This seems like a lot to do for a newish, small, funding-constrained organization? Normally, I would expect to see such an organization try to do one, or at most two, discrete things and focus on executing them well. Could you say a bit more about why you decided to tackle so many significant projects at once?
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The Odyssean Institute
Not fundedImpact certificate
$0raised
$1,000valuation
Longer description of your proposed project
The Odyssean Institute has been founded (since 2022) to address systemic, cascading, and less analysed risks. There are highly viable contributions we have combined based on their discrete successes in different fields; through designing a unique Process for better policy making, we can promote better decision making at scale based on these insights. We also undertake associated research on neglected aspects of existential and catastrophic risks, especially resilience and recovery, using these methodologies to build more capacity and prioritise better around mitigating them.
We have 2 ongoing related projects: a pilot study in late March 2024 with 33 leading experts on the question of ‘new and neglected systemic tipping points that might lead to cascading failure of essential systems, key contributors to the spread of GCRs and X-risks’.
Our second key project is the GRAIN Initiative, standing for Global Resilient Anticipatory Infrastructure Network. Here, we combine literature reviews, modelling, and informal diplomacy - building on our developing connections with the governments of Taiwan, Oman, and the UK political parties - to encourage mutually beneficial trade and strategic policies to expand adaptive capacity to GCRs and X-risks. The aim is to encourage each state to profit in the nearer term for long term investments in e.g. resilient foods, as from ALLFED, or technological infrastructure, e.g. semiconductors in Taiwan. The idea is to target comparative advantages and encourage globally beneficial surpluses.
As part of this, we are undertaking a series of peer reviewed papers, the first to be published in April, on post-nuclear war trade routes. This is a highly neglected field, with 2-3 papers only on what to do after either a limited or full nuclear exchange. Recent geopolitical tensions imply that this needs to be redressed.
Our funding request here is operational, to enable continuing on these multiple projects by our core team and advisors: we have assembled a strong team of leading academic advisors and core researchers, from Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, etc. to build on our interdisciplinary focuses on:
Better decision making (to combat Molochian dynamics) - through the Odyssean Process - as outlined in the White Paper here: https://www.odysseaninstitute.org/_files/ugd/e56281_f0a77ff859354023bf743d07b9cea519.pdf
Resilience - for example highly neglected recovery resources and strategic planning
Complexity science - needed to detect feedbacks between cause areas, which have often been neglected
We have operated since July 2022, and are a registered charity (details on website) as of 2023, but the boldness and innovation of our proposals has meant very strictly cause area specific funders have not yet supported us. We have received seed funding and £9,000 for our pilot study, but need a more reliable amount to sustain this work to the high levels we are aiming for.
In summary, this funding will support our core team of researchers in continuing, scaling, and doing policy outreach on essential research on systemic tipping points, global resilience, political reform to enable epistemic democracy, and nuclear resilience as a key subset of this (since, as Matt Boyd stated in NZCat Webinar - 'if you can get nuclear resilience right, you can get it right for a lot of other GCRs').
Describe why you think you're qualified to work on this
Our team is broad and committed set of researchers and policy entrepreneurs, with our academic advisory board (visible on our website) and trustees composed of leading practitioners and researchers with seminal peer reviewed papers and books on the methodologies needed to grapple with these classes of risks.
Our academic board includes leading academics and practitioners in fields directly relevant: Dr. Bonnie Wintle, a coauthor on leading IDEA Protocol experiments and experienced in working with DARPA project repliCATS on replicating psychological studies; Dr. Constantin Arnscheidt, an MIT Earth Scientist with a focus on system’s tipping points for cascade risk working at CSER; Dr. Matt Boyd, of Adapt Research and a leading scholar on nuclear resilience; Dr. Mark Fabian, working on studying and enabling human wellbeing at the level of public policy; Dr. Luke Kemp an accomplished scholar working on existential risk and expert elicitation within that; Dr. Catherine Rhodes, former executive director of CSER and a biorisk expert; and Prof. Peter Turchin, an accomplished complexity scientist working in the intersection of social and cultural evolution, historical macrosociology, economic history and cliometrics, mathematical modelling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases.
Team:
https://www.odysseaninstitute.org/team
Org chart:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyxfP1T4QYW_WyoNkpLO6Vv8CHpzbFgTmEaorQ4YGK4/edit
References: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j2COihqc_QKXHWfG9DfeRaRNrmH9_5R4PGLuJu0fSMw/edit
Other ways I can learn about you
www.odysseaninstitute.org
Our White Paper was linked above, linked here for convenience again: https://www.odysseaninstitute.org/_files/ugd/e56281_f0a77ff859354023bf743d07b9cea519.pdf
Our first peer reviewed paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsos.220531
our Policy Brief, an abridged version of the White Paper: https://www.odysseaninstitute.org/_files/ugd/7a84fc_57f119500c4f4fd4869581bdeff9852d.pdf?index=true
How much money do you need?
$40,000 - low estimate for full team working 6 months on nuclear project + $3,000 needed for remainder of horizon scan pilot study costs; medium estimate $97,000 for a year-long budget including more of the GRAIN Initiative and next steps of the Odyssean Process; $212,000 for a fully scaled team working 1.5-2 years
Links to any supporting documents or information
Theory of Change: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qHpkwvXa5Bs1NCn7DLwXzIbzwra63OyMaew1rCJt4uE/edit
Estimate your probability of succeeding if you get the amount of money you asked for
95% chance of publishing 2-3x papers to complete the nuclear risk review, modelling, and outreach project.
75% chance of scaling effectively to complete the 2nd and 3rd steps of the Odyssean Process. This will provide a full proof of concept of the epistemic democratic decision making method we have developed explicitly to address GCRs/X-risks with best practice from relevant fields.
60% chance of our ongoing engagement plans with Taiwan, Oman, and future British government & civil service enabling the integration of findings and better decision making protocols into government. This is a longer term goal and subject to more uncertainty, but the initial support by those we've contacted suggest viability.
50% of a long term impactful contribution to global resilience and systemic modelling of risks, as we are building on existing work at the European level, as well as beyond, but this is subject to many incentive structures we have to navigate with caution and confidence.
Giuseppe Dal Pra
8 months ago
@Jason Hi Jason, thanks for the question. The pilot study is almost complete, and GRAIN is quite early but overlaps and builds on our research agenda. As such the projects may look extensive, but share some common fundamentals and momentum, as well as having a few completing soon (workshop is on Thursday with write up in following months, with funding needed for publication costs).
The work is hard, especially with the small funds we’ve had so far, but we believe still well coordinated. For example, we’ve managed to innovate on the usual timeline and methods used in a horizon scan, showing efficacy through our experienced advisors combined with a committed and focused team executing on this. Furthermore our team is 14 strong, currently so we’ve been able to effectively prioritise tasks while also being clear here on future work that is just beginning. It seemed wiser to include our plans for a year+ here for that reason.
I hope this gives a sense that things aren’t ’all at once’ but have benefitted from our extensive research experience across the advisory board, trustees, and core team. I am happy to discuss further on a call with any interested parties as the format here forces explication to be extra tight.
As for the logic of these key projects, pulling together research and advocacy - we believe robust decision making at the meta level needs concrete projects at the object level to take what is often treated as abstract or systemic, and make it actionable. Thus we want to ensure we try several mutually reinforcing things, where possible, to increase the odds of learning more. We have observed other organisations, both young and more established, have similar work stream spread.