= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Mass_Driver comments on $100 for the best article on efficient charity -- deadline Wednesday 1st December - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (57)
It's important to understand why you normally diversify. The reason why diversification is a good idea is because you have diminishing marginal utility of wealth. This reason just doesn't apply to charity. Your contributions make such a small difference that even if "total utility" had diminishing returns to live saved (debatable), over your range of influence it has effectively constant returns.
I agree that it's emotionally attractive to diversify, but it's simply incorrect to do so (though if your choices are of similar quality, it's not the worst thing in the world).
I'm beginning to think that LW needs a series on finance. A lot of what seems intuitive to me, doesn't seem intuitive to others, and I think standard finance has several valuable insights like this.
So, I know it's wise to purchase warm fuzzies and utilons separately, but it just so happens that I get a significant quantity of warm fuzzies from saving hundreds of lives. I'm weird like that.
Anyway, suppose (against all evidence) that utilities are ordinally intercomparable. Suppose further that the relevant chunk of my utility function is U(charity) = U(fuzzies) + U(altruism), where U(fuzzies) = ln(# of lives saved), and U(altruism) = (net utility of saved life to owner) * (my discount rate for the utility of strangers). Let's say the typical life saved by charities is worth 30,000 utilons to its owner, and that my discount rate for strangers' utility is 1/100,000.
So, if I save 200 lives, I get ln(200) + (30,000 * 200 / 100,000) = 65 utilons for me. If I save 2,000 lives, I get ln(2000) + (30,000 * 2,000 / 100,000) = 607 utilons for me. My original point was going to be that I do get diminishing marginal returns to charity, but apparently given my assumptions they diminish so slowly as to be practically constant, and so I will shut up and pick just one charity in so far as I can find the willpower to do so.
Hooray for accidentally proving yourself wrong with back of the envelope calculations.