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XiXiDu comments on Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others... - Less Wrong
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I disagree. Giving money to charity is not different from spending money on a latte at Starbucks. I spend money according to my values. And I still buy lattes. I am not Zachary Baumkletterer. Even Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always", to justify spending an INCREDIBLE amount of money (enough to buy ten people's entire lives, in an era with no inflation, making it comparable to ten million US dollars today) on pouring perfume once on Jesus' feet. The guy was tired and depressed and about to be crucified and wanted his damn perfume, like I want my damn latte.
Similarly, people who gave money to keep a painting in a museum, might also spend considerably more money to buy paintings to hang in their houses, than it would take to save a life in another country. These people value art, and they value benefitting others. Draw a 2D plot, and label the axes "selfish ... unselfish" and "spiritual ... physical" ("spiritual" standing for art and other "impractical" values). One person might
And each of those things could have similar utility for them.
I don't think this is irrational. Irrational is spending any money at all on "charity" instead of spending it according to your utility function.
This post contains the hidden presupposition that charity, using a collective utility function, is more moral than self-oriented actions; and therefore, following our utility functions is immoral. This is an assertion about morality and rationality that has huge implications! It is resonant with a very common meme that says that "moral" behavior is behavior that we don't want to do, because we are fundamentally immoral. I say, instead, that morals are part of our utility function - that we have these things called morals because part of us really wants to be nice to other people. They are just another part of our utility function.
Encouraging unselfish behavior can be done by manipulating peoples' selfish desires to produce "unselfish" behavior (give to charity and get social benefits, or stay out of Hell), as a mechanism to solve PD problems with a given payoff matrix. But it can also be done by treating people in ways that encourage what natural unselfish tendencies they have - solving PD problems by changing people's payoff matrices.
Apply Kant's imperative. This post suggests that we have 2 utility functions, one for everyday life, and another for charity; and that the one for charity is more moral. But if everyone used such a charity utility function for everything they did, it would result in a global race to the bottom as economies imploded after spending all national wealth on ameliorating suffering while undercutting all private motivation. Therefore, it is less moral. It is not only not obviously moral, it is immoral, if that means anything, for a government, or a person, to spend every last dollar on helping the unfortunate before spending any money on education, roads, defense, art, or even entertainment.
To some degree, this article is less about moralizing and more of a "how to" guide. If you want to help people, this is how to do it. If you don't want to help people, and you prefer to have lattes or works of fine art or whatever, then a how-to guide on how to help people isn't relevant to your interests.
To the degree that it is more than that, the article is an attempt to expose certain thought processes into consciousness so that they can be evaluated by conscious systems. People may be donating to these inefficient charities because they feel like it and they don't examine their feelings, even though if they were to consciously think the problem through they would give to more efficient charities. If, after realizing that the choice is between one kid's life or 1/1000 of a painting, someone still prefers the painting, I don't really have anything more I can say - but my guess is that's not a lot of the population.
You made a really good point in your mysticism post on Discussion, about the difference between categorizing things by their causes and categorizing things by their effects. When you talk about spiritual and unselfish choices, you're categorizing things by their causes - a donation to the painting come from the same warm feelings that also produce a donation to vaccines.
Efficient charity is about categorizing things by their effects - it doesn't matter how noble the feelings that produced a certain action, only how much that action did what you wanted it to do. If you want to help people, it's about how many people you helped.
Categorizing things by their causes is an academic activity that can only declare some people to be more "unselfish" than others and accord them bragging rights. In my opinion this doesn't have as much to do with the actual work of saving the world as categorizing things by effects. You say this article claims things about morality, but that's really not its purpose. Its purpose is - if you've seen all sorts of horrible things in the world, and it's reached the point where you're so mad you don't care what can or can't be classified as moral, you just want to fix things as quickly as possible, what do you do then?
I think the idea of something to protect is relevant here.
It should be noted that if you want to help people then donating something helps more people than being discouraged to the point of not donating at all due to the possibility that your contribution might be used some orders of magnitude less effectively than possible.
Many people do not (yet) have the ability (or nerves/time etc.) to read up on and make sense of the arguments, or the data, to subsequently compute the answer of what would be the most effective way to spend their money in case they want to help other people.
So before you give up and do not donate anything at all, better split your money and give some to the SIAI (or even Wikipedia etc.). Additionally use a service like GiveWell. And also don't worry helping to exhibit some painting. All of those contributions will help some people, if only by making them happy (as in the case of the painting). It will make a difference! And it will make a huge difference compared to doing nothing at all.
Indeed, it's remarkable how little we would have to spend to end the worst poverty and injustice in the world today, if only people were willing to do it.
We literally spend more on cat food than it would take to eliminate the UN absolute poverty level.