us there in Berkeley. That's in the Bay Area.

00:33:01.000 It's 30 minutes outside of San Francisco.

00:33:02.840 One of the big group houses.

00:33:04.760 Not group house. It's on this like sprawling campus. It's absolutely gorgeous and super modern

00:33:08.760 with crazy cool furniture and all these cool niches.

00:33:11.880 That's what the classes often look like.

00:33:13.320 Oh, not the ones I was.

00:33:14.920 This one, yeah. Lighthaven campus is amazing. And we're so grateful to be able to host it there again.

00:33:19.880 Yeah, I've never really seen a place quite like Lighthaven before. It's like Never Neverland,

00:33:23.800 Meets Startup World.

00:33:24.680 The Bay Area.

00:33:25.960 Malcolm.

00:33:26.360 You never socialized in the Bay Area. I do not think this is true.

00:33:29.080 Yeah, I don't think that's true. I grew up in the Bay Area, Malcolm. I don't know what you're...

00:33:31.960 You weren't invited to all the crazy rationalist parties, Simone.

00:33:34.840 Maybe not.

00:33:35.480 This is the thing.

00:33:35.960 I missed some kind of golden age that only Malcolm had access to.

00:33:40.040 This is true though. I actually did. So that is one thing. The other is Manifold,

00:33:43.480 obviously incredible prediction market and the more fun one because you actually can do the fun stuff.

00:33:47.960 And I can say that playing around with the other prediction markets, I did,

00:33:51.320 turned off by the fact that a lot of fun, weird stuff couldn't be there and that it felt really

00:33:55.640 structured and more gated. Whereas Manifold feels more open and fun and playful. And then,

00:34:00.120 of course, also Manifold. Great place to both look at cool philanthropic projects,

00:34:05.320 but also contribute to them and maybe get contributed to. So Austin, thank you so much for

00:34:10.040 your work, all the initiative you're taking. Can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks. And yeah,

00:34:13.640 can't wait to see hopefully some of the people following this podcast as well.

00:34:16.520 Thank you so much for having me on. It was great getting to chat with you. I'll see you at MathFest.

00:34:20.280 Yeah. Have a spectacular day.

00:34:22.760 Okay. Ending recording.

Based Camp - May 13, 2024

Why You Can Not Allow Nerds to Congregate with Austin Chen

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