This is the closing part of ACX Grants. Projects that I couldn’t fully fund myself were invited to submit a brief description so I could at least give them free advertising here. You can look them over and decide if any seem worth donating your money, time, or some other resource to.

I’ve removed obvious trolls, a few for-profit businesses without charitable value who tried to sneak in under the radar, and a few that violated my sensibilities for one or another reason. I have not removed projects just because they’re terrible, useless, or definitely won’t work. My listing here isn’t necessarily an endorsement; caveat lector.

Still, some of them are good projects and deserve more attention than I was able to give them. Many applicants said they’d hang around the comments section here, so if you have any questions, ask!

(bolded titles are my summaries and some of them might not be accurate or endorsed by the applicant)

When you’re done with these, you can now find the second half of the list here.

*#1: A Movement To Fight Attention Hijacking
** It’s my assertion that we need to draw people’s attention to the methods marketers use to get us to buy stuff – to point out the techniques used in digital and physical environments. The trappings of an advanced economy have led us to create some persuasive methods of engagement. And while these have been used to subliminally guide us towards purchases, by drawing attention to them as a phenomenon, we can unlock new ways to use them for the greater good – for educational purposes, to encourage positive behaviours, for healthcare, mental wellbeing, and other challenges we face as part of what, Alvin and Heidi Toffler refer to as ‘the Third Wave’ of development. Won’t that denigrate the intent behind these techniques? Well… let’s be fair – advertisers have had it good for a long time. That said, does the fact we know what television commercials or online ads are trying to do, make us buy less stuff? Nope. While drawing attention certainly makes us more aware of the purpose of the medium used, it also leads us to greater transparency and an increased opportunity to mix media – for any purpose. Could the UI that made Facebook addictive be used to promote healthy eating? Could we re-engineer Gruen transfer for hospital appointments? Can Kansei design principles remove racial bias? I want to kickstart a movement to test these ideas out. A movement called *punktoj Anyone game? Ping me: dave.barton@tbc.wtf

**#2: Understand The Texture Of Pain
** The project consists of writing software to edit textures in real-time in a browser using texture synthesis techniques, exploring ways of narrowing the state-space, and funding user testing to determine the usefulness of the method. We would like to demonstrate as a proof of concept how different medical conditions which have similar symptomatologies at the surface-level (e.g. “stabbing pain in shoulder”) show up as recognizably different textures when visualized with this technique. We think this will significantly contribute to foundational research on pain with applications for medical diagnosis, as well as pain management and treatment. We also think that these visualizations will advance our understanding of the true meaning of pain scales: we will be collecting self-reported pain levels in reference to clinically-used scales and correlating them to the properties of the visualized pains. For example, we may find that a certain pain described as “2/10” could match a visualization of 10 pin-pricks per second, while a pain of the same type described as “3/10” could match 50 pin-pricks/s, and a “4/10” pain could match 250 pin-pricks/s, and so on. I.e. these visualizations might provide a very grounded + transparent way to show that pain scales are non-linear, and possibly logarithmic (Gómez-Emilsson, 2019, see: https://tinyurl.com/ha834tpm) in nature. See full proposal here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zLWyxhOMNqHp8tGqOAK2aABHOXpMNj_tmQbIy8Fdlbk/edit?usp=sharing

**#3: Acoustics Of Historical Speeches
** I use acoustic simulation to investigate historical accounts of speeches to large numbers of people (see Benjamin Franklin’s experiment on George Whitefield’s audible range for an example). This requires visiting sites of speeches to take geometric and sound pressure measurements, and some archival research for background on the sites. Once I have this information I can build a computer acoustic simulation with my own software setup. I’ve already done this for Whitefield, Julius Caesar, and Elizabeth I. I’m now trying to raise $10,000 for site visits for Demosthenes at the Pnyx in Athens, Henry V at Agincourt (“Band of Brothers” speech), and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Because of the project is so interdisciplinary, it’s hard to find funding through standard channels. If you or anyone else is interested in funding science to learn more about history, email me at boren@american.edu.

**#4: Handbook For Making Friends In The Post-College Environment
** Hi! I’m bbqturtle. When moving to a new city, you are often confronted with loneliness. When graduating from college and surrounded by unstructured environments to meet new people, you are often confronted with loneliness. I recently transplanted cities 3 times and each time discovered 3-4 different methods of gathering communities. In Boston I have discovered the largest and best solution to this problem. I am working to distill a “best practices for making friends and growing communities in the post-college environment”. The outline and content theory is complete, bit lacking final touches and an editor. It is essentially an instruction manual and handbook to problem solve rough situations in the way best for the community. I do not have much bandwidth for this project because I do not have any audience. If this is a project that would actually interest you, please send a token Bitcoin amount to 39jcUUkQb7QqUANFXQ5ZGC4b4YvFBRFxou . Or email me at josh (underscore symbol) advance@yahoo.com. If more than 50 people are interested, I will prioritize this by end of month. If I receive more than $200, I will hire an editor to review it. If nobody is interested I may abandon the project. Thank you for your consideration!

*#5: YIMBY Explainer Video On Migration Chains
** I’m Michael Wiebe, and I will make a YIMBY explainer video on migration chains, to show how even expensive new apartments can improve housing affordability for everyone. The basic idea: A moves into a newly built apartment, B moves into A’s old house, C moves into B’s old house, which frees up affordable housing for D in a poorer neighborhood. The video will put a human face on the process, by interviewing everyone in a chain, and showing how real people in low-income neighborhoods benefit from new market-rate apartments. For example, we could show a poor college student who benefits from a vacancy in a studio apartment near their university, and trace that vacancy to the construction of a market-rate apartment building. The idea of migration chains is new, and is a big improvement over a simple supply and demand model, which NIMBYs don’t trust anyway. This model has an intuitive mechanism, where people moving *into new housing are also moving out of old housing. Since the mechanism is general and applies everywhere, promoting this idea is high-leverage: it can be used to support YIMBY activism all around the world. I’m a PhD economist and can summarize the research (eg. see here). The video will be produced by urbanist youtube channel About Here, who budgets $5000 per video. We’ll also need $1000 to buy food to incentivize volunteers to trace out a complete chain. Please contact me at maswiebe@gmail.com.

#6: System Dynamics Simulator
I’m Oleksandr Nikitin, and I want to build a system dynamics simulator. Enable independent researchers to simulate, forecast, and visualize metabolic pathways, epidemic spread, mass transit, ecology, macroeconomics, etc. Show, don’t tell. Without code. Think Airtable+Vensim+Roam+Kumu, integrated and working offline. Why offline? Why simulate? Why a new tool? Complex systems must be simulated. You miss emergent phenomena if you analyze parts separately or simplify the details. Offline sets you free from distractions and groupthink. Free to make your own breakthroughs. Take your references, notes and data with you, dive deep, then return with the verified, reproducible, interactive model. Research can take years. Tools should outlast devices and app stores. And it must be fast. Isn’t it insane for a productivity tool to make you wait? I spent years on prototypes and algorithms, tested in companies since 2013, and now I want to put these experiments together. Not as a startup. As a tool accessible to everyone. The plan: create a community of curious inquisitive makers, empower them with a small fast and robust core app, iterate and grow together, augment the human intelligence even more, and understand the world. I seek funding to focus on this project full-time, for two years. To launch and to guide people to the finished research. Sounds inspiring? Worth the money? Want more details? Ping me at oleksandr@tvori.info. Also see https://cortex.substack.com/

**#7: Science Demonstrations In Nepal
** I am Binod Rajbhandari and currently a Teaching Postdoc at Texas Tech University. I will teach at university for 9 months and this summer, I am very interested on doing a science demonstration at mostly remote part of Nepal. I have volunteered in science communication in different middle and high schools in Lubbock, TX. The student were always intrigued by the musical acoustic and some astronomy demos. I think many schools in Nepal excluding some rich schools do not have a proper science classes. I think even if I can visit 50-70 schools during the summer I can inspire at least few students in Nepal to become future scientist with 7000-10000 of ACX grant. I could have asked ACX for a research grant for the summer, but inspiring a kid from mountainous part of Nepal might outweighs the other in social contributions. [You can reach me at binodrb43@gmail.com]

**#8: Alternative Solar Power Plants
** I am developing an alternative approach to solar-thermal power plants: I want to use lenses rather than mirrors to concentrate sunlight. Reasons why lenses might be better than mirrors: 1) More robust, easier to maintain, more self-contained. 2) Easier / cheaper to mass-produce at the extreme scale needed to transition society away from fossil fuels. 3) Will be possible to capture the light into optical fibers which will make it easier to transport from the collection field to the centralized hub where it will be utilized. I wrote my own software to design the lens, which will be a Fresnel lens that has two layers that make it an achromatic doublet. It will be very difficult and cost several hundred thousand dollars to tool the plastic injection mold to produce these lenses. Tooling the mold is the critical, make-or-break stage of this project. I am not sure if it is even possible to machine the mold accurately enough, or to counteract the lens warping as it cools. But if we can do this then it will be possible to mass-produce these lenses far more cheaply than solar panels or mirrors, and once the lens is manufactured we can use existing technology for the other parts of the plant. I am looking for somebody to help with the injection molding, and somebody who can help with funding the project, which will cost several hundred thousand dollars. Email me at ecpoppenheimer@gmail.com

**#9: Help Research Teams Improve Software Quality
** I’m Victor Engmark, and I’m looking for funding to help research teams improve their software quality. Researchers have often been criticized for producing broken and unusable software, and improving the quality is key to both trust and reproducibility. I’ve worked as a software developer for 18 years, with a focus on quality assurance. I will need to spend at least a few weeks per project. This is typically the minimum amount of time it takes to set up a reasonable process, teach the baseline techniques, and hand over the maintenance. If you can help, please contact victor@engmark.name.

**#10: Create A “Tech Tree” With Foresight Institute
** The new Neurotechnology branch of the Foresight Institute is seeking funding and publicity for the making of a ‘tech tree’. A tech tree will synthesize information in a hierarchical step-by-step format from all domain experts in brain related technologies (neuronal imaging, brain therapies, brain-computer interfaces, whole brain emulation), give a current state of the industry and envision step-by-step goals for current researchers, funders and leaders to access. [You can find a 4 minute post explaining tech trees at https://foresight.pub/techtreepost, a 4 minute tech tree example at https://fsnone-bb4c.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-11-15-Longevity-Tech-Tree-Whitepaper.pdf, and our youtube at https://www.youtube.com/c/ForesightInstitute. Check our our hackathon to build a crowdsourcing/funding app - see https://mapsmap.devpost.com, or consider funding us at https://foresight.org/about-us/our-mission/.]

**#11: Preserve And Categorize Web Fiction
** I’m Makin, and I’m looking for a tiny amount of funding to save the world of web fiction from the ravages of time, with a focus on rational/ist/EA fiction. So much of the history of the genre is hard to reach, and I can put it up for permanent categorization, linking and eventual mirroring on a website. All I need is money to keep DigitalOcean instances up for a long, LONG time, though I’m also looking at IPFS as an option (and if you’re aware of any better fits, I welcome advice!). My last project was Homestuck.net, a pretty complete archive of the best works of the Homestuck fandom, which has taught me the necessary steps to archive and display things for future humans to use long-term. I also started the initiative to revamp the r/rational wiki so it was actually usable. If my archival project sounds good to you, I’m looking for yearly Patreon pledges at patreon.com/makin. You can reach me at makin@protonmail.com if a funny-looking Patreon is not an option or want more details about how your money will be used.

**#12: Search Engine To Analyze Research Findings
** inlitro is a web-based search engine to analyze research findings and extract new insights across millions of life science research papers. Tyler Cowen and Scott think this is no longer a good/feasible idea. I think the opposite. Probably good to get in touch with them/check their assumptions before reaching out via the email on inlitro.com.

**#13: Scholarships In Ethiopia
** The non-profit Omo Valley Research Project provides scholarships for indigenous students from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, home to some of the most traditional groups on earth, most of whom typically live in small-scale subsistence communities. Less than 1% of members of the Omo Valley have received any formal education but increased development is opening up new opportunities for education as well as transforming their livelihoods. For students who start school, attendance after Grade 5 is often financially out of reach and a vocational college or university impossible. Supporting education for those who desire it equips community members to fully participate in the opportunities generated through development, gives them the ability to maintain a degree of cultural autonomy, and negotiate with the governmental and market-based organizations that are transforming their lives. Finally, many students yearn to learn about the world, to learn history, science, and math. Giving these students the ability to pursue their dreams is the greatest investment in human capital I know of. We support secondary, university, and vocational education through direct contributions for tuition or cost of living expenses. The students we support are all from traditional nomadic pastoralist communities including the Hamar and Nyangatom ethnic groups. [Email us at] Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com [or check out our website at] omovalleyresearchproject.org/

**#14: Survey On Embryo Selection
** I would like to design and conduct a survey akin to the moral machine project, but for embryo selection rather than self-driving cars. The idea is to glean the informed preferences of parents over the kinds of traits they want their children to have. This is already a challenge, and the survey would need to be carefully worded to avoid framing effects, and other psychological biases. But the bigger challenge, and my interest in the project, is that parents’ preferences will largely depend on the preferences over traits that other parents have. As I wrote about in my book Creating Future People, there is a range of traits in which what is individually rational is partly a function of what other parents are expected to choose, and in which what is individually rational could diverge from what is socially optimal. Survey answers could, in principle, be fed into an AI to help refine the preferences parents exhibit over which embryos to implant. This information would be enormously valuable in for parents and fertility clinics. To the extent that the traits of future people influence the welfare of the entire world, embryo selection done well – guided by accurate information rather than guesswork – could be one of the most important forms of “effective altruism” the world has ever seen. [Email jonathan.anomaly@protonmail.com]

**#15: Book Discovery Startup
** Shepherd.com is a bootstrapped startup working to reimagine book discovery online. We help readers find books in new and unique ways while helping authors share their passion and expertise (for example Steven Pinker shared 5 of his favorites on rationality: https://shepherd.com/best-books/rationality). Social-media algorithms reinforce existing worldviews and propagate simplistic solutions. A book is one of the best ways to walk in someone else’s shoes and expose the hidden complexities that surround us. I want Shepherd to promote soft culture values that will benefit global development. How can we instill critical thinking and meritocracy as values in future generations? What other values create a better world? Currently, I am funding this project myself, but I am interested in grants or donations. I am also thinking about doing a crowdfunding campaign later this year. If you have any advice on successful crowdfunding please contact me at ben@shepherd.com. Or, reach out if you want to talk books, soft culture values, or anything around this.

#16:[removed]

**#17: Algorithms To Select The Best Systematic Review
** Navigating the expanding body of research literature is an increasing problem. Global research output is growing rapidly, as is the number of systematic reviews being produced. Systematically developed reviews (called ‘systematic reviews’ [SRs]) provide the highest quality evidence that is needed to inform clinical and public health recommendations. A SR is a synthesis of all the medical literature on a given topic. It is estimated that global scientific publications double every nine years, and for SRs the situation is more marked. For example 25,000 SRs are added to the database Epistemonikos annually. With the explosion of SRs comes an epidemic of multiple SRs published on the same topic. One study found 24 SRs on vitamin D supplements for preventing bone fractures, all with conflicting results owing to different methods. When encountering multiple reviews on the same question, clinicians may be confused and unable to formulate a conclusive answer to their patient’s question. We aim to develop an automated algorithm which will help select the best SR amongst several on the same question. Our algorithm will have significant impact and application worldwide to every health field. We, as an academic group of methodologists and clinicians (primary contact carole.lunny@ubc.ca), would love to meet with anyone interested in partnering or funding our multi-year project. Our project plan can be found at https://osf.io/nbcta/?view_only=6b06b3f490c04ba0856f4cf95fcfd5ac

**#18: Philanthropic Messaging Strategies Using Evolutionary Ideas
** I’m Ro Gupta. Inspired initially by https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768/, I’d like to commission research that explores if and how Kin Selection and Hamilton’s Rule [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection#Hamilton%27s_rule] can be applied in mass communications for altruistic giving of humans in modern times. The goal is to uncover alternative messaging strategies that help subjects transcend blood-thicker-than-water hardwiring, based on underlying evolutionary biology theory – e.g. kin recognition, kin altruism – that ultimately serves to increase wealthy countries’ proportion of altruistic giving to less genetically familiar yet higher need/ impact populations, e.g. those of the Global South. [Estimates suggest around 5% of US giving currently goes to international causes.] I believe I have the right combination of academic, professional, NGO and global experience [https://www.linkedin.com/in/guptaro] to lead this, and access to a high quality network of research and communications experts to match grants to. I estimate a robust synthesis of existing work could be done for the low tens of thousands of USD, while a primary research phase one could be substantively scoped for the high tens to one hundred thousand USD. If of interest to be a part of this as a researcher, funder or general thought partner, please get in touch: http://www.rocrastination.com/contact/.

**#19: Software For Spaced Repetition And Other Education Tech
** With well-designed education technology, the task of understanding and memorizing vast, complicated, and important subjects, can be rendered trivial in comparison to conventional ways of learning. I’m seeking funding to create AnkiHub, software for facilitating application of evidence based learning strategies. As a software engineer who has been working closely with medical students to advance the use of ed tech in medical schools (such as the spaced repetition software, Anki) I am uniquely positioned to bring this project to success. The absence of truly effective and accessible accelerated learning tools is a bottleneck preventing millions of would be do-gooders from pursuing high impact careers like medicine and engineering. Because these careers are incredibly rigorous, they select for specific personality types, thereby weeding out those who would make incredible researchers, for example, but assume they aren’t smart enough or disciplined enough. AnkiHub will empower students by democratizing accelerated learning and potentiating the ever growing wealth of quality, free, educational resources. The goal of AnkiHub is to help create a world in which anybody who wants to can become a scientist, doctor, engineer, etc, (including those in the developing world, as this technology can be compatible with cheap devices). The science of learning, memory, and performance psychology is solid; AnkiHub can fulfill the need of leveraging the insights from the literature with ease. [If you want to help, email inbox.asanchez@gmail.com]

**#20: Test Charity Pitch Strategies
** We will conduct an intervention competition to test which strategies are most effective in convincing people to donate to an effective cause. We (Bastian Jaeger, Josh Lewis, and Noah Costelo) are part of a recently formed team that advises EA organizations on how they can attract more donations. There is little high-quality research on this topic and it is unclear which marketing approaches work best or should be trialed in the field. We will conduct a large-scale experiment to fill this gap. First, we will challenge academics and members of the EA community to submit an intervention that is most effective in generating donations for an effective charity. Next, we will distribute a survey among the participating teams and the EA community in which people are asked to predict the effectiveness of each intervention that was submitted. Finally, we will select the most promising interventions and test their effectiveness in a high-powered, pre-registered, and incentivized experiment. The study will generate actionable insights for various EA organizations looking to optimize their marketing strategy and attract more donations. The survey data will also allow us to test how accurate people are in forecasting the effectiveness of different strategies, by comparing forecasted with actual effectiveness. All data will be made openly available. See https://osf.io/adbwv/ for a more detailed description and you can contact me via b.jaeger@vu.nl.

**#21: Thwart Darknet Murder Plots
** I’m a darknet vigilante hacker, intercepting serious murder plots another the world through a back door into a dark web hitman scam website. Contacting people about their lives being in danger is a legal and ethical minefield, as is working with law enforcement and the media to bring about investigations and arrests. Sometimes people are already dead :( I’m looking to secure funding to: hire more journalists around the world to investigate these murder plots, accelerate software development of the investigation data analysis platform, cover legal costs, and more broadly professionalize the operation into a full blown charitable international investigative operation. Contact through https://pirate.london/

**#22: Support Zohar Atkins’ Podcast
** I’m Zohar Atkins (Rabbi, Poet, Rhodes Scholar, Emergent Ventures Winner, and Founder of Etz Hasadeh). I’m seeking $100,000 to support my new podcast, Meditations with Zohar, which I plan to make into a weekly thing over the course of many years. The show needs patronage to support production and editing costs, and, if this is to be a weekly endeavor, my time. The show features a series of conversations with eclectic thinkers, doers, and artists I admire, with a focus on the intersection of philosophy, religion, theology, and personal principles for life. I have 10 guests already signed up and scheduled, and have recorded 3 episodes, including with Noah Feldman, Sheila Heti, and Teresa Bejan. Other guests include Tyler Cowen and Agnes Callard. The show will combine the love of learning of Tyler Cowen’s Conversations with Tyler and the personal, and sometimes existential touch of Krista Tippett’s on Being. The world needs high level content that is seeking, personal, and meaning-oriented. We need to talk about ideas in a way that is rigorous but also heartfelt, acknowledging our “skin in the game.” This endeavor is part of my larger project of bringing the study of great texts and ideas outside academia. See here for one example. Betting on the show is a bet on my attempt to strengthen culture through better discourse, better education, better thinking, and deeper self-understanding.

**#23: Financial Aid For Math Students
** Euler Circle is a mathematics institute dedicated to teaching college-level mathematics classes. We have taught most of the typical undergraduate math classes, including abstract algebra, complex analysis, algebraic geometry, and many more, as well as more unusual topics like combinatorial game theory, ergodic theory, and the mathematics of Euler. We are looking for funding to help with three things: 1) Financial aid for students who are unable to afford the tuition, 2) Hiring someone to develop more classes, especially an introductory class for students who are enthusiastic about mathematics but with little exposure beyond the school curriculum, and 3) Funding for students to attend conferences, especially those who have done research and are able to give talks. Please check out our website https://eulercircle.com/ for more information, and feel free to reach out to me (Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo, director of Euler Circle) at simon@eulercircle.com to discuss anything.

**#24: Wearable Tech For Improving Memory
** What if there were a simple piece of wearable tech. that could improve your memory by one item at the push of a button? What would you use it for? The ever-elusive names of people you just met? A friend’s birthday that you always seem to forget? Or perhaps an email address or phone number just long enough to jot it down? A one-item Improvement in memory would be a luxury for a working professional, but can be the difference between independence and dependence for those with objective impairments in memory, such as those affected by stroke or acquired brain injury. Normal declines in memory across the lifespan are also a significant source of anxiety for many healthy older adults, who worry about pathological cognitive decline and dementia. Memory On Hand is this simple piece of wearable tech., and we believe it can help augment memory for any wearer. Unlike currently available memory strategies and solutions like paper note pads or cell phone note taking apps, Memory On Hand can be used without disrupting the flow of the users daily life – and even mid-conversation. Stated simply, we think Memory On Hand can help a lot of people 1) remember more; 2) improve their confidence in their memory abilities; and 3) worry less about memory. We need your help in bringing this innovation to market. More info at www.memoryonhand.org

**#25: Scientific Research On Life History Models Of Mental Illness
** I’m J.D. Haltigan and I’m looking for funding to continue independent scientific research with my academic colleague investigating life-history models of psychopathology as they relate to the neurodevelopmental disorders of ASD, ADHD, and OCD. In order to optimally continue this work amidst the pandemic, funding that would allow us the potential of release from other academic duties (e.g., teaching, grant writing) would help advance this work which is pre-registered and described here: https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=2ea9vn. Currently I am seeking 5k USD and am happy to hold a Zoom call with anyone who who can provide funding or advice to provide further details on the project as well as my academic background and credentials. [You can reach me at jhaltiga@gmail.com]

**#26: Gamify Education Right
** I am Martijn Struijs, 4/5 years PhD student and TA in Computational Geometry at Eindhoven University of Technology. My proposal is to do gamification of education right. Most attempts at gamified education start with a fixed educational program and try to let a game meet these standards. That is a terrible way to design a game. Some games were not made for education, yet have been educational. An example is Pokemon Gold, which basically taught me English. You have experienced this personally as well, in your game in another world. These games have a low “skill floor”, i.e. it doesn’t take much skill to play the game, and also a high “skill ceiling”: playing it well requires great skill. These conditions are excellent for growth and learning. For an example of an exceptional yet not well known educational game, look at ZeroRanger. Many of the skills it teaches, mostly patience, focus, recovering from setbacks, and letting go, are transferable to other aspects of life. I believe that an educational tool should teach one thing well, whatever it is, and hope that the thing it teaches is useful (if not, throw it away and try again) I already have the resources and am developing such a game. What I don’t have is social science experience to test the effectiveness of the game. I could use your support here. Most of the development costs will be paying people, this is minimal at this stage. I thank you for your consideration. May we achieve enlightenment. [You can reach me at struijsmartijn@gmail.com]

**#27: Reverse-Engineer Dating Photo Quality
** I’m Loweren, a biology PhD doing photography and dating advice on the side. Some of you might know me from the Optimized Dating Discord server or the corresponding blog: https://optimizeddating.substack.com A keystone piece of advice in our community is to put more effort into making better dating photos, and to use the photo rating service Photofeeler to quantify the performance of each photo. This advice was helpful for many people, however there’s one problem: it’s not clear which factors make the photo perform better or worse on Photofeeler, as the developers are not keen on sharing the analytics. I will attempt to reverse-engineer the most important factors that make the dating photo look better by testing various factors (camera distance, focal length, aperture size, smile etc.) against the control photos using multiple subjects. I estimate that for each $80 in donations I can test 2 factors using 3 test subjects. I already have the first batch of photos ready to be tested. Results will be published on the blog as they come, which will hopefully help more people take better dating photos. My PayPal: https://paypal.me/seeelegance

**#28: A Tool For Reasoning With Information On Prediction Markets
** I am an AI researcher specialising in explainable AI and symbolic/hybrid methods, particularly argumentation - automating the ways humans argue and make decisions. One place of decision making that could greatly benefit from formal argumentative methods of exchanging and weighing arguments and counter-arguments to reach conclusions is (conditional) prediction markets. We need good computational tools for aggregating multiple conflicting conditional predictions into ranked decision alternatives, such as on changing car taxes based on market prices of electricity from renewables, supply of electric vehicles, and election results. I want to research and build a PoC tool for reasoning with information on prediction markets, one that collects multiple predictions and automatically evaluates them as arguments and counter-arguments, while allowing the human users to argue about the decisions for the sake of explainable reasoning. I need 50k+ USD for 5 months of full-time dedicated work (in UK - liable to pay tax) to push automated deicison making using (conditional) prediction markets. Ping me at kcyras@gmail.com if interested.

**#29: Present An Open-Source Python Library For Monte Carlo Techniques
** At the heart of all serious forecasting is a statistical tool known as Monte Carlo analysis. It allows you to quantify uncertainty by introducing randomness to the inputs of computational models and looking at the range of results. If you want a good example, you might recognize Monte Carlo techniques from Nate Silver’s election forecasts at 538. It’s been a gold-standard throughout my career in the space industry, and I can attest to how powerful it is - I’ve used it to successfully send a rocket to Mars. However, there aren’t any tools out there that make it easy for researchers to take their existing models and wrap a Monte Carlo around it. So, I wrote one. It’s an open-source python library which I’m calling “monaco”. I’m at a point in development where the basic feature set is complete and working well, and I’m looking to finish up the extended roadmap in the next few months. See the project github page for the code, examples, and a lot more info: https://github.com/scottshambaugh/monaco. I’m looking for $1000 to help me present version 1.0 of this tool to the scientific community at the 2022 SciPy Conference in Austin, TX this summer. That amount should cover conference fees, hotel, and airfare, and if you’re feeling generous I could use additional funds for some external monitors and cloud compute time. My name is Scott Shambaugh, and if you’re interested in helping fund this please email me at wsshambaugh AT gmail.com. Thank you!

**#30: Retrofit Coronary Stents With Soft Edge Caps
** Coronary stent insertion is a common procedure (~600k/year in the U.S.) to treat coronary artery disease, but despite dramatic improvements in stent design, an estimated 3-20% of patients experience a major adverse cardiac event within 5 years of insertion. These post-implantation complications, such as in-stent restenosis and late stent thrombosis, are typically linked to inflammatory processes which arise from damage to the vascular wall during insertion. For example, recent studies show a 2x increased rate of major adverse cardiac events when stent edge dissection (a partial tissue lesion at the end of a stent) is detected. Alarmingly, new imaging techniques suggest that stent edge dissection may be present in ~40% of stent insertions. My name is Carl Thrasher and I am graduate student at MIT. I’m asking for $50k to prototype a method to retrofit existing stents with soft edge caps. I aim to 3D print these caps directly onto the stents using a bioresorbable polymer. This should help protect the vessel wall at the stent edge (the region of highest stress) without affecting long-term operation. I have experience in 3D printing and resin formulation. Future work would include testing in artificial vessels using optical coherence tomography. Even slight improvements here could be high impact saving millions of dollars and thousands of lives over a short time horizon. Happy to chat over Zoom or provide more detailed proposal information. Email: cthrash@mit.edu

**#31: An Organization To Promote Independent Research In AI Safety
** We need more people working on AI Safety research, but opportunities to do good work in this field are very limited, and so excellent researchers often end up working in non-safety AI roles because of this. EA grantmakers often fund independent researchers (IRs), and there are many open problems in AI Safety which could be tackled by IRs. However, IR lacks the institutional benefits of credibility, reliable income, motivation, collaboration and serendipity, especially when compared to jobs available to skilled AI researchers and engineers in industry. This could be fixed by creating an organisation to make IR in this field an attractive career path. This organisation would provide an institutional umbrella for researchers to work under to engender credibility; free workspace and food; accountability and productivity incentives; assistance in obtaining initial and ongoing funding; collaboration opportunities between researchers and with other labs in industry and academia through talks, socials and workshops; and generally make IR in AI Safety an appealing prospect for talented researchers who we would otherwise lose to non-safety AI roles elsewhere. This will cost around £150,000 p/a. I would like to raise this amount to run a one year trial in central London to assess impact. Please contact me at jessicamarycooper@gmail.com if you are interested in making this happen!

**#32: An App To Help Mentor Disadvantaged University Applicants In The UK
** UniReach is a charitable EdTech start-up that provides automated on-demand mentoring for disadvantaged university applicants in the UK. In the past 18 months, we’ve organised mentoring for 1,000s of applicants provided by 600+ undergrad volunteers. We currently focus on admissions to Oxford and Cambridge universities, where the global offer rate is 17%. Our offer rate is 3x that: 57%. We achieve this success via a year-long programme: national workshops to foster interest in applying (we don’t cherry pick), continuous on-demand mentoring, and more in-depth mentoring in peak application season. The missing piece in the puzzle is an app to reduce frictions in our core service and open new channels to engage and support applicants – right now we coordinate mentoring via email. We are looking to raise £10,000 / $15,000 / 0.4 BTC for the app. Our ambition is to cover other top UK universities and then the Ivy League. We’re well placed to do this, with an engaged mentor base (3% of all Oxford/Cambridge undergrads), partnerships with schools across the UK, plus relationships with influential figures in our current markets; we’ve also recently closed an acquisition of a smaller charity to support our growth. We would also value any calls/emails from individuals offering advice, particularly on software (or marketing, the other gap in our capabilities). All advice welcome via email: leo@unireach.co.uk / website: unireach.co.uk / Bitcoin: 38MNgr9svuU2Lc7XUhrUdab2GS8tscG9be

**#33: Get Yeast To Produce Milk
** Real Deal Milk sets out to revolutionize dairy. To achieve this undoubtedly ambitious goal, we employ state-of-the-art gene technology to teach yeast cells how to be cows. We think that today’s dairy production is not sustainable; it contributes as much as 3% of all greenhouse gas emissions (FAO 2019), uses enormous amounts of water and land (WWF 2019), and produces extreme amounts of waste (Nennich et al. 2005). Add to that the unimaginable suffering animals go through to provide fresh milk to humans and you get an industry ripe for disruption. Modern gene technology makes it possible to exclude the inefficient animals from the process entirely but keep the milk (and cheese, yogurt, cream, butter) we all love. Substituting cattle with precision fermentation allows us to keep milk just as delicious and nutritious as it is when it’s freshly milked from a cow, but more sustainable and potentially healthier and more affordable. Participate in our funding, email us at zoltan@realdealmilk.com

**#34: Outline A Potential Martian Legal System
** Inspired by Elon Musk’s regrettably mostly-unworkable set of ideas for a Martian legal system (cf. my detailed comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8q8p6n/comment/e0tpds4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), as a lawyer of the Continental Civil-Law tradition I consider it vitally important for the proper function of any future space colony with ambitions of true independence to have a solid foundational legal framework to build upon. I’m looking for a minimum of $20.000 to prepare an outline of a “Mars Charter” proposal, consisting of a Constitution, a Bill of Rights and basic rules of procedure, as well as to establish an online hub and repository of relevant works and knowledge towards this purpose. The aim is to get the ball seriously rolling on this underestimated aspect of space colony operations and to create a seed which can eventually grow a truly practical extraterrestrial legal regime. If you wish to contribute to the project in any way, please contact me at 8080256256@seznam.cz

**#35: Automate Growing Magic Mushrooms
** Hey I’m just a guy with a lifelong interest in the therapeutic potential of magic mushrooms. I’d love to find a way to automate a full-cycle (from spore to fruit) small-scale production. Probably way beyond my capacities (I am but a simple Ecology grad) but it’d be sweet to give it a shot. I’m from “the poor” so I can’t do it without a monetary injection and sadly my alma mater specializes in fish and thus disregard my non-fish inquiries. [If interested, contact me at simon.rousseau.cloutier@gmail.com]4

**#36: Improve Access To Outdoor Activities
** Adventure Nerds improves access to nature and outdoor activities. We are a startup that publishes books and resources that educate and inspire all people to get outside and enjoy nature. Adventure Nerds is a platform for sharing information that increases diversity in outdoor participation by proactively connecting communities to practical local information that is not readily available online. We reduce the cost and time required to plan outdoor activities so that people can confidently spend more time outdoors. Our educational resources give everyone the tools to plan safe, responsible adventures in nature and develop a lifelong passion for healthy outdoor activities. Integral to our work is partnering with nonprofit organizations and businesses to raise awareness for conservation and environmental action campaigns. Adventure Nerds launches in the spring of 2022 with support from Waypoint, a development program for outdoor organizations in Western North Carolina. We have published an example guidebook, and we are searching for start-up capital and business sponsors to create more resources. If you are interested in learning more or helping in any way, contact us through our website, https://adventurenerds.com/about-us.

**#37: Study Antibiotic Resistance In Nigeria
** I am Nnaemeka Emmanuel Nnadi, a Medical Microbiologist in the Department of Microbiology, Plateau State University, Bokkos Nigeria. I am seeking for funding to help in understanding how the environment, poultry and humans interact in the spread of antimicrobial resistance in Plateau State. This study by extension will lead to the establishment of a laboratory that can be used to train undergraduates and postgraduate students in Molecular genomics. With a PhD in medical microbiology and a collaboration with Dr Luis Coelho an expert in computational biology our expertise matches this project. To actualize the goals of this project, we seek the sum of 50,000 USD. I would also love to hold a Zoom call with anyone who finds this project interesting. If you can provide funding or advice, please email eennadi@plasu.edu.ng or eennadi@gmail.com

**#38: Promote Citizens’ Assemblies And Lotteries
** The newDemocracy Foundation is an organisation in Australia that develops, demonstrates, and promotes innovations in democracy. Its focus is on deliberative democracy and random selection. We have worked with the UN and the OECD to develop international standards of best practice and founded the Democracy R&D network. We’re designed and operated ground-breaking projects in Melbourne, Geelong, and Canberra, and have collaborated with international partners in Brazil, Spain, North Macedonia, and Malawi. We require funding to take advantage of an opportunity in Australian politics. Citizens’ assemblies and democratic lottery are gaining traction but the ecosystem for their implementation still requires support and training that is best provided by an independent organisation like ours. Additional funding could allow us to expand our project capacity, conduct needed research or improve our advocacy and reach to politicians. I’m happy to answer any questions or provide a brief organisation overview, you can reach me at kyle.redman@newdemocracy.com.au You can view our website here: www.newdemocracy.com.au.

**#39: Portable Urinal For Disabled Adults
** 1 in 3 adults over 30 wake two or more times to pee each night, and 70% of them are bothered by this. 1 in 7 US adults have a mobility disability. Yuri is a portable urinal that sits next to a bed, couch, or desk to eliminate wakeful or painful walks to the bathroom. It is a funnel, drain trap, and vented holding tank on wheels, and it does not smell. Emptying is infrequent, and is done by a graywater pump that connects to the tank and empties into an existing drain, like a sink, toilet, or shower. Yuri could help a lot of people who don’t move well in the 70%+ of voidings that are urine-only. My name is Matt Voda, and I am a programmer-turned-maker working on Yuri full-time. I’ve prototyped five versions of it so far and am close to an MVP. Future paths include a scaled-up, ruggedized version built around a 55-gal drum for places and people without plumbing, and a Roomba-esque wheelbase and docking station capable of pumping itself empty. Seeking mentors who can advise on the industrial design of the unit, how to engineer it for manufacturing, and the development and compliance of medical devices. Please also reach out if you or a loved one want to receive a unit at-cost in exchange for feedback on how to improve it. Email m@ttvoda.com

**#40: Build A Better Social Network
** My name is Matt, I think there are a lot of downsides to centralized social media (read: Facebook) as the primary way that billions of people interact online. I’m building an open-source alternative called Haven, https://havenweb.org , on open standards with simplified self-hosting as a primary goal. This would enable better data ownership, privacy, and avoidance of censorship. I don’t need money (which is one of the reasons I think I’m a good person to work on this), but I would very much like to connect with anyone who is like-minded or wants to try out the software and provide feedback. [Email matt@havenweb.org]. Thank you!

**#41: YouTube Tutorials On Biology
** Hi! My name’s Mike Saint-Antoine, and I’m a PhD student in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. In my free time, I make Youtube tutorials on these subjects. My goal is to take the knowledge and skills I learn in grad school and upload them to the internet so that other people can learn them for free. My field is relatively new (and quickly growing), so there’s a shortage of online tutorials. I’m trying to fill in this gap with my videos, focusing specifically on topics that haven’t been sufficiently covered yet by others. I don’t need any money for this project, but any signal boost or constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. My channel can be found at the link below. Thank you! https://www.youtube.com/c/mikesaint-antoine

**#42: Publish Books On Architecture
** I am an architect based in India trying to build a research-based design practice. I am seeking funding of 4000$ to finish self-publishing two e-books on the Amazon marketplace that will form part of my PhD application in December 2022. The costs will cover printing of test dummies, sending a few copies to prospective guides, mentors and pay for miscellaneous fees. A validated writing practice is a desired application requirement that I am trying to full fill with the exercise. The theme of the work is to show how patronage has changed knowledge production of architecture across the four generations that have practiced, are practicing in the country. An attempt to fund the project is to prove the hypothesis that the creative economy is the only way ahead for architectural practices if necessary policy guidelines are not implemented for a sustainable future for the profession. If funded process of getting an admission and transition the research done to further work on architectural imagination may also be easier. I have complied a reading list of almost an entirety of Indian architectural design books from 1985 - 2019, around 100/125, that enables the project. These will be uploaded on my Instagram account starting here. Contents and introduction to the first book is accessed here https://isaacmathew.substack.com/p/daily-sentences-2111072039. Isaac Mathew 2201240945 . Contact me at isaac@spatialresearch.net

**#43: Pocket Dictionaries For South Africa
** There is an urgent need for a solution to South Africa’s literacy crisis. What we need is a school dictionary with the portability and reliability of a print dictionary, and the functionality and capacity for extra support of an electronic dictionary. Pocket electronic dictionaries (PEDs) were common in many Asian countries in the early 2000s. They were small and portable, but could contain and present more data than print dictionaries. They do not use the internet, so there are no data or connectivity costs. Once a PED is owned, it is free to use apart from battery charging. PEDs are more suitable than smart phones for primary school pupils, as these learners do not have their own phones or access to smart phones. My dissertation for my PhD in lexicography was designing model entries for an electronic primary school dictionary, with more support for pupils with features not seen in print dictionaries. I plan to develop an updated PED as a standalone dictionary device to be used by primary school pupils. Access to a reliable school dictionary with more language support will lead to better fluency and literacy, which has obvious implications for the individuals and the country. I require an initial amount of US$12000 to get the technical specs developed and a set of sample entries produced. Based on this, the next phase will be the development of a prototype for testing in schools. Please contact me on lorna@lemma.co.za for more information.

**#44: Long-Termism Advocacy Org In Israel
** ALTER, the Associations for Long Term Existence and Resilience, is an academic research and advocacy organization being started in Israel, which hopes to investigate, demonstrate, and foster useful ways to improve the future in the short term, and to safeguard and improve the long-term trajectory of humanity. The founder, David Manheim, has a PhD in public policy and a track record of research in effective altruist priority areas and risk reduction, and in policy engagement. The key goals of the organization will be to foster academic and policy work in key areas in Israel, via organizing conferences, academic engagement, and fostering collaboration with international organizations in this space. If you have connections to interested Israeli academics, experience with making this type of academic outreach successful, or you can provide funding for this work, please contact david@alter.org.il.

**#45: Independent Research In Human-Machine Collaboration
** The most pressing long-termist priorities (e.g. AI safety, climate change, global governmence) require remarkable intellectual efforts to tackle. In this context, I’d like to conduct independent research into human-machine collaboration, investigating avenues for augmenting human cognition using AI. By making use of my background in machine learning and cognitive science, I’d explore tools for perceiving large amounts of information (e.g. user-centered recommendation systems, personalized summarization, artificial salience maps, etc.), navigating complex problem spaces (e.g. virtual assistants, intelligent tutors, conversational tree pruning), and debugging belief systems (e.g. ideological unit tests, liquid epistemics, version control for beliefs, constrained belief generation etc.). Augmenting human intellect might empower knowledge workers across fields, including in cognitive enhancement itself, potentially leading to fruitful positive feedback loops. If you’re interested in supporting this line of work, reach me via paulbricman.com/contact.

**#46: Clean Up Space Debris
** If you’ve heard about space debris – tens of thousands of uncontrollable artificial objects in orbit around Earth – then you probably agree this is a problem worth solving. You might assume there are people working on it (true), and they have found a way to turn this cleanup work into a viable business (debatable). Our project is a novel, first-principles solution that will more cost-effectively address the hardest part of the problem (the multitude of smaller, pre-existing debris in orbits 600-1000km in altitude). We think this method has the greatest chance of major positive impact in decades to come, but regular investors struggle with its lack of near-term gain. I’m Mike Le Page, CEO and Design Lead for Exodus Space Systems, and my two core values are (1) that space exploration is good for humanity, and (2) that sustainability is crucial to everything humanity does in the future. Glad to discuss further: exodusspacesystems.com/contact/

**#47: Build A Better Social Network (2)
** I want to create a social network website/app that improves politics by gathering and promoting good ideas and solutions. My site will be better than existing sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit because it will be an impartial nonprofit that incentivizes the display of good arguments from all sides instead of favoring shallow content to get more ad revenue. I am a professional web developer with the ability to create a fully functional website to test this idea. I plan to publish an early small-scale version of this website that focuses on a few key topics (like climate change, health care, AI risks) and collects a comprehensive list of excellent arguments from many perspectives. I’m looking for more support to help build this website. If you think you can help (with development, design, content writing, etc.), have questions or advice, or can provide funding, please email anon837261@gmail.com (My anonymous forwarding email to avoid spam. I can reply to inquiries with more personal details when necessary) I may also be interested in working together if there are other projects with similar goals.

**#48: Research Transparency AUDITS Of Published PAPERS
** Today’s scientists are rewarded for QUANTITY at the expense of QUALITY, causing serious quality control problems in science. In a fresh attempt to solve this problem, we are boldly conducting the world’s first researcher transparency audits, in combination with using unique rewards to NUDGE authors to increase their transparency. This uniquely addresses the needs of the established professor market while also catering to the needs of junior scientists in the emerging open science market. We are seeking a new round of funding so that we can (1) scale up and improve our apps and (2) operate a small auditing team to conduct ongoing transparency audits at a global scale. We’re excited to move forward on our MISSION to scale up our disruptive transparency author apps, so we can achieve our VISION of a transformed research world brimming with high-quality scientific evidence (for more details, see our 4-page funding proposal https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fiv6t0izX7z4F5kuPiLpzeyBtV4GwLRjaMODUj5EpSg/edit?usp=sharing ). We’re looking for seed funding in the $50K to $150K range. If you can provide funding or advice, please email contact@curatescience.org

**#49: Fund Promising Young People
** Hello World is a nonprofit that is trying to make it easier to do good in the world. We believe everyone should have access to the relevant skills, networks, and capital that enable them to pursue solutions to the issues of our time - starting with justice, climate change, mental health, and improving education. Our next step is to run a call for projects from members of Gen Z with a focus on international and underrepresented voices – your contribution ($100-$1000) will directly fund promising young people; you’ll have the opportunity to allocate your support to specific geos and topics. To learn more email me (Nick Barr, cofounder) at nick@gethello.org and to get to know some of our members, check out https://helloworldnetwork.org/portfolios.

**#50: Promote Charter Cities
** I’m Mark Lutter, Founder & Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute. CCI is looking for funding to build new charter cities in Africa. Africa is undergoing its urban revolution this century – adding ~1 billion more urban residents to its cities by 2050. Yet African cities face a near-complete lack of legal authority, financial resources, & technical capacity to accommodate this rapid expansion. Charter cities can help on all of these fronts, and by doing so serve as engines of growth and innovation rather than urban sprawl, crime, congestion, & contagious disease. As the global thought leader in the charter cities space, CCI is uniquely positioned to bring together the stakeholders needed to enhance urban legal autonomy, facilitate financing to fill huge city fiscal constraints, & incorporate urban development companies that can actually build new cities. Our goals are ambitious. CCI aims to (i) establish 10 new charter cities with a city-scale population by 2040; (ii) create at least ~2 million new urban jobs btw 2025-2040; (iii) create new financial instruments dedicated to charter cities that drive direct urban investments of $20 billion by 2040; & (iv) serve as a test-bed/proof of concept for other charter city entrepreneurs around the world. Over the next 6 years, CCI requires $1.5M per year ($9M total over 6 years) to build out its Partnerships team to deliver on these goals. If you can provide funding or advice, please email mark@cci.city & kurtis@cci.city.

**#51: Plants That Suck Heavy Metals Out Of The Ground
** My city in Germany has been poisoned by ancient mining wastes. I want to remedy this with hyperaccumulating plants which suck heavy metals out of the ground for easy disposal. I then want to publish the results and make this process easily reproducible. I have experience in Permaculture. Your funding would allow for a pilot project which will then be used to get funding from the local government. (<2500€) Contact me at phytosanierung@gmail.com

**#52: Help Slime Mold Time Mold Investigate Chemical Causes Of Obesity
** We’re the mad scientists behind SLIME MOLD TIME MOLD. We think there’s a good chance the obesity epidemic is caused by environmental contaminants. We wrote around 60,000 words about this on our blog — read it at achemicalhunger.com. Right now our number one suspect is lithium. Even if we’re really wrong about the obesity thing, someone should be looking into the fact that there’s way more of this mind-altering metal (lithium) in our water than there was 50 years ago, and right now that’s us. The budget for our immediate projects is $650,000, of which we’ve raised $125,000 as of this writing. But in the long term it will probably take several million to cure obesity, and if we get that sooner, we can spend less time waiting around and writing grant proposals. We promise to turn any donations into research. We will share all our research publicly, as fast as we can put it out. If it turns out not to be lithium we will look into other contaminants; if we find evidence against contamination we will try to figure out a new theory that works. If we solve obesity and we still have money left over we will turn that money into some other kind of mad science. Donations can be made to Whylome, Inc., a 501(c)3 pending nonprofit focused on funding this research. If you want to help, please email slimemoldtimemold@gmail.com.

**#53: Educational Videos
** Hi there. I make educational videos at youtube.com/primerlearning. The two guiding principles are to inspire people to realize (1) that learning and analysis are intrinsically interesting, and (2) that you don’t need to specialize in a topic to understand its most powerful ideas. My hope is that this will positively impact humanity’s relationship with knowledge in the future, helping combat simplistic ideologies and inspiring more people to delve into and innovate within quantitative fields. Why fund this project instead of other similar ones? [The quality and popularity of the videos are unusually high, I have experience from five years at Khan Academy, and we’ll probably have overlapping world views that make my influence in line with your values.] I’m asking for 100k to subsidize the hiring of a full-time engineer. The videos are coding-intensive, being focused on animated simulations. I have gotten along well enough, but I am self-taught as a coder, and my comparative advantage is elsewhere. This one-time investment will accelerate video production and pay for itself in the short/medium term, since the revenue per video is already high. [If interested, contact justin@primerlearning.org]

**#54: Promote Effective Institutions
** The Effective Institutions Project (https://effectiveinstitutionsproject.org/) is a new global working group that incubates and tests strategies to improve institutional decision-making at the highest levels. We analyze where power over people’s lives is most concentrated in institutional contexts, gather intelligence on how key institutions currently make decisions, identify interventions that might cause those institutions to take actions that will lead to better global outcomes, and mobilize funding and talent to execute on the most promising interventions. Alongside all of this, we are building an interdisciplinary network of reformers to steadily increase the odds of success over time. EIP was founded by Ian David Moss (https://www.iandavidmoss.com/), a veteran strategist, philanthropic advisor, and serial social entrepreneur. We are seeking to raise an additional $670,000 to hire additional researchers and build out a fund to support promising initiatives in this space.

**#55: Non-Fiction Book With Case Studies On Resilience And Design
** I’m Nikhil Mulani and I’m looking for connections and funding to support a non-fiction book project. “Patient Designs” is an exploration of case studies of organizational resilience, technological design, and investment management that could provide valuable guidance for building a society oriented around the benefit of future generations. Case studies include the successes and failures of centuries-old family-run businesses in Japan, governance frameworks for early Internet architecture and recent AI development, and ethical safeguards created for new and old public investment bodies such as Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and the City of London’s “City Cash” fund. My experience includes product management roles at a variety of large companies and startups, and management consulting engagements across a variety of clients in the public and private sectors. My educational background includes a B.A. in Classics from Harvard and an M.B.A. from Wharton. If you can provide funding, connections, or advice, please email nikhilrmulani@gmail.com

*#56: Aella Wants To Start A Dating Site Like Old OKCupid
** Hi it’s Aella! I have a concrete thing i want funding for now - rationalist-targeted dating app. there’s a few in the works but none hit the really specific spot I want. my proposal is to rebuild a version of old-okcupid (match scores from questions, user profiles, basic messaging, high control over search, strong orientation towards compatibility and personality), and include personality tests/results (women like this, would get women on the app and we should have plentiful data to do this). I also want to structure the questions awesomely, in clear, unambiguous ways that translate to both efficient matching and also good data for us on the back end. I think this would also be a great way to do research, where it would generate a huge amount of data that hopefully spans across a ton of different questions. I’d like to make some very anonymized version of the data publicly available. My goal is to have it be just profitable enough to cover its own costs (tho if it ends up being more profitable i won’t complain, i’m just not orienting it towards that). I estimate i need between 30k-150k in funding for a basic version depending on how fancy we wanna get/how much programmers wanna get paid. My personal reach is around 750k horny men, which uhh definitely doesn’t help the gender ratio *but if the site is structured such that personality results are easily shared, i think this would be a great organic start to catch the eye of female users. [If interested, email aellasinbox@gmail.com]

**#57: Advocate Against Subsidies And Tax Breaks For Local Corporations
** America’s state and local governments hand out roughly $95 billion in tax breaks, grants and other forms of economic development subsidies every year. That’s enough money to fully fund the 11 smallest state government budgets, combined. It’s a market-distorting wealth transfer enabled by voters’ fears that without subsidies, all the jobs and prosperity will go someplace else. So long as those fears persist – and they’ve been cultivated by the political and corporate interests that benefit from this crony capitalism – it will be virtually impossible to implement evidence-based policy reforms. That’s why the Center for Economic Accountability (CEA) works to change the way people think and feel about economic development. This year, we’re taking on the challenge of improving the quality of local media coverage of economic development deals across the country. Currently, local news coverage tends to be dominated by pro-subsidy viewpoints and lacks critical context about costs and risks. That’s why we’re looking for support to develop and distribute the “Skeptical Reporter’s Guide to Covering Economic Development,” a resource for local journalists who want to get the story right but need help getting past press release talking points to the real story. The Guide will preemptively answer the questions we regularly get asked by reporters and help them uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of corporate welfare. For more, visit economicaccountability.org/skepticalguide/.

**#58: Convert Waste Heat To Energy
** Waste heat is one of the greatest untapped energy resources available, and data centres emit huge amounts of it. NovoPower is a Montreal startup developing systems to enable liquid cooled data centres to self-generate up to 10% of the power they need for just 4-5¢/kWh, which would reduce their costs and go a long way toward reducing our collective GHG emissions. No competing solutions exist for data centres. Once these systems have been brought to market, there are many possibilities for expansion, ranging from aluminum smelters to cruise ships to food processing. NovoPower is seeking equity financing. See www.novopower.ca for more details. Or write to raphals@novopower.ca.

**#59: Rapid Replications Of Newly Published Papers
** We aim to shift incentives in social science via rapid replications of top newly-published papers, to help combat the replication crisis. We have been awarded an ACX grant to cover a pilot version of this project, but if all goes as well as expected, we will be in need of more funding upon completion of the pilot. The initial plan is to select from the most prestigious psychology journals. When new issues are released, we’ll randomly select a newly-published paper. As long as the cost of replicating it is below some threshold, we’ll attempt a rapid replication, in addition to scoring it on commonly accepted standards of good research practice, and we will quickly release the results (after the original research team has a chance to give comments). When researchers are submitting to top journals, our project will greatly increase the probability that they will be replicated, hence shifting their incentives. This is unlike previously existing replication projects, which are backward-looking only and hence don’t change incentives. Over time, we hope to shift the incentives of journals as well, as repeated replication failures or use of poor practices will hurt their reputations, whereas a high replication rate and use of good practices will increase their prestige. Additionally, we plan to celebrate and promote the work of scientists using good practices. This model, if successful at shifting scientific incentives, could be expanded to other sciences beyond psychology. [Contact spencer.g.greenberg@gmail.com]

**#60: Empower People To Understand And Reform Public Policy
** PolicyEngine is a tech nonprofit that empowers people to understand and reform public policy. Last year, we launched our open source UK web app (https://policyengine.org), which lets anyone see their benefit eligibility and tax liability, and then calculate the personalized and society-wide impacts of changing tax and benefit rules. Policymakers from multiple parties use PolicyEngine to improve their institutional decision-making, and individuals are using it to explore policy reforms and hold leaders accountable. Our founders are Max Ghenis, a US-based former Google data scientist and MIT-trained economist who previously founded the UBI Center basic income research organization, and Nikhil Woodruff, a former data scientist on leave from a MSc in Computer Science at Durham University in the UK. Our board of advisors includes economists with experience in academia, think tanks, and government, as well as tech leaders. Now we’re seeking $100,000 to build PolicyEngine US over six months. We’re fiscally sponsored by the PSL Foundation (https://psl-foundation.org), a 501(c)3. We’ve provided more information at https://proposal.policyengine.org and you can reach us at max@policyengine.org.

**#61: Hobby Research On Universal Darwinism
** I’m Peotr Zagubisalo. For some years I tried to make progress in a hobby research task within Universal Darwinism and Open-Ended Evolution research programs (different points of view) – Open-ended natural selection of interacting code-data-dual algorithms as a property analogous to Turing completeness github.com/kiwi0fruit/ultimate-question/blob/master/articles/oens_of_algorithms.md – The simplest artificial life model with open-ended evolution as a possible model of the universe. Open-endedness means that the evolution doesn’t stop on some level of complexity but can progress further to the intelligent agents github.com/kiwi0fruit/ultimate-question/blob/master/README.md – Novelty emergence mechanics as a core idea of any viable ontology of the universe github.com/kiwi0fruit/ultimate-question/blob/master/articles/novelty.md – After I failed to make a progress in creating mathematical model and got burned out I switched to once a year as enthusiasm builds up writing promotional articles that I publish on GitHub and Reddit. Or I write directly to people who might be interested. THE GOAL IS TO FIND ANOTHER ACTIVE RESEARCHER FOR THIS TASK. With sufficient monthly funding, I will be motivated and will write promo significantly more often. It should be more than ~$150 to have it as a must-have hobby. My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peotrzagubisalo This research direction is interesting for people as seen in this Reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/97s8dl

**#62: Commentaries On Greek And Latin Literature
** Greek and Latin literature for all! My project is a series of commentaries in the Pharr-style popularized by Geoffrey Steadman (geoffreysteadman.com). I am now working on an edition of book four of Virgil’s Georgics. Future projects will include: the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity; Plato’s Gorgias; the books of Augustine’s Confessions; and the comedies of Terence. For the edition of Virgil’s Georgics, I estimate needing $1200 to pay an undergraduate Classics major $15/hour to help me compile vocabulary lists. My purpose for the project is, first, to help my own students have a more satisfying experience in their Greek and Latin courses and, secondly, to encourage anyone who has serious interest, but limited time, to read ancient Greek and Latin literature. Like Steadman, I intend to self-publish my commentaries, selling paperback editions for ≈ $15/copy, while making free PDF versions available on my website (andrew-beer.com).

#63: Support Human Cryopreservation

I’m Emil Kendziorra, a medical doctor, ex-cancer researcher, and tech entrepreneur. I founded Tomorrow Biostasis and the European Biostasis Foundation to improve human cryopreservation in quality and to make it more affordable. In fact, I don’t plan to do anything else until I die. After one year, we’re the fastest-growing provider worldwide and ready to open a Switzerland-based research institute that we’ve built in 2021. If you’re interested and want to support the topic: Donations (registered non-profit) to fund research or investments (social venture) to scale and make the procedure more affordable are possible. Read more: https://emilkendziorra.medium.com/ or reach out emil@tomorrowbiostasis.com - Happy to answer any question.

**#64: Make New York An EBike City
** Hi! I’m Matt. I think NYC should become the world’s first ebike city—we’d do everything with ebikes and turn streets into parks. I’m raising $200k to get to the launch of the first neighborhood. If you have any interest in chatting about donating (contributions of any size are appreciated), please email me at matt@mattrichman.net.

**#65: Test The Ethics Of Foreign Interventions In India
** I am a PhD Candidate at the University of British Columbia researching the demand for (and ethics of) foreign intervention in India. Charities and researchers rarely measure what the people think about their interventions, and even more rarely does that measurement truly reflect people’s preferences. Moreover, many consider foreign intervention (even NGOs’ development programs) as a form of colonialism unwanted by the locals. To remedy that, I will contact local politicians in India – as if I were working for an NGO – and ask whether they would like to sign up their communities for different kinds of interventions provided by different institutions. To make sure I can test a few interventions with a large enough sample size, I need 15,000 USD in extra funding. The funding will mainly go towards hiring and training phone surveyors and conducting complementary data collection on the characteristics of those local politicians. [Contact me at deivisangeli@gmail.com]

**#66: Help Fund Eyesight Restoration Surgery
** I was highly affected by the Covid-19 issue of not having a job. figuratively not homeless but having a place to stay. for 2 years now, have been looking for a decent job that I cam sustain the food, shelter, clothing option in life. I was working in a Corporate setting since 2004, and do hope to find a decent job, where I am currently located. If I were to be independent and on my own, survival is my key to sustain myself to live daily. My Father is retired as a long time employee same as my mother. They sustain there lives besides their low monthly retirement fund via servicing and can take home $5 per day. He now has an issue with his eye sight this affecting his way of life. But there’s a light of day and can be operated. But with less fund and nobody to run to. I do not have any ways and means to reach out to them and lend a money making hand. Nor we cannot rely woth anyone in return. This I propose to have it submitted and hope this can be considered in any considerable funds would be appreciated deeply. [You can reach me at collaborativemedian@protonmail.com]