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Normal_Anomaly comments on So you say you're an altruist... - Less Wrong
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You need to choose a very carefully targeted charity that takes into account knock-on effects like displacing local production, before you should accept any such claim. It is now being suggested that the majority of aid is actually counterproductive and destroys local industry in exchange for giving Westerners a warm fuzzy feeling. Hence Africa staying poor despite (because of?) hundreds of billions spent.
Frankly, if you're going to put in that much work into buying expected utilons at the cheapest available price, you shouldn't be considering any mainstream charity targets like aid to developing countries. Let Bill Gates worry about it, if that's the limit of his creativity.
Are the charities reccommended by Givewell, specifically VillageReach, good or counterproductive?
Also, what exactly does the Singularity Institute spend its money on? If I knew, I'd be more willing to direct my money there.
I've answered this before directly, so I'll try a different tack. What action could you take to find this out? What information is already available?
Since no one bit my Socratic lure, my sequence of answers would have been to point out that SIAI is a charity, charities are nonprofit corporations, corporations keep records of spending, and often make them public; as an IRS-recognized charity, SIAI is obligated to make reports public, and some googling then turns up GuideStar as a source, at which point it's easy to download their PDFs from SIAI and finally answer the question - what does SIAI spend its money own?
I did this earlier for salary information: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2l8/existential_risk_and_public_relations/2ywt There are a lot of interesting things in the filings; I once wrote an essay on what I found in the filings for Girl Scouts: http://www.gwern.net/Girl%20Scouts%20and%20good%20governance (See also Discussion post.)
EDIT: for an analysis of SIAI, see http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/5fo/siai_fundraising/