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ciphergoth comments on The Last Days of the Singularity Challenge - Less Wrong
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A friend points out one possible way this reasoning doesn't work: charities can gain political power by quoting a larger number of individual donors. This would argue for giving $10 to several charities and the rest of the money to the best one.
I suspect that this reasoning is not only reasonably defensible, but also much more palatable; that the underlying biases are tested much less strongly by the policy conclusion "give the bulk of your money to one charity" than "give nothing to other charities". I will try to remember to use this version henceforth.
I have to confess, if I had a lot of money to donate I'd find it very hard to swallow this advice whole and give it all to the SIAI; I'd feel like donating half to GiveWell or suchlike would be a "hedge" against the possibility that I fear UFAI for irrational reasons I haven't identified. However, I can't find a reason to think that uncertainty about my own sanity will plug into the math any differently than any other kind of uncertainty.
Or perhaps giving $10+e to lots of people on the condition that they give $10 to the charity you'd like to target.
This would make the IRS sad if they found out. You wouldn't like them when they're sad.
Good point. Even better, then: charity trades. I give $10 to your charity and you give $10 to my charity.
Probably a wash if everyone does it, but might give a selective advantage to rationalists if practiced by rationalists only and the practice didn't spread beyond that... which seems unlikely in the long run, but not too impossible in the short run.
Could you give an example?
I doubt that the above charities are interested in the political power that can be bought that way.
I can't, but item five here makes a similar statement.
That's a reason for large donors to diversify. It is not at all a reason for small donors to diversify.
Edit: The parent, before being edited, at the time I responded, as I recall, read:
It now reads:
I am disappointed by this departure from LessWrong's excellent track record of not abusing the edit feature to change the context of responding comments.
End Edit
The point is that the more total money they get from small donors, the more money large donors can give without going over certain percentages of the total that have arbitrary legal significance.
No, that's not the point.
I meant, that's the point of Document's quote from SIAI's statement about the value of small donors. It may not be an example of what ciphergoth was talking about, but it is about the importance of small donors.
So, arguments are soldiers?
Not much of an argument here.
This law does not provide a good reason for individual donors to diversify, but it does provide good reason for non-profits to actively solicit from small donors, and it shows that small donors are important.
I don't want to diversify my altruistic giving of political clout any more than I want to diversify my altruistic giving of money.
So, here I explicitly declare that: I donate money exclusively to SIAI, because I believe it is the most efficient way of buying humanitarian utility.
Aggregated with similar people, is that worth any political clout?
Not really. If SIAI made a fuss and about how many individual donors they got and they got some benefit from this then you would be best off... hang on I just read Guy's reply. I was just going to say 'donate under multiple names'.