Thanks for bringing this issue up. I had thought of addressing it in the body of my main post but decided against it because it was already getting kind of long.

•It's best for people who value improving the world and their relative status within their communities to spend their time in communities where improving the world is correlated with increased status. For example, people in this situation who live in a materialistic suburb like Orange County, CA might do well to move to a university town (like Santa Cruz, CA) where excessive materialism is frowned upon and where a greater than usual percentage of the population thinks that making charitable donations is cool.

•Now, things being as they are, I agree that despite my above point, it's still not the case that "the best way to donate also just happens to be best for the average donor's happiness." This is because at present most people don't care about effective charity. In this connection, I think that what GiveWell is doing is important for two reasons:

(1) It's offering a community for people who do care about about effective charity. Members of this community can compete for relative status within the community by doing their best to maximize their positive social impact.

(2) By drawing attention to the case for effectiveness-oriented giving, GiveWell is working to push social norms in the population as a whole in the direction of higher emphasis on effectiveness-oriented giving. The more success that GiveWell has in this respect, the stronger the correlation will be between "engaging in effectiveness-oriented giving" and "raising relative status" even for the average donor.