MIRI's Winter 2013 Matching Challenge

I put a check for $10,000 in the mail earlier this week. (That said, I don't believe my donation is available for the 3x Thiel matching, as I'm a preexisting large donor. Likewise, my employer will only match $1,000 of it, since they have an annual cap.)

In general, I'm much happier with MIRI/SIAI as an organization now than I've ever been in the past. I'm highly supportive of more public facing research and more engagement with the academic community. The workshops appear to be producing fantastic results, like the probabilistic logic paper, and I'm hoping to see more things like that.

In light of the unusual 3x offer, I have borrowed from future-Yvain's expected contributions to MIRI and donated $5000. It should qualify for matching.

This extremely generous matching offer came at a fortuitous time for me, since I just succeeded at my master plan of becoming an effective altruist in Silicon Valley and doing earn-to-give for MIRI. $10,000 from me as well.

Paid 300$ with my employer matching it, but the employers contribution may come in only at around Jan 15. Hope that isn't too late.

Now is your chance to double or quadruple your impact

... or even octuple with employer matching ($2.5k -> $20k). Probably more than 10x when accounting for tax deductions for US residents.

Donated $50. Happy Saturnalia!

I have posted this in the last open thread, but I should post here too for relevancy:

I have donated $5,000 for the MIRI 2013 Winter Fundraiser. Since I'm a "new large donor", this donation will be matched 3:1, netting a cool $20,000 for MIRI.

I have decided to post this because of "Why our Kind Cannot Cooperate". I have been convinced that people donating should publicly brag about it to attract other donors, instead of remaining silent about their donation which leads to a false impression of the amount of support MIRI has.

0.1 BTC. Had some left over in a hot wallet, and I have a vague recollection of precommitting to donate around 50 bucks if MIRI impressed me with their attempts to improve the productivity of their organization.

What about CFAR this year? Should I consider donating to their 2013 Winter Matching Fundraiser instead of to MIRI?

Last year I remember someone (Eliezer?) wrote a somewhat confusing recommendation as to which one one should donate to.

A quick glance at their progress reveals that the MIRI one has almost reached its goal of $250k whereas CFAR has only gotten $8k so far (but also has another two weeks to go).

I don't see a corresponding thread for CFAR's donation drive (which frankly seems like an strange omission -- LessWrong is a good donor base for them, no?), so let me note here that I've just donated $1000 to CFAR.

I usually donate just to MIRI, but since MIRI's matching total has now been reached, and given comments by Yudkowsky and Muelhauser in Facebook, I shift this winter's donation to CFAR instead.

I'd also like to thank whoever responsibile for the small detail of having the donation bar in this thread mention the date it was last updated (the lack of which I had mentioned as a minor pet peeve of mine last time -- thanks for fixing/improving this)

For US citizens, it may be worth noting that if you give before the end of 2013 (within the next 10 days or so), you get to count it as a tax-deductible charitable contribution for this year, which will mean a larger refund from the IRS next year after tax day. You only get to do this for up to half your income for each year, so this represents an opportunity cost. (I don't know about other countries' tax laws--in fact, I don't know much about US tax laws either, really, so don't cite me as an expert.)

Hmmm.... I donated earlier this year for the value of several Harry Potter books. Given my income, I think my charitable donations will probably go to GiveDirectly and Christmas gifts for friends this year.

(Blah blah blah, sorry for funding present-day people instead of N^^^M potential future people, blah blah blah.)

Also, Facebook, seriously? And here I was stuck looking at Luke's So You Want to Save the World page.

One strategic point of my own: as your ideas are moving into the mainstream (someone reviewed Our Final Invention in the Washington Post editorial section a few days ago, taking the ideas very seriously and using the term "friendly AI" explicitly), it's time to move from "wanting to be a cult" to "wanting to be a large, thriving movement". If you want someone to write propaganda to this effect, call me ;-). Overall, though, your transition from SIAI to MIRI and your partnership with FHI have rendered you a far more professional organization who can do a better job being taken seriously. Good job on that.