ciphergoth comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong

60 Post author: Wei_Dai 09 February 2010 08:09PM

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Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 01:21:21PM 0 points [-]

If you don't sympathize with Amanda enough that helping her would give you a fuzzy feeling, then obviously it's not a good use of your money (from your perspective).

Comment author: ciphergoth 10 February 2010 01:33:48PM *  1 point [-]

Rather, if my sympathy for her is not at least two orders of magnitude greater than it is for unknown Africans. I don't mean that to sound moralistic - my sympathy for my cats really is greater, awful as that sounds.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 02:00:05PM 0 points [-]

For me, helping unknown Africans generally comes out of the utility budget, rather than the fuzzy budget. You may be different.

In any case, yes, it's a question of amount-of-fuzziness per unit-of-money donated.