I can't tell if this is a joke/experiment, or the situation has gotten so bad that people with decades of education/experience and highly specialized skills no longer have any leverage. Or possibly, that the funding situation is so bad that some organization is desperate enough to post this.

It appears to be for a non profit group. So I can understand the lack of compensation. But they are hardly likely to attract anyone other than the kind that barely scraped through their PHD if their work isn't particularly fascinating to someone.

In the US, non-profits are sometimes very well funded. Most name-brand universities are non-profits, with huge endowment funds. Sometimes, they are your VC's "boss."