Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others...
post by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-24T21:26:10.519Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 322 commentsThis was originally posted as part of the efficient charity contest back in November. Thanks to Roko, multifoliaterose, Louie, jmmcd, jsalvatier, and others I forget for help, corrections, encouragement, and bothering me until I finally remembered to post this here.
Imagine you are setting out on a dangerous expedition through the Arctic on a limited budget. The grizzled old prospector at the general store shakes his head sadly: you can't afford everything you need; you'll just have to purchase the bare essentials and hope you get lucky. But what is essential? Should you buy the warmest parka, if it means you can't afford a sleeping bag? Should you bring an extra week's food, just in case, even if it means going without a rifle? Or can you buy the rifle, leave the food, and hunt for your dinner?
And how about the field guide to Arctic flowers? You like flowers, and you'd hate to feel like you're failing to appreciate the harsh yet delicate environment around you. And a digital camera, of course - if you make it back alive, you'll have to put the Arctic expedition pics up on Facebook. And a hand-crafted scarf with authentic Inuit tribal patterns woven from organic fibres! Wicked!
...but of course buying any of those items would be insane. The problem is what economists call opportunity costs: buying one thing costs money that could be used to buy others. A hand-crafted designer scarf might have some value in the Arctic, but it would cost so much it would prevent you from buying much more important things. And when your life is on the line, things like impressing your friends and buying organic pale in comparison. You have one goal - staying alive - and your only problem is how to distribute your resources to keep your chances as high as possible. These sorts of economics concepts are natural enough when faced with a journey through the freezing tundra.
But they are decidedly not natural when facing a decision about charitable giving. Most donors say they want to "help people". If that's true, they should try to distribute their resources to help people as much as possible. Most people don't. In the "Buy A Brushstroke" campaign, eleven thousand British donors gave a total of £550,000 to keep the famous painting "Blue Rigi" in a UK museum. If they had given that £550,000 to buy better sanitation systems in African villages instead, the latest statistics suggest it would have saved the lives of about one thousand two hundred people from disease. Each individual $50 donation could have given a year of normal life back to a Third Worlder afflicted with a disabling condition like blindness or limb deformity..
Most of those 11,000 donors genuinely wanted to help people by preserving access to the original canvas of a beautiful painting. And most of those 11,000 donors, if you asked, would say that a thousand people's lives are more important than a beautiful painting, original or no. But these people didn't have the proper mental habits to realize that was the choice before them, and so a beautiful painting remains in a British museum and somewhere in the Third World a thousand people are dead.
If you are to "love your neighbor as yourself", then you should be as careful in maximizing the benefit to others when donating to charity as you would be in maximizing the benefit to yourself when choosing purchases for a polar trek. And if you wouldn't buy a pretty picture to hang on your sled in preference to a parka, you should consider not helping save a famous painting in preference to helping save a thousand lives.
Not all charitable choices are as simple as that one, but many charitable choices do have right answers. GiveWell.org, a site which collects and interprets data on the effectiveness of charities, predicts that antimalarial drugs save one child from malaria per $5,000 worth of medicine, but insecticide-treated bed nets save one child from malaria per $500 worth of netting. If you want to save children, donating bed nets instead of antimalarial drugs is the objectively right answer, the same way buying a $500 TV instead of an identical TV that costs $5,000 is the right answer. And since saving a child from diarrheal disease costs $5,000, donating to an organization fighting malaria instead of an organization fighting diarrhea is the right answer, unless you are donating based on some criteria other than whether you're helping children or not.
Say all of the best Arctic explorers agree that the three most important things for surviving in the Arctic are good boots, a good coat, and good food. Perhaps they have run highly unethical studies in which they release thousands of people into the Arctic with different combination of gear, and consistently find that only the ones with good boots, coats, and food survive. Then there is only one best answer to the question "What gear do I buy if I want to survive" - good boots, good food, and a good coat. Your preferences are irrelevant; you may choose to go with alternate gear, but only if you don't mind dying.
And likewise, there is only one best charity: the one that helps the most people the greatest amount per dollar. This is vague, and it is up to you to decide whether a charity that raises forty children's marks by one letter grade for $100 helps people more or less than one that prevents one fatal case of tuberculosis per $100 or one that saves twenty acres of rainforest per $100. But you cannot abdicate the decision, or you risk ending up like the 11,000 people who accidentally decided that a pretty picture was worth more than a thousand people's lives.
Deciding which charity is the best is hard. It may be straightforward to say that one form of antimalarial therapy is more effective than another. But how do both compare to financing medical research that might or might not develop a "magic bullet" cure for malaria? Or financing development of a new kind of supercomputer that might speed up all medical research? There is no easy answer, but the question has to be asked.
What about just comparing charities on overhead costs, the one easy-to-find statistic that's universally applicable across all organizations? This solution is simple, elegant, and wrong. High overhead costs are only one possible failure mode for a charity. Consider again the Arctic explorer, trying to decide between a $200 parka and a $200 digital camera. Perhaps a parka only cost $100 to make and the manufacturer takes $100 profit, but the camera cost $200 to make and the manufacturer is selling it at cost. This speaks in favor of the moral qualities of the camera manufacturer, but given the choice the explorer should still buy the parka. The camera does something useless very efficiently, the parka does something vital inefficiently. A parka sold at cost would be best, but in its absence the explorer shouldn't hesitate to choose the the parka over the camera. The same applies to charity. An antimalarial net charity that saves one life per $500 with 50% overhead is better than an antidiarrheal drug charity that saves one life per $5000 with 0% overhead: $10,000 donated to the high-overhead charity will save ten lives; $10,000 to the lower-overhead will only save two. Here the right answer is to donate to the antimalarial charity while encouraging it to find ways to lower its overhead. In any case, examining the financial practices of a charity is helpful but not enough to answer the "which is the best charity?" question.
Just as there is only one best charity, there is only one best way to donate to that charity. Whether you volunteer versus donate money versus raise awareness is your own choice, but that choice has consequences. If a high-powered lawyer who makes $1,000 an hour chooses to take an hour off to help clean up litter on the beach, he's wasted the opportunity to work overtime that day, make $1,000, donate to a charity that will hire a hundred poor people for $10/hour to clean up litter, and end up with a hundred times more litter removed. If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it. And if he wanted to help people, period, he's chosen a very wrong way to go about it, since that $1,000 could save two people from malaria. Unless the litter he removed is really worth more than two people's lives to him, he's erring even according to his own value system.
...and the same is true if his philanthropy leads him to work full-time at a nonprofit instead of going to law school to become a lawyer who makes $1,000 / hour in the first place. Unless it's one HELL of a nonprofit.
The Roman historian Sallust said of Cato "He preferred to be good, rather than to seem so". The lawyer who quits a high-powered law firm to work at a nonprofit organization certainly seems like a good person. But if we define "good" as helping people, then the lawyer who stays at his law firm but donates the profit to charity is taking Cato's path of maximizing how much good he does, rather than how good he looks.
And this dichotomy between being and seeming good applies not only to looking good to others, but to ourselves. When we donate to charity, one incentive is the warm glow of a job well done. A lawyer who spends his day picking up litter will feel a sense of personal connection to his sacrifice and relive the memory of how nice he is every time he and his friends return to that beach. A lawyer who works overtime and donates the money online to starving orphans in Romania may never get that same warm glow. But concern with a warm glow is, at root, concern about seeming good rather than being good - albeit seeming good to yourself rather than to others. There's nothing wrong with donating to charity as a form of entertainment if it's what you want - giving money to the Art Fund may well be a quicker way to give yourself a warm feeling than seeing a romantic comedy at the cinema - but charity given by people who genuinely want to be good and not just to feel that way requires more forethought.
It is important to be rational about charity for the same reason it is important to be rational about Arctic exploration: it requires the same awareness of opportunity costs and the same hard-headed commitment to investigating efficient use of resources, and it may well be a matter of life and death. Consider going to www.GiveWell.org and making use of the excellent resources on effective charity they have available.
322 comments
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comment by rabidchicken · 2010-12-25T07:23:21.115Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Reading this and your article on using dead children as currencies reminds me of an event a few years ago which might have helped stop me from becoming another religious nutcase.
I did not know anything about rationality or utilitarian ethics at the time, and I was involved in a youth group at church that was going to be making aid kits for Ethiopia. One of the items that was requested was some kind of clothing, so I picked it up from a second hand store and put the kit together. Later when we were talking about the kits, I was told that we were only supposed to bring new items. when I asked why, the person in charge said something about respecting the feelings of the people who were receiving the gifts, and wanting them to feel like they had been given something special, instead of a discarded item. Everyone else in the group seemed to accept this easily, but I asked how many more people we could have helped with bargain items. This time, they pretty much ignored what I had just said.
I think this was the point when it finally hit me that good intentions and appearing kind are horrible indicators that you are really making the world better. So anyway, I probably would never have tried to find out about websites like this without my experiences dealing with religion. Too bad we cannot all just be taught utilitarian ethics and rationality by our parents and school instead of discovering them the hard way.
Replies from: Pumpizmus, avataress↑ comment by Pumpizmus · 2012-07-09T17:43:18.759Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Excuse my noob question, but isn't your subtle anti-religion generalizing implication somehow exactly against the pro-rational attitude this website is spreading?
Also, when it comes to utilitarian ethics and rationality or anything, isn't "discovering the hard way" more fruit-bearing than having to learn in schools?
Replies from: drethelin, DanielLC↑ comment by drethelin · 2012-10-20T06:06:14.390Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Discovering the hard way generally leads to deeper knowledge, but it's still extremely important to learn about, eg, the germ theory of disease in school. You may not end up knowing as much as its original discoverers about bacteria and their behavior, but you can still spread a lot fewer disease.
↑ comment by DanielLC · 2013-11-08T07:19:11.431Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Also, when it comes to utilitarian ethics and rationality or anything, isn't "discovering the hard way" more fruit-bearing than having to learn in schools?
In addition to what drethelin said, there's also the problem that discovering it the hard way is hard. Most people fail. That way bears no fruit at all.
↑ comment by avataress · 2014-04-07T04:05:34.336Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Don't be freaked out by my handle/username: I like to blend the best of rationality with the best of feeling/emotion, which I understand is what every avatar has done and does to get what I understand to be wisdom, although their adherents no so much so. This post reminds me of the (wrongly!) hated Republican, T.J. O'Rourke, from his book, Parliament of Whores, where he described having spoken with people who lived in what he called, "A Sewer In the Sky," and asked one of them who was saying things like, "the landlords, they treat us like a dog when we ask for services," to just imagine, what if she and her fellow tenants could own the property for no more rent than they were presently paying and then THE TENANTS could decide/control what happened to them there and would no longer be subject to any other authorities except the law, i.e., when and how repairs were made etc., and she looked at him, looked at the building and said something to the effect of "I ain't goin' for none of that!" This is most people in our world, I have found repeatedly over years of trying to help the "less fortunate!" Another for instance is that TV shows are blaring how there are no jobs, and people are living paycheck to paycheck, etc. and when I approach them and tell them that I have a trademarked system that can help people overcome such "handicaps," and that I have plenty of references to help people get jobs, even ex-convicts that won't hold their records against them, they block me from being able to post on their blogs, like the redoubtable, Bill Moyers and Company of PBS that has such a reputation for trust, so they say! From what I can tell from most of the workers that I have to deal with daily and they are many in all spheres from Walgreen's to my healthcare providers, the vast majority of workers are incompetent and have rotten attitudes! If they were doing such a great job, why weren't they retained when the rest of the people were? Employers, though not always fair supposedly are not stupid either! Everybody wants the best, but most don't want to give it to get it!
Another example is a friend of almost 20 years whom I've recently had to separate myself from because I was becoming a nasty, snarling, extraordinarily angry person when faced with what I understand to be his delusional thinking which has only gotten worse recently. One of our typical conversations was that he told me that everyone he talks to, most of whom I call "Soup kitchen denizens" agree with him that above and beyond the nutritional labeling on our food, they have a "right" to know what's in their food and in a democracy, the majority rules, which latter is true; however, he neglected to understand that America is NOT a democracy but a republic, the latter of which I understand is a society in which the minority opinion is also supposed to be considered in decision making. Further, many advance guard doctors say that one can easily and simply navigate our present food labeling for the most part by not eating anything that has more than five ingredients listed on its label or any ingredients that one doesn't know exactly what they are; this in moderation is relatively healthful. Sounds sensible and balanced to me!
I told my friend in answer to this that Americans are pretty much the only ones who think they have a right to know what's in their food and most people in other parts of the world KNOW they have no such right unless they grow the food themselves. I also suggested that he could do so since he is going to be so damned persnickety, which of course he doesn't have a clue how to do, e.g., what seed would be best, how to rotate same, crops, top soil, soil nutrients, etc. and he has no income whatsoever and therefore can't buy ANY food (!) eats at soup kitchens three times a day or when I fed him, lavishly and repeatedly out of my income, and can't tell me why he doesn't have any income nor how he pays his rent! It's something having to do with the "Will the God!" I even gave this dude a working computer FREE of charge (he has great ideas which could serve a lot of people and even make him a name which would last beyond his death on alternative technologies which he has amassed on said computer, but he absolutely will not listen to reason and be practical about how to go about implementing such ideas, which I tried to tell him in detail even writing them down!) and all he ever did was complain that I wouldn't listen to most of his bellyaching! Fool, me!
I feel responsible that I am attracting this type of person often, but for the most part, there are quite a lot of such overgrown adolescents and I too was one for a very long time. I tell these people how I overcame that handicap but they're interested in being professional victims. That's how they get their attention with the, "Oh, woe is me!" syndrome.
Finally, is there anyone here who would like to see my sell sheets for my healthful, delicious food line, including the two most powerful super-foods I've heard of, which I fed to the above-mentioned character for most of last year, again out of loyalty and misguided pity, and which seemed to be the only thing he was satisfied with, asking me for more and more even when we were both livid with each other, as do many others? If so, please contact me. I've also started a rationally based church like none I've ever heard of before in recorded history (Google: "Free Church of the Divine Marriage" [it's not what you may think from its name, I'm pretty sure!] to learn more and to contact me from there) as well as many other accomplishments under extreme duress from non-rational people!
I hope this finds you having a pleasant day!
comment by James_Miller · 2010-12-25T01:12:37.940Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm going to assign this to my introductory microeconomics students to help them understand opportunity costs.
Replies from: Yvain↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T03:12:21.290Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That sort of terrifies me, but in a good way.
At the risk of tooting my own horn, this essay only incidentally addresses opportunity costs, but I wrote another essay a few years ago in a different style that addresses them more directly: A Modest Proposal
Replies from: James_Miller, XiXiDu, Psy-Kosh, juliawise, DanielLC↑ comment by James_Miller · 2011-10-01T16:54:27.315Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I discussed the ideas in this essay with my students. I first ask my students how much an iPad costs. They give me some dollar amount, but then I say something like "I don't want the answer in dollars but rather in dead African children." Since we have just been discussing opportunity costs they catch on quickly to what I'm getting at.
Replies from: faul_sname↑ comment by faul_sname · 2012-04-19T06:50:12.123Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Are we counting resale value, and are we buying new or used? That makes rather a lot of difference.
↑ comment by XiXiDu · 2010-12-25T17:34:16.933Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Have you considered submitting your essay to LW? It might not fit the general objective perfectly well, but I believe it should be promoted and that many people would enjoy reading it.
That said, I have to thank you for all your great posts. It is a pleasure to read them. Being clear and concise you provide valuable insights while dissolvig important topics.
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by gwern · 2010-12-25T18:49:08.753Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'd certainly upvote any such submission. I mean:
"Not like I am any saint myself. The past two years, I've spent about two dead puppies on books from Amazon.com alone. I am probably going to spend very close to a whole dead child to fly home for my two week winter break, and I spent ten dead children on my trip around the world this summer. I spent four infected wounds on fantasy map-making software. But at least in the back of my mind I realize I'm doing it. Can the people who spend a dead kid plus a dead puppy on the world's most expensive sundae say the same? What about the Japanese guy spending 1050 dead kids on a mobile phone strap?"
Come on!
Replies from: XiXiDu↑ comment by XiXiDu · 2010-12-25T21:20:47.029Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I can't follow, are you being sarcastic about my suggestion? I guess it's a matter of taste. I thought the essay shows how our utility calculations are easily influenced by highlighting the potential of the fuel that is money. Most people just use their money to feed a fire for its warmth and the beautiful sparks. They do not realize that every banknote is worth more than the printed paper it is made up of. People do not see that a banknote can be used much more effectively. Renaming money is simple yet changes its perceived potential dramatically. As such the essay is a metaphor to caution against the burning of books that is fueling the fire of ignorance. Do not burn books if not absolutely necessary, use the potential effectively, read them!
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by Psy-Kosh · 2010-12-25T13:59:17.214Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You know... that actually seems like potentially a good idea. Not just a tongue in cheek style good idea, but I'm thinking that this could be an actually for real good idea, and not just as a way to make "those other people" see what they're doing. I'd want this implemented as a way to make it easier for me to keep such things in mind!
(The "infected wounds" link is broken, though, so mind explaining the concept re that?)
The only real difficulty that I see is that as things change (tech, economic conditions, etc), the actual cost of saving a child and the relative costs of saving a child vs saving puppies, etc might shift around. So you'd need some way to dynamically rename chunks of the currency. For instance, if improving tech and such leads to the equivalent of 400$ being sufficient to save a child, then what was called a DC would have to be renamed 2 DC.
This would be confusing.
Replies from: Yvain, shokwave, Armok_GoB↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T20:19:56.713Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The "infected wound" originally linked to some organization that donated first aid kits to those who couldn't afford them. I'll try to fix that next time I update the site.
Replies from: Psy-Kosh↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-25T14:19:04.025Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Float "dead children" as a currency and regulate that all prices must be expressed in US dollars and time-of-pricing equivalent value of dead children. Determine the exchange rate not through any normal currency concerns but strictly through the change in how many lives US dollars save.
Passing a law that does something like this seems almost feasible.
Replies from: Psy-Kosh↑ comment by Psy-Kosh · 2010-12-25T18:57:56.332Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hrm... That might work
For all shops that don't yet use electronic price tag type things, there'd obviously have to be a grace period along the lines of having a week/month/whatever to update the equivalences (due to changes in the exchange rate)
Of course, a rather uglier problem would be: "How do we manage to protect the equivalences calculation from extreme politicization and such?"
Even worse: How do we avoid businesses getting together to try to sabotage the efforts of efficient charities, that way leading to a higher dollar per child amount. ie, the less dead children per item, the more willing someone would be to purchase it, so there's a bit of a perverse incentive there.
Finally, if we solved all this: how do we push to make it a reality?
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T08:17:13.977Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
there'd obviously have to be a grace period along the lines of having a week/month/whatever to update the equivalences (due to changes in the exchange rate)
It doesn't even need that, just whenever a price is printed out, it needs the equivalent in dead children, at the time of printing. This is an incentive to change or reprint prices when the value of dead children rises and leave old labels alone when the value of dead children has dipped, but as long as the value of dead children doesn't fluctuate wildly (ie it doesn't respond to speculation about a new dirt cheap cure, only to extensive statistics on the current cost to save a child) then it should be mostly right.
The perverse incentives, political influence, and potential for Goodhart's Law and lost purposes to come into play are all serious concerns - all the more terrifying because these surely play a part in current aid schemes.
...
You would need some kind of X-Rationalist Reserve Bank of Dead Children who recite the Litany of Tarski ("If this change is to the truthful value of dead children, I desire to make this change. If this change is not to the truthful value of dead children, I desire not to make this change") every morning, and have an investigative group empowered to seek out and punish interference in charitable work, preferably in the form of huge fines payable to the affected charities (the Perverse Incentive Disincentives Task Force).
Finally, if we solved all this: how do we push to make it a reality?
Yvain for President?
↑ comment by DanielLC · 2010-12-25T23:43:57.939Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
First off, I don't like your suggestion for smaller currencies. If you want to deal with fractions of a life, just use life-years, life-days, etc.
Second, you spent ten dead children on a vacation? Keeping it in the back of your head doesn't matter. What matters is the people who are still alive. A group of people that's ten smaller, thanks to your decision.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere, faul_sname↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-26T00:04:05.448Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There are much more worthwhile things to do than accuse someone who is making a reasonable and rational effort to better the world and help others do so as well of being insufficiently self-sacrificial.
↑ comment by faul_sname · 2012-04-19T06:54:24.746Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A group of people that's also likely hundreds of people larger by his direct decisions, and probably thousands or tens of thousands of people larger by the decisions he influenced.
comment by lukeprog · 2011-06-09T07:27:24.128Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This week on Facebook, Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) wrote that this article had more impact on him than anything else he read all year. He said: "Of all the articles I've read in the past 6 months, this one had the biggest impact on me."
Replies from: Yvain↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2011-07-05T21:13:20.038Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I hadn't seen that! Thanks for bringing it up.
comment by bentarm · 2010-12-25T12:30:01.145Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Pretty much a corollary of this is Steve Landsburg's (for some reason controversial) point that you should only ever be donating money to one charity at a time (unless you're ridiculously rich). The charity which makes the best use out of your first $1 donation is almost certainly also the charity which makes the best use out of your 1000th dollar as well. Once you've done the calculation, spreading your money between different charities isn't hedging your bets, it's giving money to the wrong charity.
See his Slate article for a slightly more fleshed out version of the reasoning.
Replies from: novalis, Vaniver, ciphergoth, DSimon, erniebornheimer↑ comment by novalis · 2010-12-29T05:17:24.612Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There is one exception to this, which is political charities (ACLU, for instance). Giving to political charities, has a signalling effect: a political charity can say "we have twelve million donors," and this tells politicians that they had better listen to that charity or those twelve million people might be voting for someone else.
That said, a $10 donation is enough to get this effect.
↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T16:02:17.238Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The advice I hear is "limit yourself to three charities"- useful because it allows you to broaden your fuzzies (like supporting economic liberty and cute animals and 3rd world development) while significantly decreasing the overhead costs to the charities. They would much rather have a $1,000 donor than 10 $100 donors, especially if that donor has made an annual commitment.
Replies from: Document↑ comment by Document · 2011-07-06T18:21:05.052Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Is that compatible with points five and six here, or is it a standing disagreement among activists?
Replies from: Vaniver↑ comment by Vaniver · 2011-07-06T19:15:00.022Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I suspect that SIAI is in a different position from most charities.
I don't know what percentage of charities are low on public support, but I suspect that is not a serious issue for most donors, as most donors couldn't provide more than 2% of a charity's total income, even with a third of their total charity budget.
Most charities have a practice of sending endless streams of junk mail, and so for most charities a gift of a few dollars is actually a losing proposition in the long term, since you sent the signal you would be receptive to future donation requests but don't actually send more money. The SIAI's strategy (and costs for emailing) are different from most charities, suggesting that different advice makes sense for them.
↑ comment by Paul Crowley (ciphergoth) · 2010-12-28T14:21:36.620Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I actually tend to argue this point first, and the more general point about efficient charity second. I'm not sure if that's the most effective way to argue it though.
Replies from: apophenia↑ comment by erniebornheimer · 2011-07-13T18:23:28.149Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
From the aricle: "CARE is a noble organization that fights starvation. It would like your support. The American Cancer Society is a noble organization that fights disease. It would like your support, too. Here's my advice: If you're feeling very charitable, give generously—but don't give to both of them. ... Giving to either agency is a choice attached to a clear moral judgment. When you give $100 to CARE, you assert that CARE is worthier than the cancer society. Having made that judgment, you are morally bound to apply it to your next $100 donation."
Landsburg is wrong, and here's why. Because the world is shades of gray, not black and white. It's not clear what the best charity is, even by one's own standards (partly because those standards are not clear, and they sometimes conflict with each other). We know ourselves well enough to know we're not smart enough to make those judgments perfectly, so we don't bother with trying for perfection, but rather with making sure to do at least some good. It's hedging our bets knowing that some of the money is going to the "wrong" charity (we're just not sure which one is "wrong").
Replies from: jsalvatier, MatthewBaker↑ comment by jsalvatier · 2011-07-13T18:44:19.252Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This depends on why you're donating. If you're trying to get the mental state of feeling 'I did some good' or you're trying to impress your friends/family (certainly legitimate goals), then this logic might work. If you're trying to help people as much as possible then this logic does not work because the amount you expect to have helped people rises linearly with the probability that the charity helps.
One common strategy is to spend a smallish amount of money giving to various causes that make us feel good and/or impress others and a larger amount of money on a single charity optimized for helping people as much as possible.
↑ comment by MatthewBaker · 2011-07-13T19:24:55.324Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Also, to quote text simply use the modifier >
comment by SK2 (lunchbox) · 2010-12-25T16:57:55.191Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's a useful exercise for aspiring economists and rationalists to dissect charity into separate components of warm fuzzies vs. efficiency. However, maybe it's best for the general population not to be fully conscious that these are separate components, since the spirit of giving is like a frog: you can dissect it, but it dies in the process (adaptation of an E.B. White quote).
Lemma: we want charity to be enjoyable, so that more people are motivated to do it. (Analogy: capitalist countries let rich people keep their riches, to create an incentive for economic growth, even though it might create more utility in the short term to tax rich people very highly.)
Consider this quote from the article:
If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it.
Sure, but making the lawyer conscious of this will give him a complete buzzkill. He will realize that he was unconsciously doing the act for selfish (and kind of silly) reasons. Your hope in telling him this is that he will instead opt to use his $1000 salary to hire people, but I question whether he would actually follow through with that kind of giving in the long run, since his unconscious original motive was warm fuzzies, not efficiency. In effect, you may have prevented him from doing anything charitable at all. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
So, this article is great fodder for someone trained in rationalist/economic thought, but keep in mind that this type of thinking makes many people uneasy.
Replies from: DSimon, DanielLC, Mqrius↑ comment by DSimon · 2010-12-27T18:40:13.323Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is a genuine problem you're presenting, and I think it requires a third solution besides the presented options of "Let the lawyer do what he wants" and "Give the lawyer a buzzkill". What we need to do is find a way of getting the lawyer to understand what the right thing to do is, without making them feel defensive or like a jerk. If we make the bullet tasty enough, it'll get easier to swallow.
Rationalist marketing FTU (For The Utilons).
Replies from: Silhalnor↑ comment by Silhalnor · 2015-11-04T21:26:44.538Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
So, is my goal in explaining this stuff to someone to maximize efficiency at achieving their goals (warm fuzzies), or to maximize efficiency at achieving my goals (charity)? (Or maybe I want warm fuzzies and the lawyer wants charity, whatever.)
Replies from: DSimon↑ comment by DSimon · 2016-02-01T00:51:46.108Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The lawyer wants both warm fuzzies and charitrons, but has conflated the two, and will probably get buzzkilled (and lose out on both measures) if the distinction is made clear. The best outcome is one where the lawyer gets to maximize both, and that happens at the end of a long road that begins with introspection about what warm fuzzies ought to mean.
↑ comment by DanielLC · 2014-03-07T20:35:14.811Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you learn about how to give right, some of the warm fuzzies will go away, and fewer people will donate, but the people who do donate will donate better.
If all you're going to be doing is picking up litter at a beach, it really doesn't matter if you stop when you find out it's not helping people. You can find another hobby.
↑ comment by Mqrius · 2013-01-07T22:58:26.361Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Not quite the same scenario, but close: often when I'm considering donating to some charity, there's a reminder in the back of my head that if I were to truly support this charity I would donate a much larger amount. This isn't a happy thought, it generates conflict: there's another part of me that doesn't like spending large amounts of money. Thus, I often donate nothing at all.
I'm still working on this conflict.
comment by Elizabeth · 2010-12-25T05:15:39.769Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I find I run into a conundrum on this question, because there is a bias I fear overcompensating for. I know as a human that I am biased to care more about the one person standing in front of me than those ten thousand people starving in India that I'll never meet, but I find it difficult to apply that information. I know that donating money to, say, those malaria nets, will probably save more lives than donating to, say, my local food pantry. By these arguments, it seems that that fact should trump all, and I should donate to those malaria nets.
However, I know that my local food pantry is an organization that feeds people who really need food, that it has virtually no overhead, and that there are children who would be malnourished without it. I also know that there are people all over the world who will contribute to malaria nets, but it is highly unlikely that anyone outside my community will contribute to my local food pantry.
I agree that it is vitally important to think carefully about how we spend our charity money, and I understand that the difficulty I am having with this topic is an indication that I need to think more deeply on it, but I keep coming up against two basic issues.
There is no simple metric for "most good done." What if one disease costs little to prevent death, but leaves survivors crippled, while another costs much more to prevent death but leaves people healthy? Should I donate to the first, and burden the communities with many cripples, or to the second, and let people die? With food and medical care costing more in the developed world, should I only donate to help those in the undeveloped world, where my dollar will go farther?
Should I feel guilty for donating money to public radio because it doesn't save children? No. My purpose in donating money to public radio is to keep my favorite shows on the air, and my donations do that very efficiently. Yes, the money could go to save children, but so could the money I use to pay my cable bill. I should perhaps not consider it as charity the way I do a donation that saves children, but I should not feel guilty. If I have $500 allocated for entertainment and $500 allocated for charity, perhaps it should come out of the former. However, it would be disingenuous to say that donations for more frivolous causes, such as saving artwork, could be donated to better causes, such as malaria nets, unless we also point out that what we spent on our fancy dinner or our new dress or going to the movies could also be thus allocated.
↑ comment by clarissethorn · 2010-12-25T05:42:06.210Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The second point is something that really gets me. It seems to me that rather than feeling bad about donating to one charity rather than a more efficient or more "important" other charity, we should feel bad about spending money on frivolities rather than donating to charity. Nonprofit organizations are forced to compete against each other for slender resources in many ways, including donor dollars -- why can't they compete against things that have less moral value instead? It would be awesome if there were more social pressure to donate to charity rather than going to the movies or buying pretty clothes.
Interestingly, however, there is some social stigma against donating "too much". A few years ago, there was a New York gentleman who donated a much larger than "normal" percentage of his money to charity, as well as his kidney, plus some other stuff. (I'm sorry, I really wish I could remember his name, but I am very sure I have these details correct, because I read a lot about it at the time.) People speculated in the press about his mental status and other children mocked his kids at school, although his family was hardly left poor by the experience, and his health was not endangered.
In terms of the point in the OP about the lawyer who should be working overtime rather than volunteering ... I struggle with this so much. I spend most of my time doing activism, and I have friends who spend more time than I do (who do things like take very low-paying part-time jobs in order to finance spending most of their time doing activism), but most of us are sex-positive activists, and sex-positive activism is arguably an extremely "low priority" type of activism. If we are concerned about saving more lives, for example, then we should be dedicating our time to other types of activism, or we should be using our intelligence to get awesome jobs and then spending the money on charity. However, I (for one) have tried dedicating all my time to doing activism that seemed "more important" (HIV in Africa) rather than the activism that is most interesting to me (various types of sexuality stuff in America), and I was both less happy and less effective. I am also very sure that I would be unhappy if I dedicated my considerable IQ to becoming a corporate bitch and then donating lots of money, rather than working directly on the issues I care about.
Additionally, it is undeniable that someone has to work on the issues I care about, or else who would I donate money to even if I had a lot of it?
Replies from: ciphergoth, Vaniver, alexanderis, DanielLC, milindsmart↑ comment by Paul Crowley (ciphergoth) · 2010-12-27T17:46:08.546Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I (for one) have tried dedicating all my time to doing activism that seemed "more important" (HIV in Africa) rather than the activism that is most interesting to me (various types of sexuality stuff in America), and I was both less happy and less effective
There's a story I like to tell when I hear this. Louise and Claire are both concerned about global warming. Louise is full of passion for the subject and does what moves her most; through her hard work persuades a thousand people to unplug their phone chargers at night. Claire can't get worked up about it even though she understands it's important; in a drunken conversation one night she persuades one friend to turn down their central heating one degree.
Claire's choice of an efficient way to reduce CO2 emissions absolutely swamps the difference in enthusiasm; she does considerably more good than Louise.
Replies from: JulianMorrison↑ comment by JulianMorrison · 2011-03-24T01:23:27.804Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This makes me wonder if giving out free clothing vouchers in winter might be an effective global warming hack.
Replies from: faul_sname↑ comment by faul_sname · 2012-04-19T06:57:11.222Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Things like this are why I love Lesswrong.
↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T11:05:04.034Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
we should feel bad about spending money on frivolities rather than donating to charity.
This is standard religious dogma. Secular activists rarely have the gumption to make it part of their pitches.
Interestingly, however, there is some social stigma against donating "too much".
When you take seriously something other people are hypocritical about, it makes them edgy.
most of us are sex-positive activists, and sex-positive activism is arguably an extremely "low priority" type of activism.
Not for me. Keep up the good work :D
Additionally, it is undeniable that someone has to work on the issues I care about, or else who would I donate money to even if I had a lot of it?
Comparative advantage. Compare you being an activist and your donors working (which includes you working a low-value job to donate to yourself) and you working and donating to the marginal activist. Which scenario is superior?
The standard lawyer/secretary example comes to mind- even if the lawyer types much faster, they're better off having their secretary type for them. As an activist, are you a lawyer or a secretary? If gainfully employed, would you be a lawyer or a secretary?
Replies from: michaelkeenan, clarissethorn↑ comment by michaelkeenan · 2010-12-28T09:49:08.553Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
we should feel bad about spending money on frivolities rather than donating to charity.
This is standard religious dogma. Secular activists rarely have the gumption to make it part of their pitches.
That isn't a counter-argument. The idea is not wrong because religious people say it, and requiring gumption also does not make an idea wrong.
A completely secular presentation of the idea can be found in The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer.
Replies from: Vaniver↑ comment by clarissethorn · 2010-12-26T04:17:34.703Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Good point re: religious dogma. I think there are studies showing that religious/conservative folks are much better at volunteering and donating to charity than liberal/secular folks. It's too bad.
Re: lawyer/secretary, well, the longer I focus my time on activism the more likely it becomes that if I were more "gainfully employed" I'd be a secretary ... :P
↑ comment by alexanderis · 2010-12-25T19:27:14.909Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think the guy you're thinking of is Zell Kravinsky.
Replies from: clarissethorn↑ comment by clarissethorn · 2010-12-26T04:15:36.524Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, it looks like it. Funny, I was sure he lived in Long Island, but I don't remember why. Chalk another one up to memory being fallible even when I was "very sure" about the details.
Here's a New Yorker piece: http://facstaff.unca.edu/moseley/zellkravinsky'skidney.pdf
↑ comment by milindsmart · 2015-02-08T07:41:06.019Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A vote for the statement that : sex-positive activism is (unarguably) an extremely "low priority" type of activism.
It might be better if you can find ways to change what you feel happy about.
Just my 2p.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T21:10:21.944Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Should I feel guilty for donating money to public radio because it doesn't save children? No.
I agree and would go even further. Guilt is a terrible motivator and one that I would does not apply to anything involving charitable contributions. Well except for, say, mugging the aid workers to steal other's contributions. In such cases guilt serves an entirely different and somewhat useful role.
This is a simple question of "What do you want?" If you want to reduce malaria infections buy nets (probably). If you want to save a radio station save a radio station. If you have multiple things you want to prioritize them and do multiplications or approximations thereof.
Never let anyone make you feel guilty for doing things that achieve your goals. Even yourself.
Replies from: Pfft↑ comment by Pfft · 2010-12-26T06:36:53.430Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Never let anyone make you feel guilty for doing things that achieve your goals.
Really? Suppose I want to murder my old primary-school teacher, in a final revenge for all that arithmetic homework. Should I not feel guilty?
Replies from: AdeleneDawner↑ comment by AdeleneDawner · 2010-12-26T07:11:58.004Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If there's any part of that you should feel guilty about, it's having the goal in the first place, not what you do to achieve it. Feeling guilty about buying poison or sharpening a knife doesn't make much difference if you keep thinking that the murder itself is a good idea.
Replies from: DanielLC↑ comment by DanielLC · 2010-12-26T07:54:18.447Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well if you get right down to it, feeling guilty only makes it worse. You should just not have the goal in the first place.
The point is that listening to a radio station should be significantly below saving lives on your list of goals.
Replies from: Elizabeth, AdeleneDawner↑ comment by Elizabeth · 2010-12-26T15:59:15.924Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My point was that it is not any more wrong to spend money on public radio than to spend money on cable tv or a new iPod. Yes, in theory all my money not spent on food and shelter could go to saving children, but you are not going to do that, I am not going to do that, and no one either of us knows is going to do that.
↑ comment by AdeleneDawner · 2010-12-26T11:19:30.118Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well if you get right down to it, feeling guilty only makes it worse. You should just not have the goal in the first place.
Hence the 'if' at the beginning of my comment, though in practice I do see how guilt can be useful at that stage: Most people don't have complete control over their emotions or what they want, and given the choice between someone wanting to murder someone, feeling guilty about wanting that, and not doing it because they feel guilty about even considering it, and someone wanting to murder someone, deciding that that's a perfectly reasonable thing to want, and actually going through with it, the former is pretty clearly preferable. Not wanting to murder someone at all is preferable to either of those, but humans are pretty lousy at wanting what we want to want.
↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T20:32:52.994Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The first question is hard but not confusing (I'd say "yes" to the developing world example, though); the second question confuses me too and I don't have a good answer.
I think this whole "efficient charity" field is working in the tradition of utility theory, where people's desires are treated as givens and the only interesting question is how to maximize achievement of those desires.
In that context, if you desire getting nice clothes with strength X, and desire helping other people with strength Y, then you divide your resources accordingly and try to maximize the niceness of the clothes you get with X resources and the number of people you help with Y resources. In that model, "try and help as many people as you can per charity dollar" is about all you can say.
This is a terribly oversimplified model, both because desires might be more complicated (your desire might not be to help people, but to help Americans, or to help people who enjoy public radio like you do), and because people are not utilitarian agents and it is possible to change the strength of your desires. A model that takes those into account would have to, among other things, fully understand morality and what it means to "want" something, and I don't fully understand either, though they're both research interests.
So this essay is only about how to avoid one particularly obvious mistake that's easy to model in utility theory, and not about how to avoid more important moral and psychological mistakes.
On the harder problems, without having much philosophical foundation for doing so, I recommend Giving What We Can
↑ comment by multifoliaterose · 2011-01-22T07:24:32.558Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Late response, but:
(a) The domestic vs. international issue is not clear cut - see, e.g. GiveWell research message board posts by Elie Hassenfeld and by Jason Fehr. More generally, I think that at least at present it's quite unclear which philanthropic efforts are most cost-effective.
(b) In regards to
However, I know that my local food pantry is an organization that feeds people who really need food, that it has virtually no overhead, and that there are children who would be malnourished without it. I also know that there are people all over the world who will contribute to malaria nets, but it is highly unlikely that anyone outside my community will contribute to my local food pantry.
see Holden Karnofsky's post Hunger Here vs. Hunger There.
(c) In regards to:
My purpose in donating money to public radio is to keep my favorite shows on the air, and my donations do that very efficiently. Yes, the money could go to save children, but so could the money I use to pay my cable bill. I should perhaps not consider it as charity the way I do a donation that saves children, but I should not feel guilty.
You might be interested by komponisto's comments to a post that I made which are in similar spirit.
See also Holden Karnofsky's Nothing wrong with selfish giving - just don't call it philanthropy and the comments to it.
↑ comment by DanielLC · 2010-12-25T23:30:10.126Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There is no simple metric for "most good done."
I suggest the QALY, or quality-adjusted life year.
Should I feel guilty for donating money to public radio because it doesn't save children?
Yes. Sure you want radio, but they don't want to die. Who says your wants are more important?
Could you justify killing people for entertainment? Is this any different?
Replies from: shokwave, Lumifer, army1987↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T15:05:53.707Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I consider DALY - disability-adjusted life years - better than quality-adjusted.
Basically, I am leery of letting people choose their own factors when given a range of 1 being perfect life and 0 being death. For instance, a charity that cures blindness in impoverished sections of Africa, with a pro-this-charity treatment might choose 0.1 as blind, 0.9 as cured (blindness is hugely disadvantageous, giving back sight is therefore a huge improvement); an anti-this-charity treatment might choose 0.1 as blind and 0.3 as cured (the rest of their life still sucks). This means a QALY-based look at the charity could over- or under-estimate by as much as a factor of 4! Comparisons of charities based on QALYs that are gamed could, possibly, be only viable on order-of-magnitudes.
Replies from: DanielLC↑ comment by A1987dM (army1987) · 2013-11-08T07:59:18.303Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes. Sure you want radio, but they don't want to die. Who says your wants are more important?
The fact that it's her own money?
comment by pnrjulius · 2012-06-12T02:02:06.091Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I can't see any flaws in the argument, but the conclusion is far more radical than most of us would be willing to admit.
Am I the sort of person who would value my computer over another human being's life? I hope not, that makes me sound like the most horrible sort of psychopath---it is basically the morality of Stalin. But at the same time, did I sell my computer to feed kids in Africa? I did not. Nor did any of you, unless you are reading this at a library computer (in which case I'm sure I can find something you could have given up that would have allowed you to give just a little bit more to some worthy charitable cause.)
It gets worse: Is my college education worth the lives of fifty starving children? Because I surely paid more than that. Is this house I'm living in worth eight hundred life-saving mosquito nets? Because that's how much it cost.
Our entire economic system is based on purchases that would be "unjustified"---even immoral---on the view that every single purchase must be made on this kind of metric. And so if we all stopped doing that, our economy would collapse and we would be starving instead.
I think it comes down to this: Consequentialism is a lot harder than it looks. It's not enough to use the simple heuristic, "Is this purchase worth a child's life?"; no, you've got to carry out the full system of consequences---in principle, propagated to our whole future light cone. (In fact, there's a very good reason not to ask that question: Because of our socialization, we have a taboo in our brains about never saying that something is worth more than a child---even when it obviously is.) You've got to note that once the kid survives malaria, he'll probably die of something else, like malnutrition, or HIV, or a parasite infection. You've got to note that if people didn't go to college and become scientific researchers, we wouldn't even know about HIV or malaria or anything else. You've got to keep in mind the whole system of modified capitalism and the social democratic welfare state that makes your massive wealth possible---and really, I think you should be trying to figure out how to export it to places that don't have it, not skimming off the income that drives it to save one child's life at a time.
And if you think, "Ah ha! We'll just work for the Singularity then!" well, that's a start---and you should, in fact, devote some of your time, energy, and money to the Singularity---but it's not a solution by itself. How much time should you spend trying to make yourself happy? How much effort should you devote to your family, your friends? How important is love compared to what you might be doing---and how much will your effectiveness depend on you being loved? We might even ask: Would we even want to make a Singularity if it meant that no one ever fell in love?
This is why I'm not quite a gung-ho consequentialist. Ultimately consequentialism is right, there can be no doubt about that; but in practical terms, I don't think most people are smart enough for it. (I'm not sure I'm smart enough for it.) It might be better, actually, to make people follow simple rules like "Don't cheat, don't lie, don't kill, don't steal"; if everyone followed those rules, we'd be doing all right. (Most of the really horrible things in this world are deontic violations, like tyranny and genocide.) At the very least, the standard deontic rules are better heuristics than asking, "Is it worth the life of a child?"
Replies from: Grognor, WingedViper, insigniff↑ comment by Grognor · 2012-07-04T04:07:58.845Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is a super-duper nice comment.
Most of the really horrible things in this world are deontic violations, like tyranny and genocide.
Disagree. Most of the really horrible things in this world are just accidents that not enough people are paying attention to. If animals can suffer then millions of Holocausts are happening every day. If insects can suffer then tens of billions are. In any case humans can certainly suffer, and they're doing plenty of that from pure accident. Probably less than a twentieth of human suffering is intentionally caused by other humans. (Though I will say that the absolute magnitude of human-intent-caused human suffering is unbelievably huge.)
↑ comment by WingedViper · 2012-07-02T07:07:35.826Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Upvoted. I really like this comment because it shows some of my own concerns about consequentialism. For example I have decided that for most cases the deontic answers fit the consequentialist ones so well that we should start out following them and only if they appear to be nonsatisfactory we should dive into consequentialist reasoning. This quite leads to some peace of mind, but it obviously is the easy answer, not the correct one... Is there a post on lesswrong for deontology as a subset of consequentialism? (According to wikipedia there seem to be some scientists that state a similar opinion.)
Replies from: Lukas_Gloor, wedrifid↑ comment by Lukas_Gloor · 2012-07-04T03:33:46.766Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The utilitarian philosopher RM Hare has proposed a solution along the lines you suggest, it's called two-level utilitarianism. From Wikipedia:
As a descriptive model of the two levels, Hare posited two extreme cases of people, one of whom would only use critical moral thinking and the other of whom would only use intuitive moral thinking. The former he called the 'archangel' and the latter the 'prole'.
I think the concept has merit, but if you're smart and willing enough to do it, you'd have to act according to the "critical level" (conventional consequentialism) anyway.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2012-07-02T09:27:57.724Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
we should start out following them and only if they appear to be nonsatisfactory we should dive into consequentialist reasoning.
Your actual values are the ones that determine "what appears satisfactory".
Replies from: WingedViper↑ comment by WingedViper · 2012-07-03T10:05:39.871Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Of course, that's why I would call myself a consequentialist even though I mainly/very often argue by using deontic principles. I wasn't talking about theory (or foundation), but about the practicality/practical use of deontic reasoning versus consequentialism.
↑ comment by insigniff · 2013-08-11T10:18:24.023Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I have yet to familiarize myself more with effective altruism to know the details of their metrics, but it seems like the reliance on 'number of lives saved per unit money' doesn't necessarily align with the goal of helping people, which i think this post demonstrates well. And then there's the arguably relevant issue of over-population. If everyone contributed some of their education funding on saving lives, wouldn't the Earth get over-populated before sufficient technological progress was made to e.g inhabit another planet?
comment by kybernetikos · 2010-12-25T05:58:08.208Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Most of us allocate a particular percentage to charity, despite the fact that most people would say that nearly nothing we spend money on is as important as saving childrens lives.
I don't know whether you think it's that we overestimate how much we value saving childrens lives, or underestimate how important xbox games, social events, large tvs and eating tasty food are to us. Or perhaps you think it's none of that, and that we're being simply irrational.
I doubt that anyone could consistently live as if the difference between choice of renting a nice flat and renting a dive was one life per month, or that halving normal grocery consumption for a month was a childs life that month, etc. If that's really the aim, we're going to have to do a significant amount of emotional engineering.
I also want to stick up for the necessity of analysing the way that a charity works, not just what they do. For example, charities that employ local people and local equipment may save fewer people per dollar in the short term, but may be less likely to create a culture of dependence, and may be more sustainable in the long term. These considerations are important too.
Replies from: DanielLC↑ comment by DanielLC · 2014-03-07T20:38:09.027Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I doubt that anyone could consistently live as if the difference between choice of renting a nice flat and renting a dive was one life per month, or that halving normal grocery consumption for a month was a childs life that month, etc.
Then don't. Use two-level utilitarianism. Live like this for a brief amount of time, during which you decide how to live the rest of the time. Work out how much you can cut your budget before you start earning less or the risk of giving up goes to high, and live like that for a period before you go back and check to see if it's working well again.
comment by Desrtopa · 2011-01-07T05:02:35.957Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Although I definitely agree with the thrust of the article, I don't feel that lives-saved is necessarily a very good metric of utility. A child in the Third World might be saved from malaria, but grow up nutrient deficient leading to reduced mental capacity, work on a subsistence farm, contract HIV, and die after having three kids, who subsequently starve. A charity that prevented fewer deaths in a predictable causal sequence might still be a better utility maximizer if it had a greater positive effect on people's quality of life.
Of course, a lot of us already agree on the best available utility maximizing charity, but even among the more "mundane" options I think that causes such as promoting education in the third world may beat out direct life-saving maximizers.
Replies from: Doreen, Vaste↑ comment by Doreen · 2011-11-16T15:26:14.789Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with Desrtopa in that "I don't feel that lives-saved is necessarily a very good metric of utility." Death is binary (dead / not dead), but human pain and suffering is not. This should impact the analysis. Assuming the same cost to save the life, if forced to decide between saving someone from a fatal gunshot wound (perhaps in a war or encampment somewhere) versus saving someone from pancreatic cancer (according to Livestrong, one of the most painful terminal diseases), the outcome (life-saving) may be the same in either case, but there is more utility in saving the latter because overall pain would be reduced.
Thanks for this article; it's a fantastic read.
↑ comment by Vaste · 2012-01-17T17:21:39.790Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Perhaps a better idea would be to spend money on education of women in poor areas, something that is known to reduce the fertility rate. By reducing the fertility rate we also reduce the number of poor, starving, dying in HIV etc children born into this world.
I think that simply measuring the number of dead children may be useful as a simplification, but it's too simplistic. Really, to me it seems like it's just something that people believing in axiomatic morals are having problems dealing with. "But, think of the children!"
If the answer to "is it better to spend this money on saving a kids life?" is always yes, I'd say you have a problem with your value system.
comment by davetrow · 2010-12-25T05:40:47.889Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"The lawyer who quits a high-powered law firm to work at a nonprofit organization certainly seems like a good person. But if we define "good" as helping people, then the lawyer who stays at his law firm but donates the profit to charity is taking Cato's path of maximizing how much good he does, rather than how good he looks."
Wouldn't that depend on how much harm the lawyer might do by remaining at the high-powered law firm? What if the law firm specializes in socially-harmful activities, like defending corporate malfeasance or (pick your example). How does that fit into the equation?
In other words, I don't think it's that simple, although it's an excellent place to start, and I will certainly check out GiveWell for our next charitable tithing session.
Replies from: mosasaur↑ comment by mosasaur · 2010-12-25T10:14:27.206Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Wouldn't that depend on how much harm the lawyer might do by remaining at the high-powered law firm?"
Yes. This logical error is present in all the charity related articles. By the time you own the money it is too late. You have helped a corrupt system to become even more corrupt. No amount of money donated to charity -- not even a multiple of the money you earned -- can right that wrong. Not even with maximally effective charity.
If the leaders are wrong and can't be deposed it doesn't help to try and save their victims, because as soon as you help them, whatever they gain is taken from them and used to strengthen the rule of their oppressors. The victims can save themselves if they are ready to serve the oppressors, for example by listening to yvain's and other's feel good charity, and become high powered lawyers, but in that way they only spiral the system into more and more corruption. The fact that they try and make the ones not cooperating with corruption look like they are not helping doesn't make it OK to then make matters worse and claim you are doing good.
The new speak runs several levels deep here.
Replies from: bentarm↑ comment by bentarm · 2010-12-25T12:21:32.054Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes. This logical error is present in all the charity related articles. By the time you own the money it is too late. You have helped a corrupt system to become even more corrupt
I might be missing something, but this (and the rest of your post) reads basically like Marxist propaganda. Are you seriously suggesting that anyone who makes a lot of money has done so through "corruption"? I would hope LW was one of the places on the internet that this sort of "truism" could be avoided. Just about the only way to make a lot of money is to do something that other people want doing, and which you do better than average.
The fact that they try and make the ones not cooperating with corruption look like they are not helping doesn't make it OK to then make matters worse and claim you are doing good
I'm seriously struggling to parse this sentence, but it seems to be essentially saying that you're going to stick with your gut instinct that working for a high-powered law firm can't possibly be as good as working for a nice fluffy non-profit, and damn the numbers.
Replies from: Vaniver, mosasaur↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T14:57:22.009Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Just about the only way to make a lot of money is to do something that other people want doing, and which you do better than average.
This really isn't true. But if you said "the ways to make money we're talking about" then we'd be fine. The most morally objectionable job I've seen suggested on LW is working in finance, and the worst you can do there is be a con man (though on a pretty massive scale).
Replies from: Will_Sawin↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2010-12-25T16:56:59.812Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Caveat Certain financial actions may increase the likelihood or magnitude of a financial crisis. Financial crises are bad on the scale of the finance sector and so this is significant on the margin.
↑ comment by mosasaur · 2010-12-25T13:37:17.442Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"I might be missing something, but this (and the rest of your post) reads basically like Marxist propaganda."
Thank you. Marx was a very intelligent person who unraveled much of the inner workings of capitalism. His error was -- I think -- that there is something like a collective will of the people (a CEV, maybe) and that there is an effective way of measuring and implementing it. We all know how badly it turned out. But maybe the idea of harnessing collective greed is even worse because it seems flawed already from the beginning.
"Just about the only way to make a lot of money is to do something that other people want doing, and which you do better than average."
This is quite wrong. There is also a very big effort to prevent other people from acquiring things, and I don't just mean WMD. Maybe you could read up on the concept of artificial scarcity.
"... you're going to stick with your gut instinct that working for a high-powered law firm can't possibly be as good as working for a nice fluffy non-profit, and damn the numbers"
My gut instinct tells me a lawyer who in his day job secures a quarter of a billion dollar settlement with an evil regime to prevent legal persecution of an evil politician involved with a major weapons manufacturer, cannot offset this with buying a few mosquito nets for children in that same third world country.
Replies from: shokwave, wedrifid↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-25T14:26:55.726Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My gut instinct tells me a lawyer who in his day job secures a quarter of a billion dollar settlement with an evil regime to prevent legal persecution of an evil politician involved with a major weapons manufacturer, cannot offset this with buying a few mosquito nets for children in that same third world country.
What does you gut instinct say about a lawyer who is paid an average of a quarter of a million dollars for a year's work in which e puts an average of 2 innocent people in jail for six years each and donates on average 2% of er income (5000 dollars) to buying mosquito nets for third world children, saving on average 10 lives?
You seem to be considering the absolute worst case scenario, and adding in extraneous considerations to unfairly sway the argument to your side.
Replies from: Vaniver, mosasaur↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T15:03:27.103Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What does you gut instinct say about a lawyer who is paid an average of a quarter of a million dollars for a year's work in which e puts an average of 2 innocent people in jail for six years each and donates on average 2% of er income (5000 dollars) to buying mosquito nets for third world children, saving on average 10 lives?
My gut instinct says "2*6 years of OECD citizen freedom > 10*45 years of sub-Saharan African lifespan". Not sure where my point of indifference is. Note that I'm making a very charitable assumption as to how much a mosquito net extends lifespans; typically interventions like this just keep you alive long enough to hit your next emergency.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-25T15:30:44.448Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is the kind of response I want: one that doesn't say "damn the numbers".
Replies from: Vaniver↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T15:46:34.104Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is the kind of response I want:
I'm sorry, this is ambiguous. Does "this" refer to the second half of your post, my post, or both?
Stepping through some of the math, in case others are interested:
Assume the people in question earn the median American salary- 6 years of not working is 2*6*$32k=$384k, and add on the cost of imprisoning them: 2*6*$22k=$264k. So the lawyer is doing damage to the tune of $648,000, and in return is putting $5,000 (that's .77%) to use saving people. Let's assume they're earning, say, the Liberian per capita GDP (which is generally higher than median income) of $424, and again make the charitable assumption that the $5000 converts into 450 years of lifespan. We've added $190,800 by keeping them alive.
Net dollar loss: $457k. So this lawyer's participation in the system is eating half a million dollars per year; is that worth "extended lives in Liberia" - "imprisoned years in America"? I strongly suspect not.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by mosasaur · 2010-12-25T14:43:34.590Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"What does you gut instinct say about a lawyer who is paid an average of a quarter of a million dollars for a year's work in which e puts an average of 2 innocent people in jail for six years each and donates on average 2% of er income (5000 dollars) to buying mosquito nets for third world children, saving on average 10 lives?"
You are forgetting the lawyer works to uphold the status quo. If that status quo ("the system") also makes arms dealers reach and invades third world countries or does other despicable things, the net effect of the lawyers actions can still be negative. Think about it as different math operators. You can name a number as big as you want but if I can change the sign of it, it will always be smaller than my small positive number.
"You seem to be considering the absolute worst case scenario, and adding in extraneous considerations to unfairly sway the argument to your side."
I was thrown a bit off balance by the pejorative "marxist propaganda". I don't want to post too much politics in this thread so this will be my last contribution.
Replies from: shokwave, wedrifid↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-25T15:03:39.870Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You are forgetting the lawyer works to uphold the status quo. If that status quo ("the system") also makes arms dealers reach and invades third world countries or does other despicable things, the net effect of the lawyers actions can still be negative.
The amount that a criminal trial lawyer contributes to the status quo as it relates to the suffering of third world countries is negligible; it is fair to ignore such small constants.
Incidentally, I downvoted bentarm's comment about Marxism and upvoted your reply ("Thank you. Marx was a very intelligent person") because comparing anything to Marxism doesn't strike me as engaging with the idea (rather, matching to an already-rejected idea so they can reject this new idea easily), and your response indicated your concern was separate to Marx's.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T14:55:11.107Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You are forgetting the lawyer works to uphold the status quo. If that status quo ("the system") also makes arms dealers reach and invades third world countries or does other despicable things, the net effect of the lawyers actions can still be negative. Think about it as different math operators. You can name a number as big as you want but if I can change the sign of it, it will always be smaller than my small positive number.
A curious note: If 'The System' or anyone with power within it actually took you seriously they would necessarily imprison or otherwise cripple your ability to take action. You have essentially declared an intent to fight against everything the system does. That is, if you had any significance you would be a clear and present threat to national (and even international) security.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T14:44:14.584Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My gut instinct tells me a lawyer who in his day job secures a quarter of a billion dollar settlement with an evil regime to prevent legal persecution of an evil politician involved with a major weapons manufacturer, cannot offset this with buying a few mosquito nets for children in that same third world country.
Your gut instinct needs to learn more economics. ;)
Also note: This board uses markdown syntax. Details are in the 'help' link just below the comment box. To quote a paragraph begin the line with an >.
comment by Caravelle · 2011-07-24T19:25:21.938Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I have a question. This article suggests that for a given utility function there is one single charity that is best and that's the one one should give money to. That looks a bit problematic to me - for example, if everyone invests in malaria nets because that's the single one that saves most lives, then nobody is investing in any other kind of charity, but shouldn't those things get done too ?
We can get around this by considering that the efficiency function varies with time - for example, once everybody gives their money to buy nets the marginal cost of each saved life increases, until some other charity becomes best and all charitable giving switches to that one.
But we don't have a complete and up-to-the-second knowledge of how many lives each marginal dollar will save in every charity, all we have to work with is approximations. In that situation, wouldn't it be best to have a basket of charities one gives to, with more money going to those that save the most lives but not putting all the money on a single charity ?
Or is this consideration completely and utterly pointless in a world where most people do NOT act like this, and most people don't give enough money to change the game, so rational actors who don't have millions of dollars to give to charity should always give to the one that saves the most lives per dollar anyway ?
Replies from: a_gramsci↑ comment by a_gramsci · 2011-10-30T15:52:37.514Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What happens in that situation is that people continue to invest in malaria nets, so much that the marginal cost of saving another life goes from say, $500 to $700, and for $600 dollars you can dig a well, saving another persons life. In essence, you donate to the most efficient charity until that money has caused the charity to have to pay more to save lives, and therefore stops being the most efficient charity.
Replies from: Vaste↑ comment by Vaste · 2012-01-17T16:18:29.990Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I've thought about this problem before, but in the context of peer peer-to-peer file sharing.
The problem is that everyone is acting independent and with limited knowledge. It's hard to know what other people are choosing. There may also be long delays between you and others paying and the cost changing.
Say that the optimal outcome is that out of $1000M, $200M is spent on insect nets and $800M on wells, and that you can only donate to one charity (too bothersome or high transaction costs or something). Now, if everyone is rational they are going to donate to the wells, and no one to nets. This is a suboptimal outcome. It'd also be difficult to coordinate the millions of people donating, so that just the right amount choose nets instead of wells. A solution to such coordination is to roll a dice. If everyone makes a random selection and lets the probability of choosing nets be 2/10ths then the expected outcome is just what we want.
Now, you can adjust this to how many (you think) are playing like yourselves. E.g. if you know most people are going to give to wells, perhaps it'd be better if you put higher probability on nets (perhaps 100%).
Replies from: a_gramsci↑ comment by a_gramsci · 2012-02-14T21:52:38.132Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The thing about that is, is that not everyone is donating at the same time, so that they can see the expected value change.
Replies from: Vaste↑ comment by Vaste · 2012-02-15T11:05:17.991Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, but there can be long delays between a donation happening and updates. Coordinating donations can be non-trivial, especially when flash crowds appear (e.g. sob story on reddit).
Also, such a randomized approach is not necessary if one can just donate small amounts to multiple projects instead (i.e. if transaction fees are not a problem).
Replies from: army1987↑ comment by A1987dM (army1987) · 2012-02-15T15:58:06.970Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I once donated some money to VillageReach a few minutes before getting the GiveWell newsletter issue announcing that VillageReach wasn't going to be among the top charities in the next update because their founding gap had mostly closed and encouraging people to wait for the next update before deciding whom to donate money to. True story!
comment by [deleted] · 2010-12-25T18:12:58.158Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you are to "love your neighbor as yourself"
Why use that particular phrase? I think I don't need to love my neighbor as much as me to be interested in charity. And while I suppose the phrase sits well aesthetically in the text, I think it might unfortunately evoke with it a few Christian cached toughs. Pure selflessness rewarded in afterlife don't really seem applicable to what people here want to do.
comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-27T13:43:25.849Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think this might be correct but that humans are prone to prioritising the welfare of kin and close friends, and so someone working directly with people and forming some kind of relationship with them may be more likely to donate financial resources to that group in future. The lawyer may be more willing to spend money to keep a beach safe and free of litter if he or she has some personal experience which increases the importance of that beach in his mind. Most of us don't give much weight to mosquito nets because our own experience doesn't even put that on the radar.
I make a point of buying only FairTrade chocolate. My mental hack for times when I feel tempted to buy the ordinary kind is to think about people I love and admire, and imagine that my spending decision extends as far as having an immediate impact on whether they are paid fairly for their work. This is not, directly, how the market works, but as a re-framing exercise it does help me in sticking to a resolution when my own desires seem more compelling than those of the people who produce the chocolate.
I also question whether money is always more directly effective than time. I think the human relationships which might draw people to further financial support are often in and of themselves beneficial. That has certainly been my experience in formal and informal mentoring situations. No amount of money can buy lovingkindness, and while a kind word will not fill an empty stomach, someone with their immediate food, shelter and medical needs met may still be very much in need of that kind word. Encouragement and genuine care should not be overlooked as factors in increasing someone's quality and duration of life.
These things are hard to quantify but, for me, they tip the balance toward contributing time and energy directly to local causes, especially as I earn very little money anyway.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-27T14:20:48.017Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Welcome to LessWrong! I'd like to mention that here on LessWrong we will try to quantify the value of loving kindness and encouragement, and after quantifying we're going to find that it would fall well below the value of immediate food, shelter, and medical needs.
especially as I earn very little money anyway.
I suspect this is a stronger reason than the preceding paragraph ;)
Replies from: David_Gerard, artsyhonker↑ comment by David_Gerard · 2010-12-28T10:57:52.590Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
here on LessWrong we will try to quantify the value of loving kindness and encouragement, and after quantifying we're going to find that it would fall well below the value of immediate food, shelter, and medical needs.
It helps in this regard to be really sure of the security of one's own immediate food, shelter and medical needs.
(Can this be claimed of all LessWrong participants? If so, then LW's participant base is not wide enough.)
Replies from: shokwave, artsyhonker↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-28T13:51:17.695Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes. This is my major disagreement with the "give until it hurts" slogans you sometimes see.
Also, I guess yes to your parenthetical. This is a selection effect caused by LessWrong's medium (generally, shelter is a necessary condition for internet access, and food and medical needs are probably - hopefully? - prioritized over internet access).
Replies from: David_Gerard↑ comment by David_Gerard · 2010-12-28T16:50:55.597Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
generally, shelter is a necessary condition for internet access, and food and medical needs are probably - hopefully? - prioritized over internet access
Actually, no, it turns out your view of the world is incorrect and in need of updating. I spent a chunk of 2002 couch-surfing, living on the kindness of friends, looking for work in London. I seriously put rather a high value on Internet, because it was the rational choice in securing a job. "Well, yes, it's a house ... but there's no net there." It's that important.
Replies from: shokwave, BillyOblivion↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-28T17:08:29.029Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Wow. I definitely do not treat the internet as that important. Clearly I generalised from my own example instead of seeking out any data. I can even see how it makes rational sense to prefer internet over shelter, food, and medical needs; it's an instrument to achieve all three terminal goals. I just didn't think that way.
Man, that one-mind fallacy is insidious.
Replies from: David_Gerard↑ comment by David_Gerard · 2010-12-28T17:18:27.284Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In the situation, it would have been irrational - blitheringly stupid - not to make damn sure I had internet access in the prospective new place. Medical needs are fine in the UK (here's to the NHS!), cheap food exists in small quantities, shelter is the crippling expense in London.
Fortunately my friends are sysadmins. I would characterise my situation at the time as closer to "distressed gentleman" than "bum". (1)
In any case, I owe the world (and said individuals) lots of kindness points, and am quite proud to pay a sizable chunk of my income in tax, because I know personally what it pays for ...
More broadly: yes, you actually need Internet to participate in Western civil society these days. Restricting it from the homeless is a way to keep them there. They have phones too these days, and not just as some sort of frippery - why do they need them? And also, loving kindness and encouragement are how to treat humans; positing that as somehow dichotomous with food, shelter and medical care is a twist of thought I find confusing.
- And hadn't been the former long enough for it to smell like the latter.
↑ comment by BillyOblivion · 2011-01-01T12:12:38.577Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What was that t-shirt (from slightly earlier than 2002) 'bout drugs, sex and 'net access?
Replies from: David_Gerard↑ comment by David_Gerard · 2011-01-01T16:55:32.517Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
One of the several alt.gothic T-shirts, dating to the mid-1990s. (I had several but appear to have only the original 1994 one left.)
↑ comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-28T11:54:27.190Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The security of one's own access to physical necessities is an interesting factor in this. Are those whose security has been unstable more or less likely to donate time or money to charity?
For me personally, uncertainty about my own circumstances is a double-edged sword. If I am feeling a bit skint I'm unlikely to give money to someone begging on the street, and if I know my budget will be limited I am stingier than usual about charity boxes in shops. At the same time, an awareness that it is only because of the kindness of others that I am not homeless myself makes me eager to pass that kindness on in unstructured ways (being kind to others where I can in the course of my work and leisure) and more formally (this winter, volunteering at a local night shelter).
Replies from: juliawise↑ comment by juliawise · 2011-07-23T00:32:12.619Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Possibly the people who give the most, albeit to relatives, are immigrants from less developed to more developed countries. Even though for many it means lowering their standards of living in the US (or wherever), they know the remittance they send is sending their younger sister to school, buying a new roof for the family house in Bolivia, etc.
In the US, the lowest income bracket gives a larger percent of their income than any other bracket. I haven't seen numbers on whether this includes people on the brink of not having their basic needs met, but I bet a lot of them have been there at some point.
Replies from: multifoliaterose, pnrjulius↑ comment by multifoliaterose · 2011-07-24T01:14:40.156Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In the US, the lowest income bracket gives a larger percent of their income than any other bracket. I haven't seen numbers on whether this includes people on the brink of not having their basic needs met, but I bet a lot of them have been there at some point.
Note that it's possible that a substantial fraction of these donations are made to community organizations (churches, etc.) and so may effectively serve as membership dues. Despite this I think that this statistic makes a good rejoinder to middle/upper class people who claim that they can't afford to give.
↑ comment by pnrjulius · 2012-06-12T01:45:35.803Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
On the other hand, perhaps the poor give too much! They should be receiving the aid, not giving it out!
Consider all the economic opportunities that poor immigrants are giving up by remitting so much of their income to relatives where they came from. Perhaps it would be better if they saved and invested instead, and then after securing themselves financially, then start giving back?
Replies from: juliawise↑ comment by juliawise · 2012-06-12T13:00:31.284Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Perhaps it would be better if they saved and invested instead
If you consider yourself as, say, a Mexican 30-year-old who comes to the US and works as a carpenter, would you prefer to save your earnings and invest them (despite having little formal education, and thus being unlikely to invest well) while your wife, son, and parents continue living in a shack in Chiapas? Knowing that they would despise you for hoarding your earnings while they scraped by? I bet you would send them part of your paycheck. The opportunity cost of saving that money is too high.
↑ comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-28T10:43:39.377Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks for the welcome.
I wonder how it's possible to quantify encouragement and the value of relationships. I have been on the receiving end of a good deal of care and encouragement at a time when my physical health was poor and nothing could immediately be done to improve it. This gave me great hope and is experience I still draw courage from when I find life challenging. I don't have a spare me to experiment on so can only imagine how I might have fared without that support, but I know it has seemed more influential than the practical support I had, and in some cases I would not have sought practical support had I not had steady emotional encouragement. I am fortunate in that I have never been without sufficient food or adequate shelter, but that would not have been the case had I been left to my own devices. I can only experience the world as myself, but for me, loving kindness and unconditional positive regard have been extremely important, and are probably the deciding factor in my subsequent attempts to help others.
On a wider scale, I've often wondered why we don't simply set up a tax system such that everyone can have a decent physical standard of living. Population concerns aside (given the lower birth rate that appears to result from increases in standard of living this should sort itsrlf out) I think some of this comes back to our tendency to prioritise kinship or clan groups over the common good. I would argue that not having a direct relationship with the people we are trying to help makes us more likely to withdraw aid at the first hint of danger. Certainly those withdrawing benefits or financial aid from the most disadvantaged in Britain right now are not those who work with the disabled and the homeless on an ongoing basis. Yes, good people ought to donate to charity, and funds should be used efficiently, but the idea that paying taxes, voting, donating a bit to charity and perhaps writing to an MP or going on a protest is enough seems flawed. I think that for the changes to occur which would guarantee everyone a decent standard of living, people need serious motivation. I see that motivation coming from personal involvement and relationships more than from a cost/benefit analysis of how to spend the "charity" portion of a household budget. The latter is important and I am glad there are organisations like GiveWell which attempt some of the arithmetic, but I question whether money-only donors will, in general, evaluate the rest of their spending and activity with a view to increasing the common good, and I suspect that the abstract connections formed by financial donations are frail, making such aid more likely to be withdrawn if it is inconvenient.
I don't suggest that people who donate money to charity should discontinue that support but I do think it helpful if they also spend some time, perhaps as little as an hour per week or month, doing some kind of aid work that offers the opportunity for a genuine relationship not based on who has more money. As most people do not spend all their waking hours working, this need not detract from their financial contributions.
I would be interested in seeing any data that support or refute this; I am extrapolating from my own observations.
Replies from: David_Gerard↑ comment by David_Gerard · 2010-12-28T10:53:41.692Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't suggest that people who donate money to charity should discontinue that support but I do think it helpful if they also spend some time, perhaps as little as an hour per week or month, doing some kind of aid work that offers the opportunity for a genuine relationship not based on who has more money. As most people do not spend all their waking hours working, this need not detract from their financial contributions.
This is an important point: perfectly spherical rationalists of uniform density in a vacuum at absolute zero might make a more productive contribution to charity by working and donating rather than personal contribution of time, but perfectly spherical rationalists of uniform density in a vacuum at absolute zero are in somewhat short supply. In the world of humans, a bit of hands-on participation makes it far more likely that they will bother to continue to contribute to that charity at all.
Replies from: artsyhonker↑ comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-28T12:00:37.253Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In the world of humans, a bit of hands-on participation makes it far more likely that they will bother to continue to contribute to that charity at all.
Exactly what I was trying to say, but much shorter! Thanks.
comment by soreff · 2010-12-25T01:51:50.937Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Anyone know what the probability of a whole blood or platelet donation saving a life is? That isn't rated by GiveWell, and I failed at finding the data in a Google search.
Replies from: jsteinhardt↑ comment by jsteinhardt · 2010-12-25T03:19:30.475Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Red Cross claims that 1 pint saves "up to 3 lives". I'm not sure what to make of that, given that it's an upper bound and presented by a non-partial source.
If anyone can do better, I would be very interested in knowing the answer. I always try to give blood as often as possible under the assumption that I save at least one life each time, but a more robust figure would be nice.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, wedrifid↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2010-12-25T03:39:22.719Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I always try to give blood as often as possible under the assumption that I save at least one life each time
That can't possibly be right, not on the margins.
Replies from: jsteinhardt↑ comment by jsteinhardt · 2010-12-25T03:51:15.113Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Given you and wedrifid's responses, I am now updating my estimate of number of lives saved significantly downwards. However, I am curious as to why it's obvious to you that 3 lives is too high of a number on the margins.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, wedrifid, None, NancyLebovitz↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2010-12-25T06:19:06.990Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Maybe I'm just being naive here, but in a case that straightforward and that possible for the average person to understand, where there's nothing odd or unprestigious about the action and lots of people are doing it already, where, on the margins, an additional American life is saved each time another person donates blood, I have trouble believing that even a world this insane wouldn't push blood donations a little harder.
Replies from: Perplexed↑ comment by Perplexed · 2010-12-25T07:08:34.772Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I take it that you're suggesting marginal analysis based on the standard correct classical causal decision theory (in which no one is responsible for saving a life by donating blood unless someone would have actually died had that donation not been made) out of either belated humility about the probability of an SIAI-originating decision theory being correct, or because you're planning to actually convince someone and you don't want to invoke Hofstadterian superrationality in place of the standard correct decision theory?
:)
My guess would be that at the margin, a blood donation saves less than 0.00001 lives. (Otherwise, compensation would be increased for the paid donors). But, if you want to use a TDT/UDT style analysis, here are some relevant statistics from the American Red Cross:
- The number of blood donations collected in the U.S. in a year: 16 million (2006).
- The number of patients who receive blood in the U.S. in a year: 5 million (2006).
Given these numbers, I would estimate that roughly 0.5 million (US) lives are saved (more accurately, extended) by blood products annually. If you adopt the assumption that all blood comes from voluntary, uncompensated donations, and divide those 0.5 million lives among the 16 million annual donations, you get one life saved for every 32 pints donated - not as much as jsteinhardt hoped, but still significant enough to earn a major warm-and-fuzzy.
Replies from: Marius, HoldenKarnofsky, soreff, Will_Sawin, Vaniver↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-25T13:39:51.872Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I happen to administer a lot of blood to my patients, so let me answer some of the factual questions.
The way they calculate "up to 3 lives" is in the most trivial way: blood you donate is fractionated into red cells, plasma, and platelets. Each of those may go to a different recipient.
All blood administered to patients comes from voluntary, uncompensated donations. Plasma used in research studies may be compensated, but may not be transfused. This is the most important factor keeping our blood supply safe, and is far more effective than laboratory testing alone.
Given that blood banks need to keep a sufficient store of blood available of each type, rarer blood types are generally in greater need than, say, A After all, a larger proportion of blood of those types must be discarded. O blood is obviously highly useful in trauma situations, and is therefore in high demand as well.
The distribution of donors' and recipients' blood types should not be assumed to be equal: people with blood type A are significantly more likely to donate than people with blood type B. This exacerbates the discrepancies due to point 3.
The number of lives saved can be calculated in two ways:
a. the feel-good way. Every time a physician gives a unit of blood to a patient e does so believing it is a life-saving procedure. So if 3 units are given the patient's life was saved 3 times in rapid succession. (You have to be willing to save a life multiple times, because that's the analysis we're using for the rest of this discussion: multiple mosquito nets saved the same kid's life multiple times over his lifetime; that same kid was then saved by anti-diarrheal treatments; etc. The same analysis belongs here). Now, we subtract the number of patients who die, but that's a small number. So 26 million transfusions/16 million donations = 1.6 lives saved per donation.
b. the marginal way. Donations are currently sufficient for usage; we benefit in three ways from more donations. First, we can be slightly more profligate with trauma patients who have a low survival chance; this saves a minimal number of lives. Second, fresher blood is associated with better outcomes than older blood; the extent of this effect is unknown but is an area of current research interest. The calculation would have to look at the likelihood that your donation reduced the average shelf age of the blood being administered times the survival improvement from the fresher blood. Third, blood from multiparous women is associated with ARDS; an increase in donation would allow us to stop using it.
Replies from: Alicorn, wedrifid, datadataeverywhere, TheOtherDave, Perplexed↑ comment by Alicorn · 2010-12-25T13:58:43.721Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
people with blood type A are significantly more likely to donate than people with blood type B
I've donated blood a few times and I'm type A+. Why is it that B's are less likely to donate, or is that unknown? Are my donations likely to be marginally useless?
I have mostly donated blood in the past for signaling reasons, conversational high ground, and a vague desire to match the 15-gallon mark that my grandfather got his name in the paper for. There's a plaque of the newspaper mention in my grandma's house and I've been looking at it my whole life. Also I figure the Red Cross will let me know if I come down with one of the diseases they screen for, and it's a free way to get my iron levels checked (attempting to donate blood was how I found out I was anemic in the first place). These reasons aren't likely to evaporate if I find that I have been saving only tiny fractions of expected lives, but I would probably endure less inconvenience in order to donate for only these reasons as opposed to these reasons on top of lifesaving.
Replies from: Marius↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-25T17:49:32.550Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Your donations are not marginally useless! (unless you've been pregnant a couple times - in that case, consider stopping).
The reason for the discrepancies in donation rates between types A and B is both simple and complex: ethnicity. In the interests of safety (avoidance of Hepatitis C, HIV, etc) we've set up a system that subtly encourages certain types of donors and discourages others. The system is not racist per se, but it is most effective in obtaining donations from white, middle-aged, middle-class males.
Regarding signaling reasons: we are obviously very afraid of blood donated for signaling purposes. Accordingly, we do not allow people to donate to their relatives except under very unusual circumstances. Additionally, we give people an "out" by checking a box which tells the center to draw and discard their blood. That way people who fear they may be high-risk donors can get the social approval of donating without harming any patients.
Replies from: Alicorn, TobyBartels↑ comment by Alicorn · 2010-12-25T19:09:59.017Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
unless you've been pregnant a couple times - in that case, consider stopping
I've never been pregnant, but what is it about multiple pregnancies that renders the blood non-preferred?
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2010-12-25T19:18:25.972Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Obvious guess: Your blood then contains antibodies to the blood type of your babies.
Replies from: Marius↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-25T19:25:27.682Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Essentially this. The A/B/O blood groups represent the most relevant antigens in human blood. There are a host of others (Rh, Duffy, Kell, etc.) which typically create only minor problems in a transfusion and which can be ignored in an emergency. But a person who has been exposed to allogeneic blood via multiple transfusions or pregnancies becomes more likely to develop antibodies to some of these antigens. The donor's antibodies or white cells can react to the person being transfused, causing lung damage.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T20:48:28.932Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There are a host of others (Rh, Duffy, Kell, etc.) which typically create only minor problems in a transfusion and which can be ignored in an emergency.
In the case of the Rhesus factor it should be noted that it is minor once and then only minor for males. Being thereafter unable to safely give birth to healthy Rh+ children is definitely not a minor consequence even if it is better than 'probably going to die today'. (Unless, I suppose, you happen to some Rh+ antiserum lying around but no Rh- blood, which will usually avoid the future difficulties.)
Replies from: Marius↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-25T22:34:27.071Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I use "minor" differently than you do, to mean "unlikely to cause death". Obviously cross-matched blood is always preferable for a variety of reasons (including possible infertility, in the case of young females).
I would avoid RhoGam in the case of a patient who needs a RBC transfusion, incidentally. It would be unlikely to be safe or effective.
Replies from: shokwave, wedrifid↑ comment by TobyBartels · 2010-12-26T08:04:40.228Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Oops, I see that this has already been asked.
we've set up a system that subtly encourages certain types of donors and discourages others
While we've got you here, can you explain why gay men cannot donate? This upsets a lot of gay people that I know.
I understand that it's easier to catch STDs (not just HIV/AIDS) from a man than from a woman. But the current U.S. rule (A man cannot donate if he's had sex with a man; a woman cannot donate if she's had sex with a man who's had sex with man.) is lopsided.
The even-handed rule that you cannot donate if you've had sex with a man would keep the supply safe without having to rely on people's being able to trust their partners. But it would keep most women from donating, so maybe it's not worth it. The even-handed rule that you cannot donate if you've had sex with man who's had sex with a man would still keep out most gay men, but it would probably help to heal the rift.
Replies from: Alicorn↑ comment by Alicorn · 2010-12-26T13:11:13.032Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The even-handed rule that you cannot donate if you've had sex with man who's had sex with a man would still keep out most gay men
If a man is gay and sexually active, he's almost certainly had sex with a man who's had sex with a man, even if the men he has had sex with has only had sex with him. I don't see how this phrasing of the rule would be an improvement.
Replies from: TobyBartels, shokwave↑ comment by TobyBartels · 2010-12-28T00:17:07.717Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My phrasing was unclear; make it "if you've had sex with man who's previously had sex with a man (other than you)". There wouldn't be any point in forbidding me from donating (if I'm male) because the man that I've had sex with has had sex with me!
This change would include more people; it includes monogamous gay male couples who began their relationship as virgins (as well as some other people). Not many more, but it makes it clear that the blood collector is only willing to trust you and your partners, no further.
Frankly, the first even-handed rule (no sex with a man, period) makes more sense to me. Why should the blood collector trust that I know (if I'm a woman) whether all of the men that I've had sex with have had sex only with women? (No doubt many women are donating contrary to guidelines because they don't know this about their partners.) But because this would cut the potential donor pool in half, the blood collector is basically forced to trust me about my partners too.
In fact, the blood collectors trust women to know the sexual history of their partners, but not men. They are not asking everybody the same questions.
Replies from: TobyBartels↑ comment by TobyBartels · 2010-12-30T07:36:05.521Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Another possible solution, not even-handed, but more honest: Just don't ask women anything about the subject.
The idea that a person can be trusted to know about their partners' partners is preposterous; no other question (in the U.S.) asks the donor about other people's behaviour, and for good reason. Instead of half-assedly trying to be even-handed about it, just admit what they're doing: ruling out men who've had sex with men, because many of their partners will have had sex with other men, and so on back (in many cases) a long way; but accepting women who've had sex with men, because most of their partners won't have had sex with men, stopping the transmission-from-men sequence.
I'm confident that they already accept blood from most women who've had sex with men who've had sex with men (because the women don't know this about their partners), and they are surely aware of this (if I am correct) fact. So why are they asking questions of people who don't actually know the answers?
Gay people will still be upset that they can't donate, but I at least would be more willing to trust that the blood collectors are actually making an honest decision.
Replies from: TheOtherDave↑ comment by TheOtherDave · 2010-12-30T17:35:54.823Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Mostly, my faith in the quality of the blood supply derives from what testing they're doing to the blood, not from what unenforceable policies they're suggesting to the donors.
I'd actually be surprised if the latter significantly affected the quality of the blood.
Mostly, I think the problem they are a solution for is maintaining public confidence in the blood supply. Which I acknowledge is an important problem. And it may well be that being perceived as excluding gay men and their partners is a better solution to that problem than anything else they might do; I don't know.
That said, if I'm wrong and these policies really do solve a problem related to the blood supply, yet another possible solution is: don't allow people who have had unprotected sex to donate.
Or, if that's too big a chunk of your potential donor base, make it people who have had unprotected sex outside of a monogamous relationship.
↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T13:54:35.527Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The original rule bars 'a man who has had sex with a man' - X - and then any women who've had sex with X. It's a logical phrasing but unfortunately X maps exactly onto "gay man", so it feels like gay men are being specifically targeted. The rephrasing mollifies that sense of targeting without, as far as I can tell, changing the included or excluded people.
The original phrase is even-handed, however. If you overspecified an even-handed rule and said "1) You cannot donate if you're a man who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man, and 2) you cannot donate if you're a woman who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man" - ie, prevent "man who has had sex with a man" from coming into sexual contact with any donor - you could reduce 1) down to "man who has had sex with a man" (it logically implies three, four, and so on iterations). This, therefore, reduces down to the actual rule they have in place.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T14:41:27.831Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Every time a physician gives a unit of blood to a patient e does so believing it is a life-saving procedure. So if 3 units are given the patient's life was saved 3 times in rapid succession. (You have to be willing to save a life multiple times, because that's the analysis we're using for the rest of this discussion: multiple mosquito nets saved the same kid's life multiple times over his lifetime; that same kid was then saved by anti-diarrheal treatments; etc. The same analysis belongs here)
There are not many times I see a line of reasoning and have to reject it at every single step. Apart from being conceptually absurd the very thought is morally objectionable. It totally devalues the value of 'saving a life' to the point of utter meaningless. How could that ever make someone 'feel-good'?
Replies from: Vaniver↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T15:13:26.928Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It totally devalues the value of 'saving a life' to the point of utter meaningless.
Which part? I thought that started silly (it's explaining the logic behind a non-profit's puffery, did you expect it to be rigorous?) but then got better. The idea of "saving a life" is pretty meaningless when you poke at it- it's all just lifespan extension. And so the idea that each emergency treatment extends lifespans by the 'natural span of a life' is silly. If someone would die if they don't receive a unit of blood at 50 separate occasions on their life, should each transfusion get the full moral weight of saving a life? If so, we just gave this person 50 lives. If not, then we need to abandon the language of "saving a life" and talk about "extending a lifespan" (because we can say those units of blood each added a year to the person's life, for example).
↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-25T14:02:48.218Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks, this is exceptionally informative.
I didn't realize that donations were sufficient for usage. Is this barely maintained by calling people when blood supplies are low, or does blood regularly get thrown out, or is there some other reason that supplies closely match need?
Replies from: Marius↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-25T17:34:31.346Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A combination of the above. We have a core group of donors who can be called in emergency situations, we increase the intensity of blood drives when supplies are low, we reduce marginally-beneficial uses of blood when supplies become low, and we are better able to discard the oldest least-effective blood whenever supplies increase.
We are likely to face challenges in meeting future need. The cohort that most regularly donates blood is aging...
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2010-12-25T19:46:15.765Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
We are likely to face challenges in meeting future need. The cohort that most regularly donates blood is aging...
I'm assuming you are from the US, do you think the same is true for other countries? Also which demographic are you referring too?
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T20:24:16.871Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm assuming you are from the US, do you think the same is true for other countries? Also which demographic are you referring too?
I'm more interested in the cohort that isn't aging. What is their secret? A new and improved Calorie Restricted diet? Perhaps that explains their inability to generate sufficient excess blood for donation.
Replies from: Will_Sawin↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2010-12-25T21:28:03.552Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
They could also be brain uploads, which would also explain the inability.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by TheOtherDave · 2010-12-25T18:04:04.838Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks for data!
Only vaguely relatedly: if you have pointers to (or are willing to synthesize) a reliable calculation of expected lives-saved/deaths-caused by maintaining or discarding the existing Red Cross policies about who is "allowed" to donate blood, especially the relatively controversial ban on male donors with homosexual acts in their sexual history, I would be interested.
Full disclosure: I do have a personal/emotional stake in this question, but I really really don't want to set off a political/ethical conversation about it. I'm asking it here because, as with a lot of politically charged topics, the arguments I've found on both sides are mostly a case of framing the question so as to give the answer one wants to give, rather than so as to answer the question that was asked, and I'm looking for a more objective analysis.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-25T18:49:02.953Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I also wanted to ask this question.
Giving blood is important to me. It is so important that I have chosen not to pursue relationships with other men in order than I can continue to give blood without lying to do so. I expect that sooner or later, I will choose otherwise, and a sexual relationship will be important enough to me to sacrifice my ability to ever give blood again, and this distresses me.
I can accept that the risks of HIV may be high enough to make this a reasonable choice on the part of United Blood Services / Red Cross. However, I would like to be quite sure that this is the case, or to be told that my blood isn't as important as I previously though it was. I was previously giving blood on the impression that each donation saves around a twentieth of a life; this thread doesn't change that estimate enough for me to feel like I can stop donating in good conscience.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, Marius, TheOtherDave, JoshuaZ↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2010-12-25T19:08:44.723Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Giving blood is important to me. It is so important that I have chosen not to pursue relationships with other men in order than I can continue to give blood without lying to do so.
On the margins, I expect that each marginal pint of blood saves only a very small fraction of a life. As several readers pointed out, this doesn't mean that we should ordinarily be calculating on the margins, since it's not like you can use a pint of blood for something else instead; in terms of moral credit, you should think of yourself as part of a reference class of people who all choose to donate blood for around the same reasons, and who all get an equal share of the lives saved.
However, the Red Cross has already decided that they're willing to X out the entire homosexual community, and I would expect the reference class of those who refrain from sexual activity in order to continue donating blood to be small, and I would guess that if this entire reference class refrained from donating blood, not a single additional life might be lost.
Modern-day hospitals are not, so far as I know, blood-limited. They need a routine flow of blood in order to routinely save lives. They do not need more blood to save more lives. That's the impression I got, anyway; some quick Googling even said that they usually have enough blood to just use O-negative instead of matching types.
I hate to say this, but I think you're making the wrong sacrifices here. I estimate a very high information value for further investigation on your part; I would expect it to show that you were safe to stop donating blood and resume sexual activity without costing anyone one-twentieth of a life. If you're really feeling guilty or worried, resume sexual activity and send a donation to the Singularity Institute as a carbon offset. If you can speed up a positive Singularity by one minute that works out to around 100 lives, never mind increasing the probability.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere, katydee↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-25T23:45:12.870Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think I was accidentally misleading by failing to add that I'm bisexual. Not giving blood reduces my pool of potential romantic partners by roughly 10%, and doesn't prevent me from having fulfilling relationships. I don't think I would abstain from sex in order to give blood even if I knew I could save a life with each donation. Even if that's an incredibly selfish decision, I'm just not that good a person.
Regardless, the support of everyone who replied is very much appreciated.
↑ comment by katydee · 2010-12-26T00:42:25.764Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
...technically, doesn't speeding up a negative singularity also save lives-- the lives of those who would otherwise have been born and then killed but were instead never born and therefore couldn't be killed? In fact, I think speeding up a negative singularity actually "saves" more lives than speeding up a positive one using this calculation-- a quick Google search indicates ~250 people are born every minute and ~100 people die every minute.
Replies from: Vaniver, Desrtopa↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-25T19:39:42.960Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I believe you can make an easier calculation: change the denominator from lives to units of blood. How much effort/money/social capital would it take you to convince one more person to donate one more unit? [ignore the cost to that person, as it's likely zero or slightly beneficial]. Calculate the effort it therefore would take you to replace yourself as a donor while keeping the blood supply constant; this should serve as an upper bound for the self-sacrifice you should make in terms of sexual restraint.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-25T23:49:22.767Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You make an excellent point. I clarified that the sexual restraint required is not as great as it may seem, but convincing other people to donate regularly (I have done so at least twice in my life) is still much less of a sacrifice.
↑ comment by TheOtherDave · 2010-12-25T20:59:43.730Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
(nods) For me, it's not a pragmatic question of whether I donate or not: after ~20 years in a mutually monogamous relationship, I am confident that my donating blood reduces the percentage of infected blood in the supply, regardless of my gender, and that's the metric that matters.
But I spent some time trying to make sense of the arguments pro and con, a few years back, and mostly came to the conclusion that I didn't trust anyone's arguments.
It is certainly true that if you divide the community of potential donors into two groups, and the frequency of blood-born pathogens is higher in group A than group B, and your filtering mechanisms aren't 100% reliable, then the blood supply is N% safer if you remove group A from potential donors.
It is equally certainly true that you can do that division in thousands of different ways, and each way of doing that division gets you a different N.
I was hoping to find a comparison of estimated Ns for different plausible policies, and perhaps a recommendation for the best policy.
What I found instead was that defenders of the existing policy were making the first argument and saying "See? The policy makes the blood supply N% safer! We have to keep doing it, to do otherwise would be unsafe!" while at the same time disregarding questions about how large N actually was (i.e.., how many lives were actually at stake? 1000? .001? Somewhere in between?) and whether a different policy might get you a much larger N, while opponents of the policy were disregarding the first argument altogether.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T21:20:30.724Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But I spent some time trying to make sense of the arguments pro and con, a few years back, and mostly came to the conclusion that I didn't trust anyone's arguments.
My conclusion is somewhat related. I have no particularly good reason to believe that I am better able to establish blood donation and usage policy than the Red Cross or the medical practitioners. I just give them my blood and they can use it or not as they see fit. I'd do it just for the health benefits anyway.
Replies from: TheOtherDave↑ comment by TheOtherDave · 2010-12-25T21:53:40.335Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
For my own part, I appreciate that the Red Cross (and etc.) is trying to satisfy multiple constraints, only one of which is the actual safety of their blood supply, and I don't object to that. But the constraints that apply to them in articulating a policy don't necessarily apply to me in donating blood.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T21:57:17.396Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
On the other hand you have constraints that they do not have, not least of which is the lack of scaling benefits for your research and decision making efforts.
We are left with an optimal approach of considering what we know of our own blood that the collection agency does not (or is forbidden from discriminating on). We can approximate whether this knowledge would make the blood more suitable or less. Only if 'less' do we need worry about how significant that extra knowledge is.
Replies from: TobyBartels↑ comment by TobyBartels · 2010-12-30T07:44:39.643Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
We also need to worry if the answer is ‘more’ and because of that we decide to lie on the answer form so that we can donate.
I kind of get the impression that TheOtherDave is doing that, or at least would condone it under circumstances very much like his.
Replies from: TheOtherDave↑ comment by TheOtherDave · 2010-12-30T17:25:37.226Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't do it, mostly because I'm so irritated by the policy that I've worked my way into a completely counterproductive "F--k it, then, donate your own f--king blood, see if I care" kind of sulk about it. I'm not proud of this, but there it is.
Yes, I condone it... indeed, I endorse it... in situations very much like mine.
↑ comment by JoshuaZ · 2010-12-25T18:57:51.321Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
They aren't assessing that risk in a logical fashion. If they were, they would have similar restrictions on donation by ethnic group. (It is possible that the Red Cross would like to do that also but knows that it is political unfeasible.)
Replies from: CarlShulman↑ comment by CarlShulman · 2010-12-26T00:35:30.738Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Will Saletan has an article on this.
↑ comment by Perplexed · 2010-12-25T15:02:58.342Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thx.
All blood administered to patients comes from voluntary, uncompensated donations. Plasma used in research studies may be compensated, but may not be transfused. This is the most important factor keeping our blood supply safe, and is far more effective than laboratory testing alone.
This article on the ethics and pragmatics of blood source - compensated vs uncompensated - was fascinating, IMO. Though it may be somewhat out-of-date.
↑ comment by HoldenKarnofsky · 2010-12-29T17:01:06.407Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is Holden Karnofsky, the co-Executive Director of GiveWell, which is referenced in the top-level article and elsewhere on this thread.
I think there is an important difference between discussing the marginal impact of a blood donation and the marginal impact of a vote. When it comes to blood donations, it is possible for everyone to simultaneously follow the rule: "Give blood only when the supply of donations is low enough that an additional donation would have high expected impact", with a reasonable outcome. It is not possible for everyone to behave this way in elections: no voter is able to consider the existing distribution of votes before casting their own.
I am only casually familiar with TDT/UDT, but it seems to me that that "Give blood only when the supply of donations is low enough that an additional donation would have high expected impact" should get about the same amount of credit under TDT/UDT as giving blood, and thus the extra impact of actually giving blood (as opposed to following that rule) is small regardless of what decision theory one is using.
I bring this up because the discussion of marginal blood donations is parallel to analysis GiveWell often does of the marginal impact of donations. We do everything we can to understand the marginal (not average) impact of a donation and recommend organizations on this basis, and we believe this is a very important and unique element of what we offer (more on this issue). We try to push donors to underfunded charities and away from overfunded ones, and I do not think the validity of this depends on any controversial (even controversial-within-Less-Wrong) view on decision theory, though I am open to arguments that it does.
Replies from: patrissimo↑ comment by patrissimo · 2011-01-02T07:04:23.803Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Completely agree with your general point on marginal analysis (although I'm a TDT skeptic), and am a fan of GiveWell, but this is trivially wrong:
It is not possible for everyone to behave this way in elections: no voter is able to consider the existing distribution of votes before casting their own.
This seems to assume away information about the size of the electorate as well as any predictive power about the outcome. Surely the marginal benefit of a Presidential vote in a small swing state is massively higher than in a large solidly Democratic state, for example. And in addition to historical results, there is polling data in advance of the election to improve predictions.
Besides this being theoretically true, we can see it empirically from the spending patterns of both Presidential campaigns and political parties on Congressional races. They allocate money to the states / races where they believe it will do the most marginal good, which is often a very inequal distribution. Thus they do, in fact "consider the existing distribution of votes before casting" their advertising dollars.
Replies from: HoldenKarnofsky↑ comment by HoldenKarnofsky · 2011-01-03T21:43:55.866Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Patrissimo, fair enough. I was thinking that voters can't vote with the same degree of knowledge of the existing situation that they can have with blood donations. Arguments over TDT certainly seem more relevant to voting than to blood donations. But you are right that voters have lots of relevant information about the likely distribution of votes that can be productively factored into their decisions regardless of the TDT debate. Glad to hear you're a fan of GiveWell.
↑ comment by soreff · 2010-12-26T05:34:37.671Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
0.00001 sounds low to me. Given that hospitals aren't normally blood-limited, there are always fluctuations around the average, and I'd be surprised if becoming blood-limited happens less than 1 day in 10^5. Two trauma cases can be enough to create a local crisis
↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2010-12-25T16:44:57.556Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My actions and your actions aren't perfectly correlated, because we're somewhat different.
No matter how you handle this, it seems to suggest that my donation would acausally affect some fraction of other people's donations. So it might count as, e.g., +/- 2 million, which is still more-or-less marginal, since the costs are multiplied as well.
Maybe more than that?
It's stil a far cry from just dividing 5 million/16 million.
Edit: Isn't utility maximized if the abstract computations "What humans do" and "The thing with greatest marginal benefit" equalized, though? If utility is convex, yes. So there should be some other rule, like, if you're at a bad equilibrium, act so as to break it. I am unsure how this works.
↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T10:52:37.383Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you adopt the fiction that all blood comes from voluntary, uncompensated donations
I know that plasma and such are compensated, but where is blood paid for? Places where it's cheaper than transporting it from areas that have surplus volunteer efforts? Or they don't publicize that compensation is available because that would shrink the volunteer base?
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T04:26:52.560Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
However, I am curious as to why it's obvious to you that 3 lives is too high of a number on the margins.
Around 15 million pints of whole blood are donated per year in the US. At 3 lives per pint that comes out to 45 million. We can also assume that if lives per pint is 3 at the margin then the more efficient cases it will be even more than that. The population of the US just isn't high enough to account for that.
Oh, then there there is the fact that a lot of cases use a whole heap more than one pint of blood. (For example.)
↑ comment by [deleted] · 2010-12-25T19:38:45.353Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Dead babies or children are a bad metric precisely because of this reason.
Years in good physical and mental health seem a better way to measure what people are going for.
A donation of blood saves less than one life in my estimates, but it improves quality of life and adds in my opinion a few years of healthy happy life.
↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-25T05:07:46.448Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I wonder if getting too focused on the best (or worst) case scenario is a named logical error.
I'm also not sure whether giving a rare blood type is likely to save more lives than giving a more common blood type.
Replies from: rabidchicken, Nornagest↑ comment by rabidchicken · 2010-12-25T07:41:50.625Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems odd the more people of a certain blood type would sustain injuries requiring blood, or that people of a certain blood type would care more about blood donation So if the people who heard about blood banks and were interested, and the people who needed them are nearly randomly distributed in the population, I would expect the demand vs supply of each type to average out to the same figure.
However, I have heard blood banks ask specifically for people with rare blood types to donate, so it would appear that this theory is wrong. Alternatively, there is an equal shortage of all types, and someone in marketing thought that the specification would attract more people. (Even though if I was going to use the dark arts to make a group more likely to come, I would target the largest one)
Replies from: Perplexed, SimonF↑ comment by Perplexed · 2010-12-25T15:35:32.429Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems odd the more people of a certain blood type would sustain injuries requiring blood, or that people of a certain blood type would care more about blood donation.
Blood types vary by ethnicity, SES varies by ethnicity, injuries and donations vary by SES.
Replies from: None↑ comment by Simon Fischer (SimonF) · 2010-12-25T12:44:04.495Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The reason for this is the compatibility of the blood types, for example O-negative-blood can be donated to everyone and is therefore used in emergencies where the blood type of the recipient is not known.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-25T03:29:03.205Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Red Cross claims that 1 pint saves "up to 3 lives". I'm not sure what to make of that, given that it's an upper bound and presented by a non-partial source.
I presume it means that the first pint of blood donated, if allocated with efficient triage, could save three lives. At the margin I assume the figure is a small fraction of a life per pint donate.
Replies from: soreffcomment by SRStarin · 2010-12-25T02:23:13.799Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The points made here are sound. I was particularly awakened by calling out the rule about overhead as wrong, since that has been a major factor in my charitiable giving in the past.
However, if we imagine everyone behaving according to these rules, we wind up with very few (incompetent) people running a few charities with piles of cash. If no lawyers take time off and contribute their expertise to a charity, then how do charities protect themselves from lawsuits, for example? The optimal charity solution is not for everyone to follow your guidelines, but for almost everyone to follow your guidelines, and a few people to deviate. Yet, how do we know whether we should be the ones who deviate?
Replies from: Emile, ata, GuySrinivasan, imbatman↑ comment by Emile · 2010-12-25T11:00:54.465Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
However, if we imagine everyone behaving according to these rules, we wind up with very few (incompetent) people running a few charities with piles of cash.
If the choice is between charities making antimalarial drugs run by competent people, and charities making (more useful) mosquito nets run by incompetent people, then yes on the short term you might see incompetent people with loads of cash, but then other charities will probably pop up making malarial nets with low overhead, and then they'll get the most donarions.
Or if you're concerned about competent people all getting a "real" job and donating money: it's only rational to do so when the marginal utility of volunteering is less than the marginal utility of working and donating. If that's the case now (too many volunteers, not enough money), that doesn't mean that all volunteers should stop and go get a job.
↑ comment by ata · 2010-12-25T02:47:01.804Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If no lawyers take time off and contribute their expertise to a charity, then how do charities protect themselves from lawsuits, for example?
The lawyer example wasn't about lawyers donating lawyering to charities, it was about lawyers buying fuzzies by doing volunteer work like picking up litter or working at a food bank instead of doing overtime legal work and using the extra money to generate ten times as much charitable work.
Under some circumstances, the most efficient thing might be for a lawyer to provide pro-bono legal work to a charity, if a good lawyer is willing to do that, but in general, the answer to "how do charities protect themselves from lawsuits?" is "by paying for legal representation with part of the money people donate to them".
↑ comment by GuySrinivasan · 2010-12-25T04:52:14.858Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The answer is that until the world's culture of giving changes massively, you should not be the one to deviate. And you'll notice when the world's culture of giving is changing massively. And then we can solve the new problem of "but the marginal gain of one lawyer from zero really is large!", but until then, it's nothing more than a hypothetical.
Unless! I haven't thought about this before, but what if the great majority of people of important-to-charity category X who currently donate their time are also the sort of people who will switch to these much better guidelines before it becomes a worldwide phenomenon? Does such a category exist? It's the only thing that would make a "just switch to these guidelines and fix the other problems if these guidelines are widely adopted" policy turn out badly if implemented, I think...
↑ comment by imbatman · 2012-06-12T18:02:35.333Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
this was covered here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/
"If the soup kitchen needed a lawyer, and the lawyer donated a large contiguous high-priority block of lawyering, then that sort of volunteering makes sense—that's the same specialized capability the lawyer ordinarily trades for money. But "volunteering" just one hour of legal work, constantly delayed, spread across three weeks in casual minutes between other jobs? This is not the way something gets done when anyone actually cares about it, or to state it near-equivalently, when money is involved."
comment by Elizabeth · 2010-12-25T16:28:25.630Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I just had a conversation with my father on this subject which significantly clarified my thinking, and resolved most of my internal dilemma. The argument put forward in this post is correct, but there is one significant problem. I care about more than just saving children. I also care about how efficiently it is done, what peripheral good a charity is doing in the community by, say, employing locals, and any number of other things. "Children saved" is an important metric and should absolutely be considered, and it is a decision that should be made carefully, but it is not the only metric to consider. We should spend our money efficiently, but we first need to clarify our goals in order to do so, and "saving children" is not necessarily our only goal, even in cases where it is primary.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T09:30:37.578Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"saving children" is not necessarily our only goal
Unless you have a huge "they are in another country" discount on children's lives, or a huge "they are in my community" boost to the other goals, I can't name any goals off the top of my head that can compete with saving children's lives.
Replies from: Elizabeth↑ comment by Elizabeth · 2010-12-26T15:48:31.269Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I didn't say that other goals could compete, but there are other goals that can be considered simultaneously. If one charity saves ten children for $100 and another saves nine and accomplishes a few other things, that is not a choice we should make mindlessly. we can't let "saving children become a buzzword that cuts off thought. What if the second charity saves the children from death and gives them some skills that will help them make a living and help their communities? In that case, I would probably choose the second charity. Think of it as a linear algebra problem, with numerous parameters with different weights. You end up with an optimal solution for all variables together rather than for a single variable alone. Just because saving children is the most heavily weighted variable doesn't mean that it is the only one.
Replies from: patrissimo, shokwave↑ comment by patrissimo · 2011-01-02T06:51:29.972Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
At the risk of provoking defensiveness I will say that it really sounds like you are trying to rationalize your preferences as being rational when they aren't.
I say this because the examples that you were giving (local food kitchen, public radio), when compared to truly efficient charities (save lives, improve health, foster local entrepreneurship), are nothing like "save 9 kids + some other benefits" vs. "save 10 kids and nothing else". It''s more like "save 0.1 kids that you know are in your neighborhood" vs. "save 10 kids that you will never meet" (and that's probably an overestimate on the local option). Your choice of a close number is suspicious because it is so wrong and so appealing (by justifying the giving that makes you happy).
The amount of happiness that you create through local first world charities is orders of magnitude less than third world charities. Therefore, if you are choosing local first world charities that help "malnourished" kids who are fabulously nourished by third world standards, we can infer that the weight you put on "saving the lives of children" (and with it, "maximizing human quality-adjusted life years") is basically zero. Therefore, you are almost certainly buying warm fuzzies. That's consumption, not charity. I'm all for consumption, I just don't like people pretending that it's charity so they can tick their mental "give to charity" box and move on.
Replies from: Elizabeth, None↑ comment by Elizabeth · 2011-01-02T16:47:21.572Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with you completely about consumption vs. charity, and had even mentioned the concept in my point about NPR donation guilt.
I also agree that the close number is wildly inaccurate, but even in context it wasn't applied to local charities and it was intended to make the point that multiple factors could and should be considered when picking charities, even when the importance multipliers on some factors are orders of magnitude higher than for other factors.
I hope this clarifies my meaning without defensiveness, because none was meant.
Replies from: patrissimo↑ comment by patrissimo · 2011-01-04T05:52:52.898Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Ok, great, I'm glad I misunderstood.
↑ comment by [deleted] · 2011-10-01T18:39:06.192Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Let's say you want to start a school, because you like education. You could found a very large school that educates lots of children, but at a so-so quality. Or you could spend the same amount of instruction to make a tiny, amazing school, a little gem. Some people might find it more fulfilling to build the small, wonderful school. When you've achieved your goal, a tiny corner of the world is just perfect, and it's a part you have control over.
I think this is part of the reason people sometimes are more motivated to improve conditions in their own country than abroad. On some level, I'd rather make one person really happy and successful than make 100 people just barely better off than dead.
↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T16:35:49.442Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Think of it as a linear algebra problem, with numerous parameters with different weights. You end up with an optimal solution for all variables together rather than for a single variable alone.
This is what I had in mind; I just felt that that the "saving childrens' lives" variable would have a multiplier of a few hundred in front of it (because lives are important) and the other variables like "improves their community" would have multipliers of two or three at best. I couldn't think of any other variable that would have a similar multiplier to "child's life".
Replies from: Strange7↑ comment by Strange7 · 2010-12-27T23:45:09.077Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Some of those other variables will feed back in to the "child's life" variable, a generation or two down the road.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-28T05:26:19.119Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Feeding back into "child's life" a few generations down the road is not a multiplier of a few hundred. That it feeds back gives it an extra 10% or so; even with the feeding back, doing anything that isn't directly saving as many lives as possible right now is an objectively worse option.
comment by fischer · 2010-12-25T06:55:57.972Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm bothered by the intertemporal implications of this, i.e. if I have $100 that I will spend to help the most humans possible, then I could either spend it today or invest it and spend $105 next year (assumed 5% ROR). Will I then ever spend the money on charity? Or will I always invest it, and just let this amassed wealth be distributed when I die?
Replies from: bogus, kybernetikos, Vaniver, DanielLC↑ comment by bogus · 2010-12-25T07:24:00.769Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Assuming that charities can invest and borrow at prevailing interest rates (and large charitable trusts can in fact borrow from their endowment), you should be indifferent to this choice. Robin Hanson has addressed this issue here.
↑ comment by kybernetikos · 2010-12-25T07:07:26.168Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The good you do can compound too. If you save a childs life at $500, that child might go on to save other childrens lives. I think you might well get a higher rate of interest on the good you do than 5%. There will be a savings rate at which you should save instead of give, but I don't think we're near it at the moment.
Replies from: wnoise, Marius↑ comment by wnoise · 2010-12-27T07:42:07.923Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
that child might go on to save other childrens lives.
Or, of course, go on to harm them. Or be neutral. It seems almost certain that on average there is some benefit from the standard trade and comparative advantage reasons, but I have no idea how to even approach that calculation.
↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-27T05:16:15.514Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This, incidentally, is also an argument for supporting less immediately-efficient charities. If you spend $500 on mosquito nets, you are saving the life of a child whose expected lifetime earning potential is low. This is wonderful, but the rate of "interest" may well be small. If you spend $500 on saving the painting Blue Rigi, you have not saved a single life in the short run. But it contributes to the education of thousands of British children, many of whom will grow up to create and donate large amounts of wealth/knowledge. Your incremental impact on their education may plausibly prevent more malarial deaths than your donation of mosquito nets, though I've no idea how to calculate this.
At the very least, I'd suggest that analogy of "setting out on an Arctic journey" sets us up to mentally discount future benefits in favor of immediate results. Instead we might imagine that we've set up an Arctic village, or are planning a journey a decade from now. Our spending habits would change accordingly.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-27T06:22:14.242Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you spend $500 on saving the painting Blue Rigi, [...] it contributes to the education of thousands of British children, many of whom will grow up to create and donate large amounts of wealth/knowledge
Contributes how much? For each child, how much more knowledge do you expect they will create because they saw the original, rather than a facsimile, Blue Rigi? My estimate for this is so close to 0 that I can't conscience paying even $1 for Blue Rigi, except for aesthetic reasons.
Replies from: Marius, wedrifid↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-28T01:46:02.018Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Is this another way of saying that schools should focus on math and science, ignoring art? Or is this an argument that we need to restructure the way public museums work, slashing the cost by replacing the paintings with copies?
Replies from: datadataeverywhere↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-28T02:36:10.072Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's just an argument that art is not in the same bucket as saving lives. I'm not going to tell you how to spend your money, but if your stated objective is to help people, saving Blue Rigi is not a cost effective way of doing that.
The way we run schools, math and science aren't very useful to begin with. Slashing art budgets is probably not a useful place to start.
Replies from: Marius↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-28T03:28:41.834Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well, I want to make sure I understand it. Which of the following do you mean: a. If British people become more productive that productivity won't translate into more charity/inventions that will save lives? b. Education does not improve productivity? c. Art museums are not an important part of education (at least not in terms of scientific/economic productivity)? d. Blue Rigi does not improve the overall quality of the Tate? e. Actually none of the above, but Blue Rigi was simply priced too high?
To clarify/address ArisKatsaris's points:
I am not attempting to make an argument in this post. I am trying to identify the point at which datadataeverywhere first has a problem. For instance, I don't need to discuss whether the cultural given (fetish?) that our museums will seek out originals is easily mutable if his objection really starts earlier in my list. For instance, is it possible that the education of British children is a better way to save African lives than the immediate purchase of mosquito nets? If that's implausible, then the question of how one educates a child is irrelevant to this discussion.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere, ArisKatsaris↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-28T21:16:43.680Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Aris' expanded explanation is excellent, and what I would have tried to say at first.
I find it pretty implausible that the education of British children in the artwork of an 18th century British landscape painter is a better method of saving African lives than a proven method that currently saves lives and is reckoned to be one of the cheapest methods per life saved.
Over the long term, how we educate children probably determines a great deal about what our world looks like in the future. However, unless you have an oracle, or are educating them in something specifically related, such as the concept of Efficient Charity, I would place the upper and lower guesses of the median increase in QALY/DALY well below and above zero, respectively, indicating that you shouldn't do it on that basis.
↑ comment by ArisKatsaris · 2010-12-28T03:46:29.619Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Downvoted for extreme amounts of muddled thinking, and a line of argumentation that's so hole-ridden it gives me a headache.
Also he has answered you already: He argued that displaying the original Blue Rigi as opposed to a facsimile doesn't contribute one iota to the education of any child. You either didn't pay attention, or are trying to wear him out by keep on asking something he already answered.
Replies from: Marius↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-28T03:58:51.845Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Maybe. But I still don't know if that's because art doesn't contribute or because originals are the same as facsimiles.
Anyway, can you help me understand what you consider the holes/muddle?
Replies from: ArisKatsaris↑ comment by ArisKatsaris · 2010-12-28T04:46:15.749Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Muddled thinking is when your line of argumentation "painting contributes to museum, museum contributes to education, education contributes to productivity, productivity contributes to charity" implies there's some single metric each of these increase, which can be traced from one to the other simply, step by step.
An original painting may contribute to museum's "quality", but it needn't contribute to the educational quality of the museum, so you can't transfer that sort of contribution down that next step.
An art museum contributes to education, but it needn't contribute to education in such a manner that it becomes the sort of "productivity" that saves lives. Art is about aesthetics, which contribute to quality of life, but not the preservation of such. Art contributes, but it contributes differently - and you were told that already.
Education may contribute to productivity, but depending what you're educated to value, it may increase or decrease the amounts of charity provided. For example, if you're taught to value the presence of original paintings, you'll probably give money to keep original paintings in your nation, not to save lives.
Wanting an original painting, as opposed to a copy, isn't about educating, it's about satisfying a fetish. A national fetish in this case, much the way that Greece was obsessing with Olympic Games and museums to house the unreturned Parthenon marbles, while in the meantime its economy was going down the crapper.
In that way I could easily argue that the original is of less utility than a facsimile, exactly because it encourages such unproductive fetishes, while being aesthetically identical.
Replies from: Vaniver, NancyLebovitz↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-28T05:37:19.238Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Upvoted, but disagreed with:
In that way I could easily argue that the original is of less utility than a facsimile, exactly because it encourages such unproductive fetishes, while being aesthetically identical.
It seems to me that scarcity and authenticity can both play into aesthetics, but besides those two contextual variables that's spot on.
↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-28T07:30:55.581Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't think the preference for original paintings is just a fetish. Accurate color reproduction is hard [1], and in many cases, it's possible to get close enough to the original to see the brushstrokes and texture. I don't think we're at the tech yet for really excellent reproductions, but please let me know if I'm missing something.
Originals vs. reproductions may not be worth the cost, but that's a different question.
[1] The colors in a painting may change with time, but reproductions add another layer of inaccuracy.
I don't know how good color reproduction can be if a major effort is made. I do know that if I go to the museum shop after an exhibition, I'm always struck by how far off the colors are compared to the paintings.
Replies from: datadataeverywhere↑ comment by datadataeverywhere · 2010-12-28T20:59:44.766Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Texture reproduction is actually an easier problem than color reproduction, and is pretty much solved at less than a $5000 cost. Color is hard partially because people want the painting to look the same under all lighting conditions; under just one, we can solve the problem pretty well, but under all, we nearly need to use the same materials as were originally used. Needless to say, the cost of reproductions scales with the quality, and can become quite high.
Replies from: NancyLebovitz↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-29T01:16:45.446Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I wonder if enough people would go to a museum of high quality reproductions to make it worthwhile.
↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-25T10:56:14.104Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Will I then ever spend the money on charity?
What's likely to happen is that the RoR and benefit of charity will fluctuate over time and over the size of your pot- so your pot will grow until there's a need, then you'll spend, and then it'll go back to growing. The problem is that requires active management (which is hard to continue after your death) and typically the view is that if you value warm fuzzies, you can find some charity that returns more than the RoR of profitable ventures.
There is quite a bit of warm fuzzies in generating a giant pot of cash and then endowing it to stand perpetually- but beyond stability effects I'm not sure there is much to recommend that model of charity.
↑ comment by DanielLC · 2010-12-26T01:32:56.292Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In order this to be true forever, the world would have to never end, which would mean that there's infinite utility no matter what you do.
If this is false eventually, there is no paradox. Whether or not It's worth while to invest for a few centuries is an open question, but if it turns out it is, that's no reason to abandon the idea of comparing charities.
Replies from: nshepperd↑ comment by nshepperd · 2010-12-26T02:40:22.319Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In order this to be true forever, the world would have to never end, which would mean that there's infinite utility no matter what you do.
That doesn't sound right... even if I'm expecting an infinite future I think I'd still want to live a good existence rather than a mediocre one (but with >0 utility). So it does matter what I do.
Say I have two options:
- A, which offers on average 1.. utilon per second? (Are utilons measures of utility of a time period, or instantaneous utility?)
- B, which offers on average 2 utilons / s
The limits as t approaches infinity are U(A) = t, U(B) = 2t. Both are "infinite" but B is yet larger than A, and therefore "better".
Replies from: DanielLC, Will_Sawin↑ comment by DanielLC · 2010-12-26T07:48:22.698Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You can switch between A and B just by rearranging when events happen. For example, imagine that there are two planets moving in opposite directions. One is a Utopia, the other is a Distopia. From the point of reference of the Utopia, time is slowed down in the Distopia, so the world is worth living in. From the point of reference of the Distopia, it's reversed.
This gets even worse when you start dealing with expected utility. As messed up as the idea is that the order of events matter, there at least is an order. With expected utility, there is no inherent order.
The best I can do is assign the priors for infinite utility to zero, and make my priors fall off fast enough to make sure expected utility always converges. I've managed to prove that my posteriors will also always have a converging expected utility.
↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2010-12-26T03:25:08.427Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
So we need to formalize this, obviously.
Method 1: Exponential discounting.
Problem: You don't care very much about future people.
Method 2: Taking the average over all time (specifically the limit as t goes to infinity of the integral of utility from 0 to t, divided by t)
Conclusion which may be problematic: If humanity does not live forever, nothing we do matters.
Caveat: Depending on our anthropics, we can argue that the universe is infinite in time or space with probability 1, in which case there are an infinite number of copies of humanity, and so we can always calculate the average. This seems like the right approach to me. (In general, using the same math for your ethics and your anthropics has nice consequences, like avoiding most versions of Pascal's Mugging.)
Replies from: wnoise, nshepperd, gwern↑ comment by wnoise · 2010-12-27T07:43:52.186Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Problem: You don't care very much about future people.
Why is this a problem? This seems to match reality for most people.
Replies from: Will_Sawin↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2011-01-01T00:34:36.852Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
So does selfishness and irrationality. We would like to avoid those. It also is intuitive that we would like to care more about future people.
Replies from: wnoise↑ comment by wnoise · 2011-01-06T09:33:16.457Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Excessive selfishness, sure. Some degree of selfishness is required as self-defense, currently, otherwise all your own needs are subsumed by supplying others' wants.. Even in a completely symmetric society with everybody acting more for others' good than their own is worse than one where everybody takes care of their own needs first -- because each individual generally knows their own needs and wants better than anyone else does.
I don't know the needs and wants of the future. I can't know them particularly well. I have worse and worse uncertainty the farther away in time that is. Unless we're talking about species-extinction level of events, I damn well should punt to those better informed, those closer to the problems.
It also is intuitive that we would like to care more about future people.
Not to me. Heck. I'm not entirely sure what it means to care about a person who doesn't exist yet, and where my choices will influence which of many possible versions will exist.
Replies from: Will_Sawin↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2011-01-06T15:31:30.018Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
each individual generally knows their own needs and wants better than anyone else does.
I don't know the needs and wants of the future.
Expected-utility calculation already takes that into effect. Uncertainty about whether an action will be beneficial translates into a lower expected utility. Discounting, on top of that, is double counting.
Knowledge is a fact about probabilities, not utilities.
Not to me.
Let's hope our different intuitions are resolvable.
I'm not entirely sure what it means to care about a person who doesn't exist yet, and where my choices will influence which of many possible versions will exist.
Surely it's not much more difficult than caring about a person who your choices will dramatically change?
↑ comment by nshepperd · 2010-12-26T05:44:21.022Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How about this:
If you have a set E = {X, Y, Z...} of possible actions, A (in E) is the utility-maximising action iff for all other B in E, the limit
dt'%20-%20\int_0%5Et%20{Eu(B,%20t')dt'%20\right))
is greater than zero, or approaches zero from the positive side. Caveat: I have no evidence this doesn't implode in some way, perhaps by the limit being undefined. This is just a stupid idea to consider. A possibly equivalent formulation is
%20\implies%20\left(\int_0%5Et%20Eu(A,%20t')dt'%20\geq%20\int_0%5Et%20Eu(B,%20t')dt'\right))
The inequality being greater or equal allows for two or more actions being equivalent, which is unlikely but possible.
Replies from: DSimon, Will_Sawin, Sniffnoy↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2010-12-26T12:28:12.597Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Functions whose limit is +infinity and -infinity can be distinguished, so your good there.
I think it's the same as my second: As long as the probability given both actions of a humanity lasting forever is nonzero, and the differences of expected utilities far in the future is nonzero, nothing that happens in the first million billion years matters.
Replies from: nshepperd↑ comment by nshepperd · 2010-12-27T09:30:13.444Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The difference in expected utility would have to decrease slow enough (slower than exponential?) to not converge, not just be nonzero. [Which would be why exponential discounting "works"...]
However I would be surprised to see many decisions with that kind of lasting impact. The probability of an action having some effect at time t in the future "decays exponentially" with t (assuming p(Effect_t | Effect_{t-1}, Action) is approximately constant), so the difference in expected utility will in general fall off exponentially and therefore converge anyway. Exceptions would be choices where the utilities of the likely effects increase in magnitude (exponentially?) as t increases.
Anyway I don't see infinities as an inherent problem under this scheme. In particular if we don't live forever, everything we do does indeed matter. If we do live forever, what we do does matter, excepts how it affects us might not if we anticipate causing "permanant" gain by doing something.
↑ comment by gwern · 2010-12-26T03:58:38.536Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Bostrom would disagree with your conclusion that infinities are unproblematic for utilitarian ethics: http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf
comment by Psy-Kosh · 2010-12-25T01:31:47.651Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Very well presented.
Just a minor technical note: All the links that linked to other LW pages are broken. It looks like somehow the links ended up having those articles's names being appended to the link for this one.
For instance, the one that was supposed to link to money being the unit of caring instead tries to link to this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/
Replies from: Yvain↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T03:12:03.274Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hm, never seen that particular error before. Thanks and fixed.
Replies from: Psy-Koshcomment by PhilGoetz · 2010-12-27T20:28:39.513Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
And likewise, there is only one best charity: the one that helps the most people the greatest amount per dollar.
I disagree. Giving money to charity is not different from spending money on a latte at Starbucks. I spend money according to my values. And I still buy lattes. I am not Zachary Baumkletterer. Even Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always", to justify spending an INCREDIBLE amount of money (enough to buy ten people's entire lives, in an era with no inflation, making it comparable to ten million US dollars today) on pouring perfume once on Jesus' feet. The guy was tired and depressed and about to be crucified and wanted his damn perfume, like I want my damn latte.
Similarly, people who gave money to keep a painting in a museum, might also spend considerably more money to buy paintings to hang in their houses, than it would take to save a life in another country. These people value art, and they value benefitting others. Draw a 2D plot, and label the axes "selfish ... unselfish" and "spiritual ... physical" ("spiritual" standing for art and other "impractical" values). One person might
- buy a painting to hang in their bedroom (spiritual, selfish)
- buy a painting to hang in their guest room (spiritual, sorta selfish)
- spend to preserve a painting in a museum (spiritual, unselfish)
- buy fuzzy slippers (physical, selfish)
- spend money for vaccines in Africa (physical, unselfish)
And each of those things could have similar utility for them.
I don't think this is irrational. Irrational is spending any money at all on "charity" instead of spending it according to your utility function.
This post contains the hidden presupposition that charity, using a collective utility function, is more moral than self-oriented actions; and therefore, following our utility functions is immoral. This is an assertion about morality and rationality that has huge implications! It is resonant with a very common meme that says that "moral" behavior is behavior that we don't want to do, because we are fundamentally immoral. I say, instead, that morals are part of our utility function - that we have these things called morals because part of us really wants to be nice to other people. They are just another part of our utility function.
Encouraging unselfish behavior can be done by manipulating peoples' selfish desires to produce "unselfish" behavior (give to charity and get social benefits, or stay out of Hell), as a mechanism to solve PD problems with a given payoff matrix. But it can also be done by treating people in ways that encourage what natural unselfish tendencies they have - solving PD problems by changing people's payoff matrices.
Apply Kant's imperative. This post suggests that we have 2 utility functions, one for everyday life, and another for charity; and that the one for charity is more moral. But if everyone used such a charity utility function for everything they did, it would result in a global race to the bottom as economies imploded after spending all national wealth on ameliorating suffering while undercutting all private motivation. Therefore, it is less moral. It is not only not obviously moral, it is immoral, if that means anything, for a government, or a person, to spend every last dollar on helping the unfortunate before spending any money on education, roads, defense, art, or even entertainment.
Replies from: Yvain, Eliezer_Yudkowsky, artsyhonker↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-28T08:00:31.793Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
To some degree, this article is less about moralizing and more of a "how to" guide. If you want to help people, this is how to do it. If you don't want to help people, and you prefer to have lattes or works of fine art or whatever, then a how-to guide on how to help people isn't relevant to your interests.
To the degree that it is more than that, the article is an attempt to expose certain thought processes into consciousness so that they can be evaluated by conscious systems. People may be donating to these inefficient charities because they feel like it and they don't examine their feelings, even though if they were to consciously think the problem through they would give to more efficient charities. If, after realizing that the choice is between one kid's life or 1/1000 of a painting, someone still prefers the painting, I don't really have anything more I can say - but my guess is that's not a lot of the population.
You made a really good point in your mysticism post on Discussion, about the difference between categorizing things by their causes and categorizing things by their effects. When you talk about spiritual and unselfish choices, you're categorizing things by their causes - a donation to the painting come from the same warm feelings that also produce a donation to vaccines.
Efficient charity is about categorizing things by their effects - it doesn't matter how noble the feelings that produced a certain action, only how much that action did what you wanted it to do. If you want to help people, it's about how many people you helped.
Categorizing things by their causes is an academic activity that can only declare some people to be more "unselfish" than others and accord them bragging rights. In my opinion this doesn't have as much to do with the actual work of saving the world as categorizing things by effects. You say this article claims things about morality, but that's really not its purpose. Its purpose is - if you've seen all sorts of horrible things in the world, and it's reached the point where you're so mad you don't care what can or can't be classified as moral, you just want to fix things as quickly as possible, what do you do then?
I think the idea of something to protect is relevant here.
Replies from: XiXiDu, wedrifid, thelasttree↑ comment by XiXiDu · 2010-12-28T11:58:13.630Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It should be noted that if you want to help people then donating something helps more people than being discouraged to the point of not donating at all due to the possibility that your contribution might be used some orders of magnitude less effectively than possible.
Many people do not (yet) have the ability (or nerves/time etc.) to read up on and make sense of the arguments, or the data, to subsequently compute the answer of what would be the most effective way to spend their money in case they want to help other people.
So before you give up and do not donate anything at all, better split your money and give some to the SIAI (or even Wikipedia etc.). Additionally use a service like GiveWell. And also don't worry helping to exhibit some painting. All of those contributions will help some people, if only by making them happy (as in the case of the painting). It will make a difference! And it will make a huge difference compared to doing nothing at all.
Replies from: pnrjulius↑ comment by pnrjulius · 2012-06-12T01:36:58.354Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Indeed, it's remarkable how little we would have to spend to end the worst poverty and injustice in the world today, if only people were willing to do it.
We literally spend more on cat food than it would take to eliminate the UN absolute poverty level.
↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-28T08:53:57.661Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
To some degree, this article is less about moralizing and more of a "how to" guide.
The specific quote the grandparent was replying to is about moralizing.
And likewise, there is only one best charity: the one that helps the most people the greatest amount per dollar.
One could strip the moralizing element from the quote (and the article) in a fairly straightforward manner. The best charity someone can donate to is subjectively objective: the one that achieves the most benefit per dollar according to that persons values, altruistic or otherwise.
Replies from: Yvain↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-28T09:14:03.886Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The specific quote the grandparent was replying to is about moralizing.
The problem with the word "best" there is the same problem the word "good" always runs into - the difference between "a good car" and "a good person". I'm using "best charity" in the same sense I would use "best Arctic survival gear" - best at achieving the purpose you are assumed to have. Although I think there is a case for that also being the morally best for most moral systems in which "morally best" makes sense, that would be way outside the scope of this discussion.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2010-12-28T11:39:14.053Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I understand what you are doing in the post and follow the sense of 'best'. What I am observing is that the claim "you are moralizing" is factually correct. The moralization is not in the form of a direct 'should' nor is it in the way in which you use best. It can be seen here:
best at achieving the purpose you are assumed to have.
That is an extremely powerful moral gambit.
↑ comment by thelasttree · 2011-10-24T01:10:58.508Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What a provoking article - excellent! It's healthy for us to be asking these questions.
But I wonder about the dualistic nature of the questions posed in your 'how to guide'. Sometimes, in fact often, it is not a simple choice between two. Biodiversity, like culture, is much more complex than a graph can depict. The multiple layers move at different rhythms & speed and are instructed by differing motivations such as hormone, instinct, sex, survival, power, empathy (to name only a few).
My point is that systemic change is not a matter of choosing between the best charity - that approach only has one outcome which is how many lives to save in one monetary act - if we look at the world in a connected web than demonstrating empathy & care by looking after one's place (cleaning up the local beach) or protecting a rainforest for the future health of the planet - these are all responsibilities with different impacts that contribute to a greater whole. Helping a rainforest now may save millions of lives in the future compared to 10 lives treated for malaria now. And this is not just about humans! I don't think you can measure what you are trying to measure - it denies the complexity of life and reduces it to an economic plan.
Yes you can look at a 'how to guide' if you want to find the best charity and you do make great examples of how to make that decision - but sustaining life and survival is much deeper, chaotic and unknown.
↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2010-12-27T22:18:08.069Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Even Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always", to justify spending an INCREDIBLE amount of money (enough to buy ten people's entire lives, in an era with no inflation, making it comparable to ten million US dollars today) on pouring perfume once on Jesus' feet
"Even Jesus"? Does it occur to you that making this a religious example is actually even MORE likely to get us to notice the moral dissonance, not convince us to excuse it?
↑ comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-28T11:17:09.186Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It is not only not obviously moral, it is immoral, if that means anything, for a government, or a person, to spend every last dollar on helping the unfortunate before spending any money on education, roads, defense, art, or even entertainment.
This seems a false dichotomy; the unfortunate will also be helped by money spent on education, roads and other measures which increase the common good (so long as they do not make the plight of the unfortunate worse).
Whether to spend money on medicine for the sick, education for those who cannot get access to it with their own resources, or art and etertainment by which a culture might examine these problems strikes me as being a bit like medical triage in an emergency room. Perhaps it makes sense to treat personal resource management similarly.
Replies from: pnrjulius, artsyhonker↑ comment by pnrjulius · 2012-06-12T01:41:52.727Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well, think of it this way: What would an economy look like, if everyone in it obeyed the maxims of Peter Singer?
It seems to me it would be a complete mess, far worse than what we have today.
Now, if everyone in the world gave just a small amount of their income (5%? 10%?) to a wide variety of charities they care about---e.g. scientific research, medicine, economic development, and yes, arts and culture---we would get all the benefits of our present system and eliminate a lot of the worst flaws. US GDP is $14 trillion. US development aid and private charity are more like $300 billion (about 2% if you're playing at home). Step that up to $600 billion, or $1 trillion, and what we could accomplish!
But I don't think we're going to get there by making people feel guilty about supporting one thing rather than another. Far better, it seems, to get them to just make a habit of writing a check---think of it like another bill to pay---and not worrying so much about whether it is going the best possible place.
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by gwern · 2012-06-12T02:37:06.249Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well, think of it this way: What would an economy look like, if everyone in it obeyed the maxims of Peter Singer?
They would donate up until the point of diminishing marginal returns as determined by experts in the relevant fields and then spend on themselves.
Seems like a pretty good world.
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2012-06-12T17:35:28.675Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems like a world in which most resources are controlled by "experts in relevant fields." When I consider this possible world should I imagine it with the experts we have now, or with more idealized experts?
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by gwern · 2012-06-12T17:58:42.597Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How about the existing experts that the existing Singer recommends in his existing books, and not some straw Singer as pnrjulius seems to be thinking of?
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2012-06-12T20:59:46.669Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Singer wants us to donate to these organizations. Seemingly, he wants us to donate a lot, but not so much as he personally gives.
I don't know what Straw Singer wants us to do.
↑ comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-28T11:18:53.906Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
(Sorry for bad html, I'll try to learn to use the interface when I'm next at a real computer.)
Replies from: Vaniver↑ comment by Vaniver · 2010-12-28T11:40:11.736Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
When replying to a comment, click the "help" link to the right of the "cancel" button (it's all the way over in the corner).
Replies from: artsyhonker↑ comment by artsyhonker · 2010-12-28T12:02:04.562Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks.
comment by j_phil_b · 2013-04-13T13:56:13.872Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
With respect to the lawyer example, I understand that the lawyer can maximize the good he does by remaining a lawyer instead of working for a non-profit. But if all the most talented/productive people (and thus those with the highest potential salaries in the private sector) took private sector jobs, then only the least talented/productive people would be available to start and run the non-profits. Given that we can expect this low talent pool to make many mistakes, a lot of the high talent pool's donations will be squandered and wasted. So having all the $1,000 lawyers, doctors, CEO etc... stay in the private sector may not maximize the total good achieved.
In my view we need some of the most talented/productive to run the non-profits. Yes they will make less than they will in their private sector occupation and therefore will not be able to personally donate as much. But they will make the overall charity system more efficient. As for the self-interest piece of this puzzle the talented non-profiteers would need to have a strong preference for charity so the gains in utility from their occupation offset the decrease in purchasing power from the lower salary.
comment by Yosarian2 · 2013-01-03T10:28:26.966Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
For the "lawyer work for another hour and donate the money vs. volunteer", it also what matters what the side effects of his labor are, right? If the lawyer can make $1000 an hour, but only in ways that actually harm society (working on frivolous lawsuits against hospitals, for example), then working for another hour and donating the money isn't necessarily the best thing he could be doing. Now, on the other hand, if his work also genuinely helps society and creates more wealth for people, then it's even better then the null case.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2013-01-03T11:09:26.943Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
For the "lawyer work for another hour and donate the money vs. volunteer", it also what matters what the side effects of his labor are, right? If the lawyer can make $1000 an hour, but only in ways that actually harm society (working on frivolous lawsuits against hospitals, for example), then working for another hour and donating the money isn't necessarily the best thing he could be doing.
Then the equation becomes ($1,000 - damage-per-hour + damgage-per-hour-if-the-next-lawyer-available-did-it > next-best-value-opportunity). It is highly unlikely that the lawyer choosing to not involve himself in such lawsuits will make much difference at all, at the margin. Lawyer availability isn't a particularly limiting factor.
Participating in the society-destructing behavior, taking huge amounts of money for doing so (and using it well) while still voting for laws that prohibit or limit such behavior in general is probably the correct thing to do.
Replies from: Yosarian2↑ comment by Yosarian2 · 2013-01-03T22:31:06.891Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's possible that that might be true, in theory, but considering that we are running on corrupted hardware, I would be very suspicious of actually trying to put any plan into effect that sounded like an excuse for "I'm going to do something unethical to make myself really rich, but I'll make sure I use the money for good, and if I don't do it someone else will anyway." Even if that is actually your plan, in reality you will probably end up doing more harm then good.
Replies from: wedrifid↑ comment by wedrifid · 2013-01-04T00:38:33.859Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I would be very suspicious of actually trying to put any plan into effect that sounded like an excuse for "I'm going to do something unethical to make myself really rich, but I'll make sure I use the money for good, and if I don't do it someone else will anyway." Even if that is actually your plan, in reality you will probably end up doing more harm then good.
I implement ethical inhibitions too. The difference is in a different understanding of the economic implications of the behavior. Putting "be a lawyer who is willing to work on 'frivolous' lawsuits" in the class of things that must be inhibited for ethical reasons is a mistake.
comment by Irgy · 2012-11-30T04:46:31.104Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's one flaw in the argument about Buy a Brushstroke vs African sanitation systems, which is the assumption/implication that if they hadn't given that money to Buy a Brushstroke they would have given it to African sanitation systems instead. It's a false dichotomy. Sure, the money would have been better spent on African sanitation systems, but you can say that about anything. The money they spent on their cars, the money I just spent on my lunch, in fact somewhere probably over 99.9% of all non-African-sanitation-system-purchases made in the first-world would be better to have been made on African sanitation systems. It makes the Buy a Brushstroke campaign look actively malicious, despite the fact that all it reall did was redirect money from personal junk luxury items to, well, another more public junk luxury item. Neutral at worst.
To me, it's silly to only apply the sanitation sytems comparison to people's charitable donations. They're a softer target, because it's obvious that people could have spared that money, but the end result is people who've given nothing to anyone sitting there thinking "Well at least I'm not that stupid to have made such suboptimal donations", and feeling superior about themselves compared to those who are at least giving something to a cause that's not themselves. Not to mention people feeling actively guilty about raising money for a good local cause just because every donation they gather is money those people could have given to a better cause.
I agree with your point on the whole I just think these side-effects of that comparison are worth raising.
comment by [deleted] · 2010-12-25T23:08:11.810Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This speaks in favor of the moral qualities of the camera manufacturer
Why is this? Is it unethical to profit from trade? This made my little inner Objectivist cringe pretty hard... but otherwise, I like this post a lot. It makes an important point about efficiency that isn't obvious and needs to be reinforced.
Replies from: ata↑ comment by ata · 2010-12-25T23:14:33.202Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It can speak in favour of the moral qualities of the camera manufacturer without speaking against the moral qualities of the parka manufacturer. Of course it's fine to profit from trade, but generosity is still praiseworthy.
(Though, in practice, selling a $200 camera at no profit is probably not nearly the best way for a camera manufacturer to be altruistic anyway, so that may not be the best example.)
comment by jsteinhardt · 2010-12-25T04:08:04.254Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is an excellent article. A quick comment on one of the sentences:
GiveWell.org, a site which collects and interprets data on the effectiveness of charities, predicts that antimalarial drugs save one child from malaria per $5,000 worth of bed medicine, but insecticide-treated bed nets save one child from malaria per $500 worth of drugs.
I find this sentence somewhat confusing. Should the "worth of bed medicine" be just "medicine", and the "worth of drugs" be "worth of netting"?
Replies from: Yvain↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T05:13:21.662Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thank you, I have no idea what happened to my brain there.
comment by Dan_Moore · 2014-03-28T14:55:16.676Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Pollination Project is run by a guy who gives $1,000 a day, to a different recipient every day. Rational justifications for this approach include minimizing the model risk - i.e., perhaps the model you used to decide which single charitable cause is the best is wrong. Also, small donations seem likely to produce a high velocity of the money donated.
comment by jdesrosiers · 2012-12-14T22:23:01.525Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Interesting article.
But if you really really want to do more good, you also have to change the way you see people in need. This might involve buying a ticket to Sudan and seeing children face to face while they are starving to death.
So in the long run, your $5k trip to Sudan might do more good than giving a one time $5k donation to an organization, because by changing the way you think about starving people, you will have the urgency of actually changing your priorities. So you will literally work for those who die of starvation in other countries, and deprive yourself from buying useless stuff or entertainment in order to feed more children in Sudan.
... unless you're psychopath, of course. ;-)
comment by stcredzero · 2012-12-01T00:42:58.402Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It is important to be rational about charity for the same reason it is important to be rational about Arctic exploration: it requires the same awareness of opportunity costs and the same hard-headed commitment to investigating efficient use of resources
In his Mars Direct talks, Robert Zubrin cited the shoestring budget Amundsen expedition through the Northwest Passage in comparison to around 30 contemporary government funded expeditions with state of the art steam frigates and huge logistics trains. The Amundsen expedition traveled in a cheap little sealing boat and fed themselves largely through rifles and ammunition they brought with them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Mm34Muv6Lsg#t=102s
comment by Rhalah · 2012-03-27T10:56:23.941Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Congratulations! I Liked the article very much.
I just have some doubts about two specific points:
In the part that there's the text:
"And when your life is on the line, things like impressing your friends and buying organic pale in comparison."
I got the impression that it's missing the end of the sentence. As my english is not good, maybe it's my fault. Sorry if that is the case.
The other thing is that I found a little problematic the math comparing U$ 10.000 spent on a U$ 500 charity with overhead of 50% and the one spent on a U$ 10.000 charity with 0% overhead. It's said that in the first case we could save 10 people and in the second just 2. Isn't that 20 people in the first case?
Replies from: ArisKatsaris↑ comment by ArisKatsaris · 2012-03-27T11:47:55.786Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"And when your life is on the line, things like impressing your friends and buying organic pale in comparison"
I got the impression that it's missing the end of the sentence. As my english is not good, maybe it's my fault. Sorry if that is the case.
Parse it as follows: And when your life is on the line, certain other things (like "impressing your friends" and "buying organic foods") pale in comparison.
comment by Boyi · 2011-12-05T22:52:04.629Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with the idea that efficiency should be taken into account when considering charitable actions, but I do not know if I agree with your conclusion of what is most efficient. Alleviating a problem does not cure it. While paying for malaria nets, cleaning up the beach, donating to charities alleviates real social issues, it does not address the issue of their causation. In my opinion, what is most efficient is not concentrating on recuperation, but attacking the sickness. Without changing the causal conditions the disease will continue to grow endlessly no matter how much you suppress it. This is why even after going through successful rehab, addicts will experience relapse if reintroduced into their original environments because nothing has changed to prevent the same symptoms from arising again.
What then is the cause of social travesties? I would argue a lack of high-level empathy. In my opinion the question then becomes does financial donation increase a person's empathetic capacity? I do not think it does. It definitely increase the amount of pure capital being pushed at a problem, but i do not think that necessarily cures the problem. I know that some of the poorest schools in America have recently gotten state of the art equipment, smart rooms, i-pads, new schools, but their test scores are not changing. That is because the problem is the values being pushed into the kids not the amount of money.
What does promote empathy? Pierre Bourdieu is a prominent sociologist who is best known for the idea of habitus. The general idea of habitus is that cognitive and emotional patterns are shaped by human physicality. Aristole's virtue ethics represent the idea that morality is developed through habitus. Mencius, the second most famous confucian moralist, also had notions of empathy being like a muscle that must be strengthened within people. From this theoretical framework the type of charity proposed in the essay above would be inefficient. While I cannot for certain say what action/ environments cultivate empathy/morality; I think it is a safe bet to say that working to make more money and spending money does not. if that was the case, then the most successful business men and women would also be the most empathetic people. No, it seems more likely that empathy would be developed through committing time to people and places that are not readily identified with the actor's self. Meaning that the lawyer taking an hour each day to work on the beach would increase his virtue/empathetic capacity, making that working more valuable than the thousands of dollars that he could have earned in that time seeing as there is no way to buy morals.
I am not sure if my idea is correct. If the author of this essay writes from a fundamentally economic frame, I write from a fundamentally sociological/anthropological/confucian one. The correct answer is probably a mediation of the two depending on type of charity and circumstance. Thanks for your thoughtful writing.
Replies from: thomblake↑ comment by thomblake · 2011-12-05T23:35:25.675Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Your comment tries to answer the question, "How can I make myself more charitable?" rather than the question, "Now that I'm very charitable, how can I maximize my impact?"
If someone is not a very charitable person, yes some learned empathy might fix that, and hands-on experience might be the best way to do that. But such a person would not be asking the first question above.
If someone is already a very charitable person, then they should be concerned with how much of an impact their actions are actually having - then, the work on the beach is inefficient as compared to the thousands of dollars.
Replies from: Boyi↑ comment by Boyi · 2011-12-06T02:43:32.750Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well said, but I would tweak your wording of my question to "now that I am a good person, how can maximize my impact?" What is the estimate of a good person? I would argue that a good person is one who produces meaningful relationships in the world. The model of efficiency above touches only on how to most impact the person-captial relationship, i.e what to do with the material and labor resources I have accumulated to most positively impact humanity. I agree that this is important, but add that the "good person" is defined by multiple relationships, not just of the one they have to capital. For example, I would argue a truly good person would be a good child, good parent, good friend, good older/younger (depending on the age of the opposing actor), good stranger, good citizen, good character, and potentially much more. To maximize the meaning and positivity of all critical relationships is not done through economic efficiency. And while I cannot make any absolute claims that the social impact a person makes is more beneficial than the way they use their capital, personally I believe it to be so.
Now if your original statement about already being charitable was meant to mean that you are already a very humane person (meaning your relational impact in your community is maximized) , then sure, I think maximizing charitable action is great. But I think to maximize your role within a social network is really hard, if not impossible to some extent. I also think that most people are not as empathetically developed as they would like to think. I would go as far to as to say that a perfect empathetic awareness is as unreachable as Truth with a capital T.
I apologize if I sound argumentative, I just was not sure if my question was already dealt with in your minds/blogs and this is a further point.
Replies from: thomblake↑ comment by thomblake · 2011-12-06T13:08:11.344Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That story sounds suspiciously nice.
Given the choice between being a 'good person' and fostering local relationships of various fuzzy impacts, or saving the lives of ten thousand people, would you really choose the former over the latter? Do you think that actually makes you a good person?
Note that this is not merely a hypothetical; that is effectively the choice the lawyer is making when he works in soup kitchen instead of donating money.
Replies from: Boyi↑ comment by Boyi · 2011-12-06T20:49:08.753Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well given the way you word it, yes, it does seem suspicious. There are several things I would change about your retelling of my position.
1.) I advocate for proper and efficient relationships. This idea is local if you mean thinking of mechanical solidarity before organic solidarity, but in this day in age with telecommunication and a globally mobile workforce I would not call relationship cultivation "local" in the traditional sense. For example, my self-network spans multiple continents. The potential for impact is huge.
2.) Proper relationships are by no means "fuzzy," I would say that the fact that you would describe relationship cultivation as fuzzy shows a serious lack of mental effort. Since it is something I think about a lot, I will give you an example. First let me say I am currently trying to define all core relationships of the social self. The social self is the idea that human identity, motivation, action, cognition, do not arise from autonomous agents, but from, a network of human, non-human, and cultural relationships. One such relationship is the relationship between child and parent/ child and guardian. It is possible to not have parents, or to not have a guardian, but it is not possible to avoid the consequences of this fact. The dynamics of the child to parent/ guardian relationship is fundamental to a person's actions, thoughts, and feelings. If my mom or dad were to die, no matter how happy, satisfied, complete I felt immediately prior to this, it would completely rearrange my feelings and thoughts. I would eventually recover, but I would be a different person, one who had to figure out how to be happy, satisfied and complete knowing my mother was not alive.
So far I have been trying to show the impact of a core relationship. The point I originally wanted to make was that cultivating relationships is not "fuzzy." Frankly speaking it is hard being a good son. If your parents are racist, religious zealots, unhealthy, insecure, it is not your job to fix that. You think it is your job, because your parents raised you, fixed you in a sense, and at some point to validate your own maturity you want to do the same. And honestly in a perfect world you should be able to. I have far more education than my parents about health, psychologically, and sociality. I am positive that if I know what my parents are doing wrong in certain aspects of their life, and that I could do better. There is nothing wrong with telling your parents you think they should change in some way; the problem arises when they do not want to. You cannot force your parents to change. You can cut them out of your life, but that is destroying a relationship not cultivating it. Now I am not talking about extremes here. There might be some cases where they choice comes between those two options, but the majority of the time it is not. The majority of the time, the choice is to either accept your parents for their imperfection, ignore it, or abandon them. The proper choice being the former. It is a hard thing to do.
Proper relationships are not fuzzy. If a relationship is fuzzy all the time, generally you are not maintaining it well.
3.) I see cultivating good people as making transformation change. Meaning that it is a transforming change that does not just stop at initial impact. It is perpetual. If you model proper relations in your social network, then the networks connected peripherally will be impacted. In the short run pouring money on the problem might help, but I do not see this as a solution.
A perfect example of this is Aristotle's appeal for the need of practical wisdom to complement laws. You can make laws to regulate, but if people do not have an internal commitment to the spirit behind the laws then the laws will become perpetually less effective. How many thousands of pages of new laws does the United States produce each year? The byproduct of which is that normal people can no longer understand the law because it has become so complex. If normal people cannot understand it the result is two-fold. The masses do not internalize it, and the elite figure out how to take advantage of it. I would argue this problem of deficient practical wisdom is directly related to a lack of proper relationships and knowledge of how to cultivate them.
4.) I do not think you can save 10,000 people with any one action. Nor do I think just because your intention is to save people that is what you actually do. If you get 10,000 people malaria nets that does not save them from a. being able to get malaria, b.) living in an environment where malaria is prevalent, c.) the poor condition of their lives, d.) being able to sustain their lineage for multiple generations.
Dambisa Moyo has a book called "Dead Aid" the argument is that the millions of dollars in aid sent to africa is actually doing more damage than good. There are several reasons for this, if you are interested in hearing them I would be happy to share.
Replies from: TimS↑ comment by TimS · 2011-12-06T21:06:01.551Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You are equivocating on the word fuzzy. There's a contrast between doing something because it feels good and doing something because it actually helps others. Contrast serving food at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, which makes one feel good vs. serving food on some random day in June, which is probably more helpful to the soup kitchen. The first act provides "fuzzy." The second provides more social utility.
None of this asserts that maintaining relationships is not valuable or real. The argument is that transformational relationships have less payout per effort than other social improvement acts (like donating lots of money).
And one point of anti-Aid groups is that international donors are so consumed with "trendy" types of aid that they crowd out both African self-improvement and foreign aid that might help. For more on Dead Aid in particular, you might find this developmental economist's take interesting.
Replies from: Boyicomment by Alaeriia · 2011-11-14T18:02:01.197Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I apologize if I am rehashing somebody else's post; I find that skimming the comments and then putting my own .02 in is a more valuable use of my time than thoroughly reading the comments (and thus allocating less time to an English paper I have coming up) and trying to sound like I'd exhaustively researched the topic (which would take way too much time). The payoff in terms of lives saved per work unit expended (either directly through volunteering or indirectly via donating money) varies from person to person. Even among those who consider themselves rationalists, there may be variations in which charity is most "efficient". For example, if one is incapable of becoming a high-powered lawyer for some reason, one may well have a different payoff matrix in terms of "fuzzies" and ways to go about donating. In addition, a high-powered lawyer who quits his $1000-per-hour job to work at a nonprofit may inspire others to donate to said nonprofit, which might increase the amount of lives saved. Personally, I am not concerned with world-optimization; in my opinion, perfection is unattainable in any discipline (Godel undecidablilty generalized) and, as such, we should be concerned with improvement; any improvement over the baseline is "good" and should be accepted. My goal is not to leave the world as close to perfection as I can; my goal is to maximize my happiness. As such, I donate to charities that align with my beliefs and volunteer at places I enjoy volunteering at. This may not be strictly rational, but a strict rationalist is much like a working communistic government: only attainable in fiction. I apologize if I have offended anyone; I am relatively new to LW and have much to learn about the community and rationality.
comment by [deleted] · 2010-12-26T08:03:31.840Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Would anyone of average intelligence who wants to do as much good as possible fail flagrantly in giving where it maximizes welfare? Why then the drastic difference between personal buying and donation? Someone planning an Arctic trip will not make the contemplated mistakes, which is why you used personal buying to contrast with donation practices. Whether the desire to benefit mankind is powered by warm fuzzies or some other expression of altruistic motivation, if contributors were human-welfare maximizers they would do a lot better at maximizing welfare. People aren't that irrational!
Donations have little to do with welfare maximization and warm fuzzies. They primarily function as a signaling device. Isn't that obvious?
Replies from: shokwave, PhilGoetz↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T09:27:04.121Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Isn't that obvious?
Yes. It should also be obvious that it succeeds because "appearing to desire welfare maximization and warm fuzzies" is the signal. If you donated to a charity that burned your money to reduce inflation your signal would fail.
It is less obvious but hopefully inferred by many that one of the intentions of this post and posts like it (and one of the intentions of charity-rating initiatives) is to break conventional giving, turn it into a failed signal, and replace it with efficient giving. That way, all the signalling donors will continue to donate as they did before, signalling the same things, achieving the same status gain, and accidentally helping the world more.
Replies from: NancyLebovitz↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-26T10:47:48.643Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How does trying to prevent wars and/or stop them rate as charitable activity? On the one hand, wars are tremendously destructive and on the other, it's hard to be sure how effective opposing a war is.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-26T14:30:35.995Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I am not sure. One of my nodes for "charitable activity" is non-profit organisations working in the area in question, so I hadn't even considered prevention/stopping of wars as charity. Some very light research suggests that peace activism has had a measurable impact, although by imparting the kind of pressures I think a lobby group would have more success applying.
This suggests to me some sort of lobby group should be formed, and made powerful through charitable donations. Stopping the Iraq war, to work with an example, would have saved about 110,000 lives; if it cost a lobby group around 20 million dollars to achieve the non-invasion of Iraq then you're looking at 180 dollars a life - for comparison, VillageReach gets about $200 a life and Stop TB Partnership gets about 150-170 a life. The non-disruption of citizens' lives should beat the improvement in citizens' lives when charities begin operating in a town; I don't know how to treat it more rigorously though. My intuition is that formalising the disability-adjusted life years lost due to invasion and occupation should blow all the other charities out of the water (at 20 million).
Could a lobby group stop a war with 20 million dollars? Maybe. The numbers are in the same ballpark. Lobbying against war might have some better leverage with timing (they might no need constant pressure against, they might just need to cancel out the highest points of pressure for), but declared lobbying might vastly underrepresent actual lobbying. Again, I don't know enough to treat this possibility properly.
So it rates as possibly up there with the very best of charities, definitely worth investigating, but not a very warm or fuzzy cause at all.
Edit: GiveWell's recommendations on cost-effectiveness give the upper limits of $100 per DALY prevented and $1000 per life significantly changed; without DALYs for war (I can find no figures) this gives us at most 110 million lobby dollars before GiveWell would stop recommending the lobby group. That much money seems like it could have made a significant try at opposing the Iraq war, to be honest.
Replies from: NancyLebovitz↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-26T17:45:21.890Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks. I think stopping wars is a warm and fuzzy cause, but perhaps peace activists are apt to position themselves as outsiders and this has made it less likely for them to create a formal lobby.
On the other hand, demonstrations may have become less effective, which may make a lobby more plausible.
Not sure how you'd add this to the figures, but veterans make up 1 in 4 of the homeless and Homeless adults have an age-adjusted mortality rate nearly 4 times that of the general population their average life span is shorter than 45 years.
I don't have stats for the effects on children of having one or both parents with PTSD, but I expect it to be serious.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-27T04:57:46.313Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hmm. Watch out, more numbers.
Trying to take into account those and other factors of war besides being shot in battle led me to this statistical estimate of the effect of the Iraq War. The lowest bound was 400,000, and treating excess mortality as happening on the average between 16 and 67 (an overtly optimistic hope that people under 16 remain the least affected-by-war group), we get 10.2 million expected life years lost. Assume that for every person killed, there is one person disabled in some way (a quick check suggested 3:1 serious injury:death ratio for soldiers and 1.8:1 for civilians, I went with 1:1 because disability doesn't always follow from serious injury, but concerns like PTSD can bring the ratio up to equal) and the figure is just above 20 million DALYs lost to the Iraq war. GiveWell's figure of $100 per DALY being the upper bound of efficient charity means that a lobby group or charity that could have stopped the Iraq War given 2 billion dollars would have been a gold-standard efficient charity.
I believe this answers your query, Nancy. Stopping wars most definitely rates as some of the best charity around.
Replies from: NancyLebovitz, NancyLebovitz, Marius↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-27T06:55:26.720Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I've been amazed for a long time how much people don't add up the costs of war.
↑ comment by NancyLebovitz · 2010-12-27T05:47:50.044Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's another level, I think. Afaik, wars are less likely between democracies than for other permutations of government types, so charities which spread democracy might also be a good choice, depending on one's estimate of their effectiveness.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by Marius · 2010-12-27T05:39:38.074Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Excess mortality" is a difficult concept. Most estimates I've seen calculate excess mortality based on a pre-hostilities baseline because this is relatively easy to calculate and produces the highest possible figure for excess mortality. But the number we really want would compare that mortality to the expected post-war mortality. In the case of Iraq, this would provide a higher expected value than the rate immediately pre-war.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-27T05:57:25.425Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I aimed for the lower bound. If you go by strictly what has been confirmed then something like 400 million dollars is the efficiency cut-off.
Replies from: max_i_m↑ comment by max_i_m · 2011-01-06T21:28:35.130Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This argument is based on completely ignoring future costs and benefit analysis and the available alternatives. To accept this as a (implicit?) axiom seems unnatural. Imagine a powerful lobby group stopped American involvement in the Korean war and all of South Korea ended up like the North. Imagine NATO did not strike Serbia and Milosevic continued to reign. Even the Iraq war did have some positive effect - Hussein was evil, and potentially the new government in Iraq would lead to less suffering, both internally and because of other - local and global - conflicts avoided. The particulars of these arguments are debatable (the Iraq government may collapse into chaos; even if it does not, we will never know the ultimate costs of keeping or not keeping Saddam in power), but the larger point stands. Other comments mentioned promoting democracy as a means of promoting peace. War can be a radical mean of promoting democracy (at least in Serbia it seems to have worked), and this should not be ignored.
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2011-01-07T02:35:51.322Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Even the Iraq war did have some positive effect - Hussein was evil, and potentially the new government in Iraq would lead to less suffering, both internally and because of other - local and global - conflicts avoided.
If you take the after-invasion Iraq government and subtract that from Hussein's governing, you get the improvement in governance. Is that improvement going to save 400,000 lives in its reduction of local and global conflicts? Please keep in mind it is not a dichotomy of "Invade and fix Iraq XOR abandon countries to the whims of evil dictators". It is closer to "Improving Iraq: Military intervention, or other means?".
Assassinating Hussein and backing a democratic coup is a much better way of radically promoting democracy in Iraq. I accuse you of completely ignoring available alternatives.
Replies from: max_i_m↑ comment by max_i_m · 2011-01-07T14:36:41.002Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Good, now we are talking.
Shall I contribute to charities promoting assassinations of evil foreign leaders (there are still a few left) and backing democratic coups instead of the blanket pro-peace movements?
Replies from: shokwave↑ comment by shokwave · 2011-01-07T14:51:22.042Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Charities aren't well-suited to radical political tasks. You would be better off pursuing a career in international diplomacy or statesmanship, focusing on networking with espionage rather than the military-industrial complex, if you wish to achieve these kinds of changes.
comment by JonatasMueller · 2010-12-30T22:01:33.846Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Good guide, indeed having more money to spend through whatever career may allow for being more useful for charity.
The expedition analogy is good. I'll get into discussing the specific goal or utility function. What is the goal we're heading to?
I'd say the goal as I see it is to increase the intelligence (or cure the lack of it) to make the agents of this world able to willingly solve their problems, and thereby reach a state of technological advancement that allows them to get rid of all problems for good, and start doing better things such as spending time in paradise and exploring the universe.
We shouldn't medicate our problems in the short-term, we should think in the long-term in curing them for good. How to do that? Scientific research into intelligence, artificial intelligence and human intelligence augmentation.
How does "saving" (should I say, prolonging?) African lives help with that? Not at all, in my view. Africa receives many billions of dollars in donations, there's clearly something wrong with the way it works, and you're not going to fix it by adding a million dollars to that sea of resources that doesn't end up changing anything in the long-term. It's like a car that leaks fuel, you can keep adding more and more fuel, or you should try and fix it, and that is what I suggest. You should rather spend a million dollars in a vital area that is badly lacking funding, such as intelligence augmentation and artificial intelligence.
I don't think that we want to "save lives". Save suffering instead. If you prolong an African life you're probably prolonging suffering, which is a waste. A life of suffering and misery is not worth saving. People have no souls. This is a physical world, if you lose consciousness somewhere you still got plenty of it all around.
Replies from: sgeek, erniebornheimer↑ comment by sgeek · 2011-07-04T14:01:29.006Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think you're falsely assuming that "Africa" is a single monolithic recipient for that "sea of resources" - that ignores both the spectacular variation between and within African nations, and the difference between resources given to a corrupt government aand resources applied by non-government organisations for the benefit of people there.
I think it is fair to say that the staggering sums of money given by Western nations to African governments has been at best a complete waste of money - in fact I consider that money to have caused significant net harm. It props up corrupt regimes, increases and strengthens class differences, and generally results in increased oppression and widespread misery of various kinds. Your argument applies very well to this - "Africa" does indeed receive billions of dollars, and there is indeed something broken (most of the governments receiving the money).
This argument does not apply to the international NGO's working in Africa. Some of those organisations are short-term oriented and thus arguably pointless in the long term, but some are not. A classic example would be Kiva, which offers micro-loans for people to start small businesses to support themselves and family (incidentally not just in Africa) - there are a fair few organisations doing things like this, and it is "teach a man to fish" rather than "give a man fish". These initiatives, when they work right (which they often do) help lift Africans out of poverty and put them in a position to do something about their own future (and Africa's future). A lot of worthwhile initiatives centre around education, for instance, for fairly obvious reasons.
I think you're conflating "intelligence" with other concepts such as education and good judgement (which are what's actually needed here). Rephrased like that, it becomes obvious that a much more practical action is to fund and organise education of African people - give them the means with which to figure out the solutions to their own problems, but now rather than post-Singularity. Add direct financial support (eg. by Kiva or Grameen etc) in order that these now-educated people have the means to implement their ideas, and we have tomorrow's solution today. This is currently happening, but all we tend to know about Africa's current situation is an assortment of dramatic bad news merged together into a highly misleading narrative. To give you some idea of how significantly our perceptions differ from reality on this matter, here's a TED talk from from the incomparable statistician Hans Rosling 4.5 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI - feel free to poke around for more recent presentations and data, of course, but even this old one is an eye-opener.
I'm not saying that investment in education and entrepreneurship in Africa is necessarily the most effective use of resources from a strictly utilitarian standpoint - what I am saying is that you have not presented a strong case for African investment not being a worthwhile use of resources. Personally I regard your argument largely as an excuse to not feel guilty about distant suffering, but that is just an unsupported opinion.
↑ comment by erniebornheimer · 2011-07-13T17:52:27.991Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Utter crap.
I'm reading this much later than it was written, but feel I must respond.
"Africa receives many billions of dollars in donations, there's clearly something wrong with the way it works, and you're not going to fix it by adding a million dollars..." Even if it were 100% true that there's something wrong with the way it works, it DOES NOT FOLLOW that the answer is to give less (or none). It may be the case that we have not given enough.
"It's like a car that leaks fuel, you can keep adding more and more fuel, or you should try and fix it..." Even if the analogy were 100% true and applicable, you offer a false dichotomy (add fuel OR fix it). It may be that we need to work on both simultaneously. To further the analogy, it may be that you have to add fuel to the car in the short term (knowing some will be lost), in order to keep it running long enough to get it to the mechanic who can do the long term fix.
"If you prolong an African life you're probably prolonging suffering, which is a waste. A life of suffering and misery is not worth saving." This is at best, horribly wrong-headed, and at worst, disgustingly elitist. I suspect it's a troll. Only a fool thinks a life that contains suffering and misery is not worth saving. Some people indeed are suffering so much that they may prefer death. But that is THEIR choice, not yours or mine. If you're really serious about triage, and how best to spend one's money to relieve suffering, a little humility and compassion (qualities I see very little of in this comment) might go a long way toward achieving humane (and yet rational) solutions. I suspect JonatasMueller belongs to a set of people about whom no one will ever have to ask these hard questions, and I suspect his answer is influenced by that fact. And: there's a subtle mistake here: the idea that reducing suffering does not include preserving or prolonging life. Says who?
"...the goal as I see it is to increase the intelligence (or cure the lack of it) to make the agents of this world able to willingly solve their problems, and thereby reach a state of technological advancement that allows them to get rid of all problems for good." That's a crap goal, if it crowds out other worthy goals. I believe we're already as smart as we need to be, so any efforts to try to increase intelligence are a waste of resources. I agree advancing technology is important, but I believe sharing what we have is much much more important. Our problems are mainly political, not technological. What good will it do, it technology improves the lives of some, but the fruits of that technology are not shared?
↑ comment by MatthewBaker · 2011-07-13T19:23:27.879Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Look how many scientific advancements that we have successfully made in the past 100 years, can you honestly tell me that you don't think we can continue to increase our scientific method fast enough to solve intelligence as well?
If you do, then please read some of the sequences that focus on this topic and try to understand it better. Politics is not a field that will destroy our world if not treated correctly, humanity will survive and learn from our political mistakes eventually but its not an easy problem to solve quickly. However, not solving the crisis of uFAI is the greatest current existential risk to humanity according to my valuation with a confidence factor of 90%.
I don't disagree with donating to Africa(via givewell.org) i just think that if you enjoy donating to Africa you should donate and equal amount to SIAI where they will put it to a better use in terms of the long term problems affecting them. In fact when Eliezer finished the sequences he said that whatever you feel like doing, go outside and do it. If donating to Africa makes you happy then do that and spend more time earning money to do that. However if you read more from LW you might decide that there is a faster solution to the problem in Africa :) and you might help us achieve it.
comment by sp1ky · 2012-04-18T04:46:20.156Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A good article, if your goal is to save as many lives as possible from perishing. But I'm going to say, for most people, this is not their goal. Yes, if you ask someone directly "would you save a painting, or save 1000 lives", they would almost all say "lives of course". But in reality, people don't have an emotional attachment to 1000 people they have no idea about.
In my case, I really don't care if 1000 lives are lost if I don't do something. I know that makes me sound like a bad person. But what are people really? We're a self-replicating gene machines. There's 6 billion of us in the world. There is inherently very little value in saving 1000 lives out of 6 billion. It's like saying "if you give us money we can prevent a loon from destroying 1000 iPads just because he feels like it". Now, if in this world there were only 5000 iPads left, then I might consider preserving those doomed 1000 iPads.
I think you should apply this argument towards something else, and it really needs it: animal conservation efforts. The amount of disproportionate money and focus spent on certain animals over others is highly unfair. It happens because people give money according to their emotional attachment. Hence, whales over basking sharks, or seal pups over frogs, for example. Biodiversity is an asset with unlimited potential, but before we can gene sequence it all, we're losing this diversity in front of our lives. It's like, nature has served to us on a plate amazing designs patterns and strategies, but we don't care.
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2012-04-18T20:33:30.519Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
So, clearly, the best way to optimize your utility function is to start a gene bank for freezing tissue samples from every species. You can clone them back if they turn out to be useful. It's a lot cheaper than conservationism, I assure you.
comment by JackAfter6 · 2012-02-04T14:55:13.814Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
http://jackt123.blogspot.com/2012/02/efficient-charity-or-is-that-oxymoron.html
The essence of this argument is that charities which save human lives are more valuable than charities which don't. Furthermore, it assumes that charities which save the most lives per dollar donated are the most worthy charities and the most deserving of our contributions.
How valid is this philosophy? Is saving human lives really the most crucial goal towards which we all should advance? If we explore the author's contention that the frivolous waste of money on a painting would have been better spent in the saving of one-thousand lives in Africa, then we must also explore the results of this binary decision made by the contribution giver.
The thousand saved Africans would almost certainly agree that they are the most deserving of the charitable contribution. This however ignores an unfortunate fact. The amount of life-sustaining resources in Africa―food, medicine, shelter, clean water―are sadly insufficient to sustain the lives of the Africans already living on this desperately poor continent. By funding a non-African outside force to travel thousands of miles carrying the cargo and resources and man-power necessary to save all these thousands of lives makes the donator in large part responsible for putting further strain on an already unsustainable economy. The idea that these thousand "saved" Africans will now live happily-ever-after in peace and harmony along with the other six-hundred million starving Africans is so absurd that it literally boggles the mind.
That money spent on sanitation and sewage treatment could have purchased perhaps one-million condoms, which would have decreased the birth-rate and allowed those hundreds of millions of Africans to endure for perhaps another generation. But here again the logic trips us up. For perhaps in those one-million babies never born, was the African leader who would have led the African people out of darkness and savagery into a better more compassionate future. And who's to say to what use those condoms would have gone? Perhaps all the wise Africans would have used the condoms while all the foolish Africans would have continued making babies. Your big-hearted and thoughtful gift could wind up turning a hellish brutal land into something so much worse that there's no way it could even be imagined.
Indeed even among the original thousand saved lives might be a great one with destiny riding his shoulders. So perhaps saving the most lives possible is the best answer. Unless... what if among those thousand saved lives is another Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot! No, the only thing I'm certain of is that trying to predict what the future holds based on a spur of the moment impulsive charitable gift is enough to drive a person to drink...
Replies from: JoachimSchipper↑ comment by JoachimSchipper · 2012-02-04T15:27:10.190Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Do you have a point, or are you just throwing up a smokescreen? Africa has problems, sure, but not dying of malaria is still a good thing (in expectation.) Malthus has not been proven right yet, and indeed Africa does usually have enough food (famines are rare, and usually the result of a completely fscked up government. Efficient aid does consider the government.)
comment by aeschenkarnos · 2010-12-25T11:17:01.999Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
GiveWell is ethically questionable and taking them (and their metrics) at face value is dubious wisdom. Here's why. http://mssv.net/wiki/index.php/Givewell
They are not just a "site that collects and interprets data", they collect actual money and disburse less of that money, to charities who are rated according to a highly questionable system, which was made up by people with little experience in charity and lots of experience in hedge funds.
Seems to me they are a self-inserted middle-man, whose business model is to leverage the human charitable impulse into an opportunity to scoop off a little or a lot of cream for their precious little selves. According to their financial statements in 2009 they took in ~$750K and gave out ~$110K. That's quite some overhead.
Replies from: Yvain, alexanderis↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T11:34:51.501Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I request more information. Your link goes to an "astroturfing scandal", which was stupid but doesn't obviously cast doubt on their metrics or sincerity (also, wow; remind me never to do anything wrong on the Internet where those people can see it).
As far as I can tell, GiveWell allows you to donate either to them or to their recommended charities, and makes it very clear which is which. I don't know if they're doing enough good to justify their operating expenses, but they don't seem to be doing anything deliberately dishonest in that regard.
But If you can point me to other people who do the same sort of thing GiveWell does but better, and are easily accessible online, I'll switch the links to them.
Replies from: aeschenkarnos↑ comment by aeschenkarnos · 2010-12-25T12:31:51.355Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'd classify it as an indicator of Holden Karnofsky's sense of ethics, personally.
Charity Navigator also makes the claim of analyzing charities' performance and I can't speak to the relative quality of the two sites' metrics, but Charity Navigator apparently only takes donations directly for itself. This is more transparent - $1 given to them is $1 to them, and $1 given to Charity X at Charity Navigator's recommendation is $1 to Charity X. On the other hand, $1 to "Givewell and whatever charities Givewell recommends", given to Givewell, will be divided up as Givewell pleases, and unless I'm missing something fundamental, it pleased itself to divide it $640K (Givewell) : $110K (donated) in 2009. I'll admit to a complete lack of surprise at that.
Replies from: Yvain, shokwave↑ comment by Scott Alexander (Yvain) · 2010-12-25T20:15:29.818Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Charity Navigator admits "We do not currently evaluate the quality of the programs and services a charity provides. As soon as we develop a methodology for doing so, we will. For now, however, we limit our ratings to an analysis of a charity's financial health."
As such, I don't see them as really in the same business as GiveWell. They're useful for avoiding getting scammed, but not for maximizing the efficiency of your charitable giving.
I've awkwardly added a link to Navigator in the article, but think I'll continue to link GiveWell.
↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-25T13:14:39.778Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't see your point.
$1 given to Charity Navigator is $1 given to Charity Navigator; $1 given to charity X at Charity Navigator's recommendation is $1 given to charity X.
$1 given to GiveWell is 85 cents given to GiveWell and 15 cents given to charities Y and Z. $1 given to charity X at GiveWell's recommendation is $1 given to charity X.
This is a point in favour of GiveWell, by any measure.
Replies from: aeschenkarnos↑ comment by aeschenkarnos · 2010-12-25T14:09:46.986Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Only if you assume that (a) donors are actually aware of an 85%:15% split in the charities' disfavor; (b) approve of that. I would expect the naive assumption to be on the order of 90%:10% in charities' favor, but maybe that's just me.
Now, their donation pages for separate charities eg http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/villagereach/donate do state that the donation is direct to the charity, which is .a good thing.
So it's "I'm willing to take your money for me, but if you want to give it to X, give it to X directly" vs "I'm willing to take your money for me to split between me and X, or you can give it to X". Now on the face of it, that looks like X would get more money in the second scenario, as you point out. However there is an inherent naive assumption there that the split will be fair to X. If Donor A wanted to give $50 to Charity Navigator and $50 to charities through Charity Navigator, A has to give those amounts separately. If A wants to give $50 to Givewell and $50 to charities through Givewell, A may be tempted to just give $100 to Givewell under the assumption that Givewell will split it $50/$50. I suggest that donors who assumed that Givewell will be splitting at 50%/50% or better, have been if not deceived, at least permitted to operate under a false assumption where the one who could correct the assumption (ie, Givewell) benefits from not doing so. I think the split with potential breach of trust is more ethically dubious than the known split.
I'll admit that it's possible that Givewell have cleaned their act up since 2007. But they seem to have a significantly higher online profile than Charity Navigator, while also seeming to have a smaller number of charities rated and smaller amount of money donated due to their influence, which "smells funny" (or if you prefer, triggers heuristic estimates of suspiciousness) to me.
Replies from: alexanderis, Will_Sawin, shokwave↑ comment by alexanderis · 2010-12-26T01:00:52.203Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't know what metric you're using to determine whether CN or GiveWell has a significantly higher online profile, but "charitynavigator.org" returns ten times as many hits on Google as "givewell.org"
No doubt about it, Charity Navigator evaluates more charities, but they're able to do so because they use a substantially less rigorous methodology. They carry out a fundamentally different function: they're a watchdog group, aiming to avoid fraud, while GiveWell conducts research to try to find excellent charities, a much more difficult task. (Looks like Yvain makes this point above).
Because it's younger and appeals to a smaller group of people that want to maximize their impact, GiveWell moves substantially less money than Charity Navigator (though it's growing).
Edit: I've been a fan of the GiveWell project for quite some time, and have an informal agreement to join GiveWell as an employee in mid-2011. I'm a student and was commenting simply on my own behalf, without any discussion with GiveWell. After Holden commented, I emailed him to say that I had commented, and he recommended that I disclose my plan to work for them.
↑ comment by Will_Sawin · 2010-12-25T17:15:48.625Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"we may use these funds for operating expenses or grants to charities, at our discretion" (source: http://www.givewell.org/about/donate ) This does not imply "we will treat the charities fairly" at all. It implies nothing about the numerical split.
My quick attempt to find charity navigator's favorite charities: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&listid=100 There are several universities drowning in money on this list. That does not sound very efficient. Looking for an explanation, they seem to care too much about % operating expenses and so on, and not enough about real impact.
Doing the same for GiveWell (looking at US to make it more comparable): http://www.givewell.org/united-states/top-charities We have two charities. Both are evaluated based on marginal impact and measured effectiveness. The second, KIPP, is an extremely "cool" program.
Conclusion: It appears as though GiveWell recommends more efficient charities with better criteria. GiveWell also seems to behave in a manner that sounds better to Internet geeks, for example with their mistake list. This is sufficient explanation for their Internet popularity.
↑ comment by shokwave · 2010-12-25T15:09:41.967Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It is possible that Donor A may choose to donate fully to GiveWell for many reasons, including a prior assumption that it's 50:50 or better without checking easily available facts. This reflects badly on Donor A, not GiveWell, and does not in any way make a case for calling GiveWell "ethically questionable". The most you could possibly say is "GiveWell does not overly pander to the lowest common denominator enough" but these people are already donating their money to Make a Wish foundation or something equally silly.
I belabour this point because charities run solely on their appearance as ethical, and to the extent that your comments deprive GiveWell of possible donations on the basis of spurious claims, you're doing a bad thing.
Replies from: HoldenKarnofsky↑ comment by HoldenKarnofsky · 2010-12-29T16:39:24.672Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is Holden Karnofsky, the co-Executive Director of GiveWell. As a frequent Less Wrong reader, I'm really glad to see the thoughtful discussion here. Thanks to Yvain for calling attention both to GiveWell and to the general topic of effective giving.
First off, much of this content overlaps with our own, so people interested in this thread might also find the following links interesting:
- Giving 101 - our guide to the general key concepts of effective giving
- March 2010 blog post on "selfish giving" (including "purchasing warm fuzzies") vs. impact-focused giving
I'm mostly posting to clarify a few things regarding the concerns that have been raised about GiveWell (by aeschenkarnos).
- We regret the astroturfing that aeschenkarnos brought up. This incident is disclosed, along with other mistakes we've made, on our shortcomings list , which is accessible via a top-level link on our navigation bar.
- Regarding the split between grants to charities and funds spent on our own operations:
- Early in our existence, we relied on making grants of our own to charities. We weren't able to point them to any benefits that would come from our recommendations (since we were new and had no track record of influencing donations), so rather than inviting them to be reviewed, we invited them to apply for grants (subject to certain conditions such as public disclosure of application materials). Grantmaking is no longer important to our process and we no longer solicit donations to be regranted, though we still occasionally receive them. That explains why the % of our funds spent on grants has fallen a lot, though it hasn't hit zero.
- At this point, we actively solicit donations to GiveWell only when dealing with institutional funders or with people who have a relationship with us. When dealing with the general public, we put the solicitation on behalf of recommended charities - rather than ourselves - front and center. Our top charities page, linked prominently from our front page and navigation bar and in other places throughout the site, links to "donate" pages for top charities ( here's the one for our top-rated charity VillageReach ) that allow us to track donations, but otherwise take no part in the donation process (the money does not touch our bank account). These "donate" pages also are linked from charity reviews. The only way to get to the "Donate to GiveWell" page is under "About GiveWell." If donors make a considered decision to support us rather than our top charities, we want them to be able to do so, but our site is designed to push the casual user to our top charities.
- In 2009 we tracked ~$1 million in donations to our top charities as as result of our research, while our own operating (non-grant) expenses were under $300k. We expect 2010 to have a higher "donations to top charities" figure on similar operating expenses. We are still new and hope the ratio will improve substantially over time.
- We have a policy of regranting unrestricted funds if our reserves go above a certain level; we don't believe in building a massive endowment for ourselves. This is the only condition under which we regrant unrestricted funds. We don't want donors to fear that we might blindly pile up reserves without limit (we won't), but we don't want to get into all the details of our "Excess reserves" policy on the Donate page, so we went with the language: "we may use these funds for operating expenses or grants to charities, at our discretion."
- Bottom line - grantmaking used to be an important part of what we do but it isn't now; the % of our funds spent on grants is not a meaningful figure.
- Regarding Charity Navigator:
- I believe Yvain is correct to say that Charity Navigator does not evaluate effectiveness (and admits this) and that GiveWell does. See also this recent New York Times article on planned changes at Charity Navigator and Charity Navigator's disclosure of the full details of its current methodology.
- I agree with alexanderis that "number of charities rated" is higher for Charity Navigator primarily because its research is not as in-depth. I believe Charity Navigator would agree with this as well.
- I believe that Charity Navigator has a significantly higher profile than GiveWell, overall, and know of no evidence suggesting otherwise. However, GiveWell does have a higher profile within certain communities, including Less Wrong. I attribute our higher profile on Less Wrong to specific individuals including Michael Vassar, Anna Salomon, Carl Shulman, Razib at GNXP, and multifoliaterose. I don't believe any of these individuals have plugged GiveWell in ignorance of Charity Navigator (in fact I have probably discussed the differences specifically with each of them).
We've worked to find the best, most cost-effective charities (in terms of actual impact per marginal dollar) and write up all the details of our analysis. We welcome more comments and questions about our work, whether here, on our blog, or via email.
Replies from: aeschenkarnos↑ comment by aeschenkarnos · 2011-01-09T08:37:13.584Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Alright. You've given an explanation here that seems reasonable to me, and you've continued to run GiveWell for significantly longer than I would have expected if you were just in it for yourselves. For what it's worth, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and I wish you well in your mission.
↑ comment by alexanderis · 2010-12-25T19:23:00.241Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't know what financial statements you're looking at, but if you look at the 2009 IRS form 990, it shows that they raised $374K and spent $340K. Of that, $110K was re-granted.
They did raise $768K in 2008, but they only spent $155K of it, and saved the rest. $250K of it was restricted for the their economic empowerment grant, which was distributed in early 2010.
Furthermore, I find your characterization of their business model misleading. I don't know what Holden and Elie made working for a hedge fund, but I bet it's a hell of a lot more than they're making at GiveWell, so criticizing their selfishness strikes me as mistaken.
I don't know if GiveWell publishes the data on where they get their money, but I'm fairly certain that very little of it comes from the general public in the way you're suggesting. Their mid-2010 budget update (DOC), for instance, calculates when they would run out of money if they don't get any donations that they aren't already anticipating. Most of their funding, on my understanding, comes from the Hewlett Foundation and their board.
Edit: I've been a fan of the GiveWell project for quite some time, and have an informal agreement to join GiveWell as an employee in mid-2011. I'm a student and was commenting simply on my own behalf, without any discussion with GiveWell. After Holden commented, I emailed him to say that I had commented, and he recommended that I disclose my plan to work for them.