EVN General Support Application

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Elizabeth Van Nostrand

ActiveGrant

$50,000raised

$233,684funding goal

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Project summary

General support for blogger Elizabeth Van Nostrand. (acesounderglass.com).

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Enable Elizabeth to work on public-good producing projects of her choosing, without worrying about per-project fundraising.
Fund investments in capacity such as a writing tutor or a deeper studies on particular topics..

In general the end product of these projects are blog posts, however they may also include private conversations with decision makers. Projects may be mothballed if they prove to be infohazards.

Donors will achieve this by giving me a source of income not dependent on particular output.

How will this funding be used?

Projects of Elizabeth’s choosing over the coming months. .

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Elizabeth has been writing at acesounderglass.com for 10 years. Projects in the last year include:

Prophylactics against upper respiratory infections
What went wrong with Effective Altruism?
Chaos theory as a case study in paradigm development

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Elizabeth has another multi-month illness and is unable to work for months.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

Monthly: I have a patreon that pays ~$400/post (and will likely soon convert to $400-$800/month).

September 2024: $646 from small donors for general support

April 2024: $35k follow up grant on vegan nutrition and epistemics (Lightspeed)

April 2024: $3k follow up grant on development of scientific paradigms (Lightspeed)

This includes only altruistic funding and general purpose support, not client work.

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Elizabeth Van Nostrand

9 months ago

Progress update

What progress have you made since your last update?

Work funded with this grant:
- extended my work on chaos theory, which would otherwise have run out of money in August (https://acesounderglass.com/2024/09/20/applications-of-chaos-saying-no-with-hastings-greer/ , https://acesounderglass.com/2024/11/01/11924/)
- my vo2max research was covered by a client, however tutoring on the write up was covered by this grant (https://acesounderglass.com/2025/03/09/11954/)
- luck based medicine updates (https://acesounderglass.com/2025/04/11/journal-of-null-results-ezmelt-sublingual-vitamins/, including a prediction market on the outcome, https://acesounderglass.com/2024/12/01/luck-based-medicine-no-good-very-bad-winter-cured-my-hypothyroidism/ )
- unpublished drafts on cults, abusive relationships, and high investment groups
- AI research tool comparisons: https://acesounderglass.com/2024/10/04/ai-research-assistants-competition-2024q3-tie-between-elicit-and-you-com/

What are your next steps?

Continue with luck based medicine, vulnerability budget, and AI work

Is there anything others could help you with?

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Elizabeth Van Nostrand

9 months ago

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Elizabeth Van Nostrand

about 1 year ago

Action Item 1: fund rewards for crowdsourcing information on H5N1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bFvEpE4atK4pPEirx/correct-my-h5n1-research-usdreward

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Elizabeth Van Nostrand

9 months ago

This eventually led to https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/son5eEGymm4h856J9/estimating-the-benefits-of-a-new-flu-drug-bxm

Austin Chen

about 1 year ago

Approving this grant! Elizabeth has a track record of producing great, prosocial research (such as her analysis on Covid) and I'm excited to see what she works on with this larger runway.

Austin Chen

about 1 year ago

Note: I asked Elizabeth if she'd be comfortable contributing back 5% of this grant directly to Manifund as a fiscal sponsorship fee, which she agreed to; thanks!

(I'm currently thinking that the Manifund general policy should be to request 5% fiscal sponsorship fee from donors giving a total of $50k+. This reduces transaction costs for small grants, lines up with what how we've operated historically, and allows Manifund charge those who are being helped most re: 501c3 tax deduction. Of course, it's a bit awkward to impose a specific donation cliff -- I don't want to encourage folks to stop donating at $49k -- but I think it's a reasonably simple policy to work with for now.)