MEDIAN FOUNDATION
111 E 125 st 3E, New York, NY 10035 mediangroup.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Median Foundation d/b/a Median Group is an educational organization formed for the purpose of conducting and sponsoring research with respect to significant issues of importance to the public, particularly with respect to scientific and historical research, in order to create a shared knowledge for the common benefit of all. The Foundation focuses much of its research on identifying and assessing global catastrophic risks and the potential to mitigate or avert these risks.

Median employees and volunteers were tracking COVID as a very serious problem in early 2020 (January through March), well before the mainstream media did, which allowed for noticing neglected opportunities ahead of time. In March 2020, a conversation that included two Median employees/volunteers (Jessica Taylor and Benjamin Hoffman), as well as a few other individuals close in the social network, produced the idea of distributing masks to prisoners as part of COVID relief (as prisoner welfare is neglected and even actively curtailed in the US). This conversation led to the creation of Redeemed Sole (https://www.redeemedsole.com/), which worked with Reform Alliance (https://reformalliance.com/) to distribute masks. The distribution was of 100,000 masks on April 4 (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/meek-mill-jay-zs-criminal-justice-organization-ramps/story?id=69943866); note that Shaka Senghor (mentioned in the article) is a Redeemed Sole founder. Subsequently, Madonna also worked with Reform Alliance to donate 100,000 masks (https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/9363607/madonna-reform-alliance-masks), and Jack Dorsey worked with Reform Alliance to donate 10,000,000 masks (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/11/twitter-million-dollars-prisons-coronavirus-248419). We believe the initial effort with Redeemed Sole inspired and cleared the way for these subsequent efforts (such that it took much less effort for these other donors to contribute than it would have if not for the initial distribution), meaning that the initial mask donation had a very high amount of leverage in terms of impact. While Redeemed Sole is its own organization, Median continued being involved in collaboration. Specifically, Median provided website design consulting, and has hired Shaka Senghor as a contractor for COVID prison relief work. Additionally, Jessica Taylor and Benjamin Hoffman have continued to be involved in strategic discussions around Redeemed Sole's efforts.

Median has fiscally sponsored the Mask Project (https://www.maskproject.tech/) to manufacture masks, beginning at a time where there was a mask shortage in the US.

In addition to COVID relief, Median has continued general research and inquiry, especially into decision theory, epistemology, psychology, and sociology. The following written works were produced in 2020: A sequence of blog posts about ontology and decision theory by Jessica Taylor. Although multiple topics are discussed, the primary upshot is that, through careful choice of ontology, it is possible to model both (a) the ability of an agent to choose one of many actions (which is essential for VNM-like decision theory concepts to apply), and (b) underlying physical determinism. These posts can be found on the Alignment Forum (https://www.alignmentforum.org/users/jessica-liu-taylor); the posts of 2020 extend from "On the Falsifiability of Hypercomputation" to "Modeling naturalized decision problems in linear logic". Those especially relevant to decision theory are: "A critical agential account of free will, causation, and physics", "Subjective implication decision theory in critical agentialism", "Two Alternatives to Logical Counterfactuals", "Modeling naturalized decision problems in linear logic". Jessica continues to think about decision theory, and may write a longer paper explaining the main contributions in more detail. This research is relevant to AI alignment, and follows in the same intellectual vein as decision theory research Jessica conducted at MIRI. Other philosophical writing by Jessica on her blog (https://unstableontology.com/), produced in the course of general philosophical scholarship and exploration. A document on psychological concepts by Miya Perry (http://mediangroup.org/docs/toward_a_working_theory_of_mind.pdf). This provides a very general and practical ontology for thinking about minds. Miya and others (especially those in the Metamorphic Group which was active 2019-2020) used these concepts both theoretically and in practice sessions to gain insight into, and consider modifications to, people's psychological constructs. The Incoherence of Incoherence, an excerpt chapter from The Ouroboros, a forthcoming study of mental illness and social coordination, discussing the nature and origin of psychological inconsistencies (http://mediangroup.org/docs/the_incoherence_of_incoherence.pdf). Since the vast majority of humans hold persistent inconsistent beliefs (and motives), understanding these beliefs and where they come from is key to enhancing the ability of people to effectively pursue goals and coordinate with each other. The first of the book's three parts will be released in October. An essay by Ben Hoffman on the incentive problems faced by professionals, especially nonprofit employees (http://mediangroup.org/docs/the_professionals_dilemma.pdf). This is in the vein of solving the problem of aligning human and organizational values, which begins with making clear what is nontrivial about the problem, and especially the ways in which present normal organizations fail.

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