In this episode of our podcast, Timothy Telleen-Lawton and I talk to Oliver Habryka of Lightcone Infrastructure about his thoughts on the Open Philanthropy Project, which he believes has become stifled by the PR demands of its primary funder, Good Ventures.

Oliver's main claim is that around mid 2023 or early 2024, Good Ventures founder Dustin Moskovitz became more concerned about his reputation, and this put a straight jacket over what Open Phil could fund. Moreover it was not enough for a project to be good and pose low reputational risk; it had to be obviously low reputational risk, because OP employees didn’t have enough communication with Good Ventures to pitch exceptions. According to Habryka.

That's a big caveat. This podcast is pretty one sided, which none of us are happy about (Habryka included). We of course invited OpenPhil to send a representative to record their own [...]

---

First published:
April 29th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vpjDibeusXvQq4TCu/bandwidth-rules-everything-around-me-oliver-habryka-on

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Bandwidth Rules Everything Around Me: Oliver Habryka on OpenPhil and GoodVentures” by Elizabeth

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Bandwidth Rules Everything Around Me: Oliver Habryka on OpenPhil and GoodVentures” by Elizabeth