Holden Karnofsky
Holden Karnofsky is co-founder of GiveWell (2007) — the charity evaluator that pioneered rigorous cost-effectiveness analysis for global health interventions — and co-CEO of Open Philanthropy, the grant-making organization that funds AI safety research, biosecurity, global health, and other cause areas. Open Philanthropy has been one of the largest funders of AI safety work, including grants to Anthropic and MIRI.
His writing is characterized by careful epistemic hygiene: he tries to show his reasoning, flag uncertainty, and avoid conclusions stronger than his evidence supports.
Learning by writing
The one ingested essay describes his method for turning investigation into retained, opinionated understanding. The core loop: pick a topic, read lightly on both sides, write a premature hypothesis, list your case's weaknesses, pick the sub-question most likely to flip your conclusion, investigate narrowly, revise, repeat.
The decisive practice is always having a hypothesis. Without it, investigation becomes diffuse information-gathering with no forcing function. Writing the hypothesis early reveals exactly which sub-investigations have leverage — and which are just procrastination disguised as thoroughness. See learning-by-writing.
This method operationalizes several of the heuristics in humans-are-not-automatically-strategic: explicit goal-setting, progress tracking via written claims, conjecture testing, and focus on high-leverage moves.