Violet comments on Public Choice and the Altruist's Burden - Less Wrong

19 [deleted] 22 July 2010 09:34PM

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Comment author: Violet 23 July 2010 01:52:54PM 1 point [-]

Have you considered that some of us might have utility functions that do have terms for socially distant people? Thus the charity can give direct utility to us, which seems ignored by the analysis.

Second, end points rarely are optimal. E.g. eating only tuna and nothing else could be unhealthy and weird, but that does not imply that eating some tuna is unhealthy or weird. Thus your analysis seems to miss the obvious answer.