37bvhXnjRz4hipURrq2EMAXN2w6xproa9T

I've updated the post with it.

FTX did successfully retrieve the $1M from the title company! We didn't have any control over those funds, so I don't think we were involved apart from pointing FTX in the right direction.

Habryka means we would have to pick one number per Stripe link (eg one like for $5/month, 1 for $100/month, etc)

Are you checking the box for “Save my info for 1-click checkout with Link”? That’s the only way I’ve figured out get Stripe to ask for my phone number. If so, you can safely uncheck that

(Also, I don’t know if it’s important you, but I don’t think we would see your phone number if you gave it to Stripe)

What do you mean by A?

Habryka is slightly sloppily referring to using Janus' 'base model jailbreak' for Claude 3.5 Sonnet

as I understand it, the majority of this money will go towards supporting Lighthaven

I think if you take Habryka's numbers at face value, a hair under half of the money this year will go to Lighthaven (35% of core staff salaries@1.4M = 0.49M. 1M for a deferred interest payment. And then the claim that otherwise Lighthaven is breaking even). And in future years, well less than half.

I worry that the future of LW will be endangered by the financial burden of Lighthaven

I think this is a reasonable worry, but I again want to note that Habryka is projecting a neutral or positive cashflow from Lighthaven to the org.

That said, I can think of a couple of reasons for financial pessimism^[1]. Having Lighthaven is riskier. It involves a bunch of hard-to-avoid costs. So, if Lighthaven has a bad year, that does indeed endanger the project as a whole.

Another reason to be worried: Lightcone might stop trying to make Lighthaven break even. Lightcone is currently fairly focused on using Lighthaven in revenue-producing ways. My guess is that we'll always try and structure stuff at Lighthaven such that it pays its own way (for example, when we ran LessOnline we sold tickets^[2]). But maybe not! Maybe Lightcone will pivot Lighthaven to a loss-making plan, because it foresees greater altruistic benefit (and expects to be able to fundraise to cover it).

So the bundling of the two projects still leaks some risk.

Of course, you might also think Lighthaven makes LessWrong more financially robust, if on the mainline it ends up producing a modest profit that can be used to subsidise LessWrong.

1. ^{^}

   Other than just doubting Habryka's projections, which also might make sense.

2. ^{^}

   My understanding of the numbers is that we lost money once you take into account staff time, but broke even if you don't. And it seems the people most involved with running it are hopeful about cutting a bunch of costs in future.

I worry that cos this hasn't received a reply in a bit, people might think it's not in the spirit of the post. I'm even more worried people might think that critical comments aren't in the spirit of the post.

Both critical comments and high-effort-demanding questions are in the spirit of the post, IMO! But the latter might take awhile to get a response

The EIN is 92-0861538

My impression matches your initial one, to be clear. Like my point estimate of the median is like 85%, my confidence only extends to >50%