I chatted with Thane about his project in LessWrong DMs. Thane's research is like a more theory-focused version of mine, which is what drew my interest to it.

It seems like Thane is approaching things with a rigorous and interesting mindset. I like the idea of building a non-agentic and fully interpretable world model, and if this idea is viable at all, Thane seems smart and like a good person to work on it, based on reading his work and having conversations with him. (However, this assessment has fairly weak confidence, since I have limited taste in theory research, and generally am a pretty junior researcher.)

My main consideration against funding is that I'm a bit skeptical of theory as opposed to empirical research. (So if you are bullish on theory, this project should be even more promising for you.) But as far as theory goes, this project seems like a good one, and Thane plans to do empirical work as well. It's my hope that this empirical work will lead to legible and exciting results, leading to more people paying attention to Thane's research and making sure he gets comfortably funded.

It seems like it should be worth at least the $40,000 per year needed for Thane to continue to work full-time on this. I certainly hope LTFF funds him, and hope that my donation can be useful as additional financial cushioning.