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komponisto comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong
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I agree with JGWeissman's comment here. The key point is that the article is written for donors who have not thought about who not familiar with concepts of optimizing charity and x-risk/transhumanism.
I responded to JGWeissman here, acknowledging that but standing by my criticism of the framing.
What framing would you prefer?
I would suggest comparing the cost of saving a life with the cost of something more mundane and dispensable, like movie tickets, rather than the sorts of activities that are likely to be seen as integral to one's identity and values (like bringing happiness or other help to people in bad situations).
I see. I suspect that your objection arises from you having thought more about effective philanthropy than the intended audience but I may be wrong. If people in the intended audience have a similar objection I'll consider revising the article.
Basically, I feel that "effective philanthropy" is a "wrong topic". The topic should be effective use of money. VillageReach vs. Make-A-Wish is a false choice. If we are going to channel more money into VillageReach, I feel that that there are much better places to take it out of than something like Make-A-Wish.
Think about it: imagine you're a regular Make-A-Wish donor who has suddenly found out about VillageReach, and would like to offer support. Why should your Disney-World-trips-for-cancer-patients fund be the first jar you raid?
Because people are the way they are. They have intuitive budgets for different classes of expenditure and trying to take money from their shoes budget instead of their charity budget just would not work.
Was it not clear that I was attacking the notion that there ought to be a "charity budget"?
This is the inferential gap that we ought to be trying to bridge. Famine relief and Make-A-Wish shouldn't be in the same budget!
How do you know this? In fact I beg to differ. People aren't born with a charity budget; they have to take it out of somewhere when they start giving in the first place.
I am attacking the notion that effecive philanthropy is a 'wrong topic' just because in a perfect world people would be different to they are now. Effective philanthropy is an important topic because people do care about their shoes. A lot.
I disagree on the fundamentals. People do allocate their resources and attention according to inbuilt instincts. People do have an impulse to balance signalling conspicuous consumption and signalling altruism. People do not act as perfect utility maximisers who will be persuaded to redirect their resources so fluidly. We know that these individuals are not rational because they are donating to the flipping Make A Wish Foundation!
Not a wrong topic.
For what it's worth, I upvoted the last 4 posts in this exchange. Both the problems of excessive compartmentalization and of inadequate attention to charitable effectiveness are worth attacking. But, despite possible aggravation of the former issue, not necessarily at the same time.
Interesting thought. I'll have to think about this. Again, the ultimate question is how the intended audience responds. Neither you nor I are representative of the intended audience. It would be good to have some data on people's subjective reactions to the article. A couple of points:
See the GiveWell blog entry titled Denying the choice.
It's plausible to me that Make-A-Wish donors could get more fuzzies out of donating to VillageReach than they do now (after initial discomfort coming from a readjustment of worldview).
I would suggest that the author of that entry see the grandparent comment. No one denies that there must ultimately be some tradeoff. That doesn't mean that a particular proposed tradeoff is necessarily optimal.
It sounds like you're once again assuming the very thing I'm disputing, which is that donating to VillageReach implies "switching" from being a "Make-A-Wish donor". Either that, or you've perhaps forgotten what I wrote earlier:
I feel like we're engaged in a semantic dispute and/or hairsplitting which has proceeded beyond the point of diminishing returns at least for me personally. Though I've read everything you've said, I don't have a clear intuitive sense for where you're coming from and why this topic is important to you. If you feel that you have a substantive point to make on this subject maybe you can make a discussion board post detailing your position.
I don't want to see the human species stop doing things like e.g. Make-A-Wish does. I feel that the kind of urge that motivates people to do such things is a large part of why humanity is worth protecting in the first place. Although I agree that saving lives is typically more important than a particular other cause, and that it's usually what you should do if you have to choose, I think we should if at all possible avoid compromising high-level values -- such as by discouraging other forms of altruism -- in order to do so.
To put this in a broader context, I have a strong aversion to the mentality expressed in the second paragraph of this post. I fear that if we don't allocate some of our caring to particular humans in their individual capacities, people will come to be seen as dispensable -- and then, one day, I might be discarded, too. Since I greatly value my existence on good days and my autonomy even on the worst days, this is a nightmare scenario. I'm afraid of someone being tortured for 50 years to save 3^^^3 people the inconvenience of a dust speck. Yes, it may be the better option, if those are the only two choices, but that doesn't make it good.
Given that this is how I feel even when we're talking about existential risk -- saving the whole human species and its future -- I hope you can understand why similar-sounding arguments against small-scale fuzzy personal altruism in favor of anything less than existential risk reduction leave an especially bad taste in my mouth.
I'm the type of person who highly values fuzzies, to such an extent that I value others' valuing of fuzzies, and I don't want to push the culture in a direction toward hostility to valuing fuzzies. I think it's great if we can learn to be more rational in the pursuit of our goals, but anyone whose goals include trips to Disneyland for cancer patients doesn't have anything more to be ashamed of than someone whose goals include a new pair of shoes.
Search 'Amanda Knox' on the site. Not necessarily just the top level posts on the subject by Kompo but the other times 'rational charity' subjects have come up.