2012 Winter Fundraiser for the Singularity Institute

Thanks very much!!

Holy pickled waffles on a pogo stick. Thanks, dude.

Is there anything you're willing to say about how you acquired that dough? My model of you has earned less in a lifetime.

(At the time of this comment) 27 karma for a $20k donation, 13 karma for $250, 9 karma for $20 (and a joke) ... something's amiss with the karma-$ currency exchange rate!

Really?

That's a hell of a gamble, kid. Rock on.

Thanks very much!!

My new year's resolution is tithing, to be split roughly half-in-half between "serious" causes and things like supporting my favorite webcomics/fansubbers/whatever. As part of the former, I decided to add 1000 € to the above donation.

Thanks so much!

Five cheers for this! Those who are steadily donating should get applause every time.

I'm having the same problem. I used the card to buy modafinil yesterday, which might raise a red flag in fraud detection software? But if you're having it too, I'd update in the direction of it being a problem on SIAI's end.

Has anyone successfully donated since Kutta posted?

edit - Amazon is declining my card as well.

edit 2 - It's sorted out now, just donated £185.

After investigating the issue, it proved to be a problem on Kutta's side, not ours.

I just verified that donations in general are working via PayPal and Google Checkout. We'll investigate this specific issue to see where the problem is.

1) In the long run, for CFAR to succeed, it has to be supported by a CFAR donor base that doesn't funge against SIAI money. I expect/hope that CFAR will have a substantially larger budget in the long run than SIAI. In the long run, then, marginal x-risk minimizers should be donating to SIAI.

2) But since CFAR is at a very young and very vital stage in its development and has very little funding, it needs money right now. And CFAR really really needs to succeed for SIAI to be viable in the long-term.

So my guess is that a given dollar is probably more valuable at CFAR right this instant, and we hope this changes very soon (due to CFAR having its own support base)...

...but...

...SIAI has previously supported CFAR, is probably going to make a loan to CFAR in the future, and therefore it doesn't matter as much exactly which organization you give to right now, except that if one maxes out its matching funds you probably want to donate to the other until it also maxes...

...and...

...even the judgment about exactly where a marginal dollar spent is more valuable is, necessarily, extremely uncertain to me. My own judgment favors CFAR at the current margins, but it's a very tough decision. Obviously! SIAI has given money to CFAR. If it had been obvious that this amount should've been shifted in direction A or direction B to minimize x-risk, we would've necessarily been organizationally irrational, or organizationally selfish, about the exact amount. SIAI has been giving CFAR amounts on the lower side of our error bounds because of the hope (uncertainty) that future-CFAR will prove effective at fundraising. Which rationally implies, and does actually imply, that an added dollar of marginal spending is more valuable at CFAR (in my estimates).

The upshot is that you should donate to whichever organization gets you more excited, like Luke said. SIAI is donating/loaning round-number amounts to CFAR, so where you donate $2K does change marginal spending at both organizations - we're not going to be exactly re-fine-tuning the dollar amounts flowing from SIAI to CFAR based on donations of that magnitude. It's a genuine decision on your part, and has a genuine effect. But from my own standpoint, "flip a coin to decide which one" is pretty close to my own current stance. For this to be false would imply that SIAI and I had a substantive x-risk-estimate disagreement which resulted in too much or too little funding (from my perspective) flowing to CFAR. Which is not the case, except insofar as we've been giving too little to CFAR in the uncertain hope that it can scale up fundraising faster than SIAI later. Taking this uncertainty into account, the margins balance. Leaving it out, a marginal absolute dollar of spending at CFAR does more good (somewhat) (in my estimation).

[SI has now] shifted from waterline-raising/community-building to more technical areas where CFAR success would be of less help to them

Remember that the original motivation for the waterline-raising/community-building stuff at SI was specifically to support SI's narrower goals involving technical research. Eliezer wrote in 2009 that "after years of bogging down [at SI] I threw up my hands and explicitly recursed on the job of creating rationalists," because Friendly AI is one of those causes that needs people to be "a bit more self-aware about their motives and the nature of signaling, and a bit more moved by inconvenient cold facts."

So, CFAR's own efforts at waterline-raising and community-building should end up helping SI in the same way Less Wrong did, even though SI won't capture all or even most of that value, and even though CFAR doesn't teach classes on AI risk.

I've certainly found it to be the case that on average, people who get in contact with SI via an interest in rationality tend to be more useful than people who get in contact with SI via an interest in transhumanism or the singularity. (Though there are plenty of exceptions! E.g. Edwin Evans, Rick Schwall, Peter Thiel, Carl Shulman, and Louie Helm came to SI via the singularity materials.)

If someone has pretty good rationality skills, then it usually doesn't take long to persuade them of the basics about AI risk. But if someone is filtered instead for a strong interest in transhumanism or the singularity (and not necessarily rationality), then the conclusions they draw about AI risk, even after argument, often appear damn-near random.

There's also the fact that SI needs unusually good philosophers, and CFAR-style rationality training has some potential to help with that.

I'd be very interested in hearing from an SIAI higher-up whether they really want my money or whether they would prefer I give it to CFAR instead.

My own response to this has generally been that you should give to whichever organization you're most excited to support!

Thanks! That counts for CFAR's drive.

Yes.

Certainly. Please see the instructions under 'Donate by Check' on the donate page. Thanks very much!

Anyway, he pretty much admitted who he is now.

Social proof. Very useful.

It helps people like me, who look at it almost like a competition. The more people competing ,the merrier.

I've sometimes earned more than my SIAI base salary from speaking fees, but I've never earned $140K in any year, and will cheerfully exhibit my tax returns if Luke, Holden, or any other sufficiently reputable entity requests them. I've also got no idea what that "estimated extra compensation" line is about, unless it's health insurance or something - per the wishes of Peter Thiel, SIAI never pays $100k in any year to any employee, including bonuses.

(Note that, as usual when a poster has received many sufficiently extreme downvotes in their history, I designate them a troll and delete their comments at will.)

Meant to go to singularity.org/research. Will an editor please fix? I'm working from my phone now.

The donation bar lags somewhat, and it's normal for most of the funds to come in "at the last minute."

We've never done such a drive in the past and have no current plans for one. We do have a pretty heavy discount rate. Sorry i can't say more.

There doesn't seem to be anything SIAI would gain from running such a program. If big donors are willing to give $N to match donations, if donations are matched dollar-for-dollar then SIAI can reasonably hope to raise $2N in the fundraiser; if donations are matched two-dollars-for-every-dollar, SIAI will only get $(3/2)N. Unless, of course, the big donors would donate more if SIAI sets up the second type of matching program, but why would they?

The only scenario I can see where this would make sense is if SIAI expects small donors to donate less than $(1/2)N in a dollar-for-dollar scheme, so that its total gain from the fundraiser would be below $(3/2)N, but expects to get the full $(3/2)N in a two-dollars-for-every-dollar scheme. But not only does this seem like a very unlikely story, even if it did happen it seems that you should want to donate in the current fundraiser if you're willing to do so at all, since this means that more matching funds would be available in the later two-dollars-for-every-dollar fundraiser for getting the other people to donate who we are postulating aren't willing to donate at dollar-for-dollar.

Given that historically SI has completed all matching drives to 100%, I wouldn't even recommend waiting for a 2x match to donate.

I seem to recall reading a study that concluded that the multiplier on the match (above 0.5x) doesn't change the increase in donations much. Cursory searching didn't refind it though.

I was influenced both to donate and to donate more. Social proof is very powerful. I also would not have posted if I didn't think it would encourage people to donate or donate more.

self aggrandizing karma whoring

If I didn't hope it would help encourage others, I wouldn't post about my donation. I can't think of reasons that knowing of a donation of mine might discourage others of donating, so I believe it will help encourage them, even if minimally so.

Have you read this thread and been influenced to donate or to donate more?

Generalizing to "this and similar threads", I think the answer is yes in regards to me.

I note that you've retracted you post, but I still feel the need to ask: shouldn't the name reflect what they do?