multifoliaterose comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong

31 Post author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 10:27AM

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Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 06:07:30AM *  0 points [-]

You are making the perfect (people donating to x-risks charities instead of buying personal luxuries) the enemy of the good (people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).

My preference ordering is:

(people donating to x-risks charities instead of buying personal luxuries) > (people donating to save lives instead of buying personal luxuries)>(people donating to to provide trips to Disneyland instead of buying personal luxuries)>(people donating to x-risks charities instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland)>(people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).

EDIT: No, this is wrong; see below. Attention should be focused on the grandparent.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 05 December 2010 06:10:28AM 1 point [-]

Your ordering raises the possibility that your preferences are nontransitive! :-)

Comment author: JGWeissman 05 December 2010 06:18:30AM 1 point [-]

I don't see the nontransitivity, but it does seem to imply:

U(x-risk reduction($x)) - U(Disneyland($x)) < U(Disneyland($x)) - U(personal luxuries($x))

which, while not inconsistent, seems to undervalue x-risk reduction relative to trips to Disneyland for cancer patients.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 06:33:05AM 1 point [-]

You're right. The penultimate item is too low; it should in fact be second.

All I really wanted to point out was the abundance of items between the first and the last, and the fact that (people donating to save lives instead of buying personal luxuries) is higher than (people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).