What Is Optimal Philanthropy?

I disagree with your treatment of statement #5. It's hard to explain directly why, so let me analogize:

Humans aren't perfectly rational. However, we can strive to be more rational, even though we as humans can never reach perfect rationality.

Now, replace "rational" and "rationality" in the above with "moral" and "morality" and therein lies the reasoning. To say that you could be doing more for charity, or you could be nicer to your fellow man, &c., is exactly saying that you could be more moral. But this "could" is in a purely abstract sense; humans are exactly as moral (and as rational) as they can by given their own brains.

Thus it is written:

If you feel that giving 5% of your income to charity isn't enough, and that the moral ideal is 10%, try giving 6%. Make the best choices you can make with the willpower you have. The choice isn't between giving 5% and 10%; you don't have that much willpower in the bank. The choice is between giving 5% and 6%. The better choice is 6%. Now you've made a better choice; feel happy. Feeling guilty about not having willpower doesn't contribute to the development of willpower. Rather, try for the proper exercise of available willpower, and the slow reshaping of the self that results.

On #5 (opportunity costs) (and to some extent #3 (fun)), I think it's better to frame it positively and get rid of concepts like "obligation" and "morally responsible". Saving a child's life is great. Saving more children's lives is even better. Hooray for each life you save!

If you want to save more children's lives (or insert your charitable goal here), you can pursue this goal similarly to how you would pursue any other directional goal (e.g., read more books, eat healthier, have more fun, exercise more, make more friends, run faster). Aim for a reachable target, look for opportunities to take steps in the right direction, reward yourself when you make progress, get social support/encouragement/validation by talking with people who share the same goal, learn tricks that other people with the same goal have used successfully, keep striving to do better, etc. Don't frame the topic in a way that makes you feel bad and creates an ugh field.

In defense of the hypothetical "Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies" (and because I can't help but nitpick)...

The European Commission on Public Health gives the following definition of "rare disease":

Rare diseases, including those of genetic origin, are life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases which are of such low prevalence that special combined efforts are needed to address them. As a guide, low prevalence is taken as prevalence of less than 5 per 10,000 in the Community.

What are the odds that a person living in the U.K. will be diagnosed with a rare disease during his or her lifetime? As it turns out, it's one in seventeen. Getting a "rare disease" is not a rare event.

So, assuming that the prevalence of rare diseases in dogs is similar to that of people, the problem that Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies is trying to address is fairly wide in scope. How cost-effective they are is still an open question, though. For all I know, it might be, on average, much easier to invent a cure for any given incurable rare disease than any given incurable common one, because any common disease that would be easy to cure would already have a cure.

Of course, they're still saving dogs instead of people...

For one thing, it produces atrocious incentives.

I don't understand what this means. Are you implying that an ethical system needs to provide incentives for people to abide by it? The only ethical system that does that is egoism.

If your goal is to help people, the only incentive is people getting helped. If optimal philanthropy helps the most people, it has the best incentives. Doing good is it's own reward, provided that it's what you're actually trying to do, rather than be happy or have a meaningful life or something.

Another huge problem is the creation of unbounded obligations.

There is no upper bound to how much money you could make. As such, the opportunity cost to making any finite amount of money is unbounded. This does not make you infinitely poor. Similarly, being able to do an unbounded amount of good and not doing so is not infinitely bad. Opportunity cost is just a way of reframing the problem.

With this line of argument, there's literally no point at which one can sit back and say, "I've fulfilled my duty to charity - there's nothing more to do".

That reminds me very strongly of something I read in a Jewish prayerbook, or possibly the Talmud, a long time ago. I can't find it with google (translation being what it is), but here's my best recollection:

"It is a command we are given repeatedly in Torah. But what does it really mean to 'love your neighbour as yourself'? ... Never would a man say 'I have fulfilled my obligation to myself'. In the same way, you have never fulfilled your obligation to your neighbour."

Taking the comparison back the other way raises what I think is an interesting question. People have no issues with the idea that your obligations to yourself are unbounded, so why does having unbounded obligations to others pose a problem?

There's literally no point at which one can sit back and say, "I've fulfilled my duty to myself - there's nothing more to do".

I'm glad you wrote this.

A professional philanthropist is, typically, someone whose full-time job it is to figure out how to give away their money.

This isn't how 80,000 Hours uses the term. I found it confusing, so I asked them and they said they meant "devoting your life to earning money and giving it away." Not that someone spends 40 hours a week thinking about how to give their money - that seems excessive. If you're really that good at charity research, you might as well work for GiveWell and share your findings. Or, better yet, work another job and fund whatever's best (which might be charity research).

If not donating surplus money is morally equivalent to causing whatever bad outcome the donation would prevent, you are now twice as guilty.

This is why I prefer to think of it in consequentialist terms. If I give 10% of a larger salary, fewer people suffer - so that's good. But of course, a better outcome would result if I both pursue a higher-paying job and donate a higher percentage. Where I eventually draw the line depends on my willpower, how utilitarian I am, and my estimation of what may cause me to burn out.

The Psychology and Morality of Optimal Philanthropy

This [designing careers around being able to donate as much as possible] one I see as highly damaging. Human psychology is such that, in order for a movement to get long-term, voluntary participation by highly capable people, stuff needs to be fun.

I agree with you here -- not everyone can be a professional banker philanthropist. But I think the idea deserves attention. Perhaps a better idea with regard to donating more and not regretting it psychologically is learning how to be more frugal and increasing one's budget for donations.

A lot of the people I know who donate in the 10-50% range to effective causes actually love it a lot. And indeed, the research needed to figure out where to donate is often novel, challenging, and gets better over time -- some of the elements of Fun.

I also agree with you about being sure where the most-earning careers are. And in not ignoring the intangibles of certain careers, like authority that can be used to leverage public opinion. I think Peter Singer, as a professor, has done a lot more for optimal philanthropy than any investment banker, for example.

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If not donating surplus money is morally equivalent to causing whatever bad outcome the donation would prevent, you are now twice as guilty, since the amount you aren't donating (20% vs. 10%) is twice as large. This is despite the fact that the total amount of good done is also twice as large. Why punish an improvement?

Punishing an improvement is obviously not the utilitarian thing to do. This is why Peter Singer never actually condemns non-donators as moral monsters, and actually has a standard for giving equal to about 5% your income. Giving What We Can is only 10%. These are easily reachable.

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Another huge problem is the creation of unbounded obligations [..] With this line of argument, there's literally no point at which one can sit back and say, "I've fulfilled my duty to charity - there's nothing more to do".

You're right, and that's because there's always more that you can do. I think it becomes much less confusing if you don't think of doing everything as morally good and anything less as a moral evil. Think of things as morally better or morally worse, and remember that's from a utilitarian perspective.

And also keep in mind that no-one can be an ideal utilitarian. It's like striving to be an ideal rationalist. You can only get better, the point of perfection is impossible. But that doesn't mean that utilitarianism or rationalism is flawed.

Regarding #3, I can say that hearing 'thanks' is a lot of fun, as is having people tell me I'm doing a good thing. I couldn't stop smiling for 4 days after starting this thread, and I still smile to think of it.

Great article, however, there is a third important option which is 'request proof then, if passed, donate' (Holden seem to have opted for this in his review of S.I., but it is broadly applicable in general).

For example if there is a charity promising to save 10 millions people using a method X that is not very likely to work, but is very cheap - a Pascal Wager like situation. In this situation, even if this charity is presently the best in terms of expected payoff it may be a better option still to, rather than paying the full sum, pay only enough for a basic test of method X which the method X would be unlikely to pass if it is ineffective; then donating if the test has passed. This decreases the expected cost proportionally to the unlikelihood of X efficacy and the specificity of the test.

I think #5 is bad metaethics. You write: "Why punish an improvement?" and "A moral framework should make the good outcome and bad outcome as distinct as possible, not the same."

I think this is a holdover from Judeo-Christian metaethics in which there are distinct classes of good things to do and bad things to do (and morally-neutral things in between) and then clear rewards for doing good and punishments for doing bad. In a world without God, morality isn't about punishing or rewarding us, so a moral framework should provide an ordering over choices rather than distinct classes of good and bad with estimates of how good or bad they are. What's useful to know is "What's the most moral thing to do here?" not "How much will I get punished if I don't do this?" because you simply won't get punished.

Re #2-6, I don't think GiveWell has ever said these. Their argument is simply that if you are going to spend money doing good, they will advise you on how to be optimal at it. This is an argument with 80000hours and (in the case of #5) Peter Singer. And #6 I think GiveWell would explicitly disagree with.

It occurred to me that although I agree with Statement #5 - "People are morally responsible for the opportunity costs of their actions," I do not think it is a claim actually being made by the optimal philanthropy zeitgeist. I think the actual claim is "Your actions have opportunity costs and you should probably think about that," which should be uncontroversial.

Re #4 "People can donate the largest amount through a traditional "high-earning career", like investment banking."

This one involves, to some extent, the classic American confusion between social class and income. ...

This isn't what 80,000 hours or anyone else is arguing. It's explicitly "choose high earning careers" not "choose prestigious careers". Investment banking is often brought up because it really is a way to make a lot of money.

standard "career tracks" have serious disadvantages, like working insane hours doing unpleasant stuff. They sap what I call human capital and social capital - human capital is your skills, capabilities, and the value you can provide to an organization, while social capital is your network of friends and people who want to work with you. Human capital and social capital are the two critical things one needs to do anything, including world saving; they shouldn't be spent lightly.

Totally agree. It shouldn't be spent lightly. If you're trying to maximize the good you do over your life, choosing a soul-sucking career that will burn you out in only a few years is probably not a good idea. But there are some financial companies where people work more reasonable hours, and there are other careers that provide better work-life balance.

A job that is unpleasant but lets you donate ten times as much is letting you do approximately ten times as much good as a job you enjoy more. If you work only five years at the unpleasant job, you may be doing more than you could in a whole career at the more pleasant one.

There's (short of FAI) always another child to save.

This is literally untrue. According to Wolfram Alpha, there are 1.855 billion children on earth (2009 estimate). Of course, not all of them need saving. Giving What We Can cites the official estimates from the United Nations Development Program for the [edited for clarity: annual] cost of basic interventions:

Basic education for all: $6 billion
Water and sanitation for all: $9 billion
Basic health and nutrition: $13 billion

These are finite numbers for which humanity doesn't need FAI. Of course, they are too huge for any one individual. So normal-earning individual donors cannot, in fact, be consistent about donating only a part of their disposable income and spend another part on luxury assuming they want to be perfect utilitarians. But it makes this condition false:

But if all states of the world - whether they be donating 0%, 10%, or 20% of income - result in 0% total goal fulfillment

Numerically, feeding all human children on earth - and providing family planning to all potential parents - is clearly feasible without FAI.

In order to do the most good for our fellow humans

For what it's worth, some of us consider non-human sentients as relevant too.

What is Optimal -- Working, Donating, or Something Else?

Of course, this is widely believed outside the optimal philanthropy movement. But I think this belief [that in order to do the most good for our fellow humans, we should start/work for/donate to/otherwise become involved in charitable organizations] is inherent in many optimal philanthropy claims

I disagree -- I think the only claim true to optimal philanthropy is that we should donate, efficiently and maybe even extensively, to charitable organizations. Whether we start new organizations or work for existing organizations is often not an efficient use of our time, and not what any optimal philanthropy work I think would tell you. Not even 80k hours seems to make this out to be the best career.

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It's plausible, but if one looks at the total good done over the last thousand years, the vast majority comes from science and various businesses, not popular causes like (back then) "tithe to the church" or (now, from the 80,000 Hours video) "campaigning against climate change".

I disagree again. I think that yes, a lot of good has come out of science and business. But remember that science needs to be funded, and some of it by private donation. Likewise, a massive amount of benefit has come out of eradicating and lessing disease, which also comes in large part from personal donation.

And even that being said, optimal philanthropy is often about what one can do as an individual. The vast majority of us aren't able to create the scientific discovery or business that helps millions. Many of us can't even change jobs. But what we can do is donate a portion of our income, and we can do a lot by ensuring it goes to effective causes.

People can donate the largest amount through a traditional "high-earning career", like investment banking.

This does not match what I know about the optimal philanthropy movement, can you tell me what your source is?

Disclaimer: I’m an 80,000 Hours member

This post raises some important concerns, which I and probably most members of 80,000 Hours share. For instance, how plausible is it to take a high-earning career we don’t enjoy in order to donate more money to charity. But I don’t think 80k’s ‘party line’ – or the views of its members - are accurately represented by these six claims. Essentially, we don’t believe that professional philanthropy is commonly the best thing we can do, or so we typically (generally? commonly?) should do it.

What we do claim is that many people (not everyone) could do more good through professional philanthropy than by working directly in the charity sector or other 'commonsensical ethical careers. This does not imply that it’s typically best. We more believe something along the lines of (6). For similar reasons we don’t claim (2) or (3) either.

80k also does not claim (4). We’ve made no claims about which careers give the highest expected earnings. In fact this is an ongoing research program at 80k. On the 80k blog Carl has already written a fair amount on ‘non-traditional’ options like entrepreneurship e.g. (http://80000hours.org/blog/23-entrepreneurship-a-game-of-poker-not-roulette). I think the common focus on banking is because, first, banking is at least fairly high earning (easily £6m over a career), and two, it’s morally controversial. So, if the argument flies for banking, it works even better for less morally controversial careers.

Neither does 80k claim (5), but Grognor and Unnamed have covered that better than I could.

Upvoted for #4.

Singer compares philanthropy to a Trolley Problem. There's a set of train tracks, which a child is lying on, and a train is fast approaching. You're driving a luxury car, and if you drive the car on the tracks, the train will run into the car and save the child. What should you do?

Is that... really what Singer calls it? Why?

This is a good post on philanthropy -- much of it not specific to the premises of "optimal philanthropy".

Even rejecting the "do the most good you can" injunction, you might still be curious about how effective a given charity is, so you can still benefit from "optimal philanthropy" orgs (to the extent that they don't mostly just advocate optimal philanthropy and actually evaluate charities)

Indeed: how to internalize feeling good to the extent you diligently ensured the most possible good per dollar, without feeling bad that you didn't spend more dollars? There's always honesty (I guess I really do care more about having a luxury car than ...), but even consciously noting such things is a bummer, and it's no good to say to most people.

I counsel people I care for to not become miserable by trying to realize a desire to be good/philanthropic by actually devoting their life to helping others (things that would ward off misery: if they can likely enjoy impressive success in doing so and/or are internally rewarded by the practice of it and not just the fantasy).