Over time FHI faced increasing administrative headwinds within the Faculty of Philosophy (the Institute’s organizational home). Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring. In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy decided that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed. On 16 April 2024, the Institute was closed down.
Sound like Oxford increasingly did not want anything to do with them.
edit: Here’s a 94 page “final report” that seems more geared towards a rationalist audience.
Wonder what this was about:
Why we failed
[…]
There also needs to be an understanding of how to communicate across organizational communities.
When epistemic and communicative practices diverge too much, misunderstandings proliferate. Several
times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we
misunderstood how the message would be received. Finding friendly local translators and bridgebuilders
is important.
FHI was basically funded by one guy, James Martin - a computer millionaire. (His Wikipedia article misses the source of his wealth, but he owned a private island and the Oxford Martin School donation was the largest single donation in Oxford University’s history.) He died in 2013. Its days were numbered at that point. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/about/founder/
Why we failed: we tried explaining why everyone else was wrong and we were right, but somehow it didn’t work. We would have needed outsiders who could have translated our obviously correct explanations to the other outsiders, then it totally would have worked. But our for hire signs with “can you talk stupid?” was misunderstood and defaced. Clearly a more stealthy tactic was needed.
Sound like Oxford increasingly did not want anything to do with them.
edit: Here’s a 94 page “final report” that seems more geared towards a rationalist audience.
Wonder what this was about:
everything in that “why we failed” breakdown is a work of art each to itself. babbie’s first interaction with the real world each and every one of 'em
FHI was basically funded by one guy, James Martin - a computer millionaire. (His Wikipedia article misses the source of his wealth, but he owned a private island and the Oxford Martin School donation was the largest single donation in Oxford University’s history.) He died in 2013. Its days were numbered at that point. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/about/founder/
remember that LessWrong used to be a joint SIAI (as was) and FHI project, with FHI supplying the academic cover
I would guess it likely has a bit more cover/funding these days
but I was wondering the other day whether the setup was in any way resilient…
well now LW/MIRI runs on ethereum
FHI didn’t seem to manage to tap into that tho
not quite entirely what I had in mind, but it will be interesting to see what happens with that down the way as well
Yeah it’s a bit of a relief to see everyone around him apparently knew he was a hack. Might have wanted to act on it sooner though!!
my Perverse Incentives Rule Everything Around Me shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by…
Why we failed: we tried explaining why everyone else was wrong and we were right, but somehow it didn’t work. We would have needed outsiders who could have translated our obviously correct explanations to the other outsiders, then it totally would have worked. But our for hire signs with “can you talk stupid?” was misunderstood and defaced. Clearly a more stealthy tactic was needed.