Try to be objective and consider whether a donation to the Singularity Institute is the most efficient charitable "investment"? Here's a simple argument that it's most unlikely. What's the probability that posters would stumble on the very most efficient investment: it requires research. Rationalists don't accede this way to the representativeness heuristic, which leads the donor to choose the recipient readily accessible to consciousness.

Relying on heuristics where their deployment is irrational, however, isn't the main reason the Singularity Institute is an attractive recipient for posters to Less Wrong. The first clue is the celebration of persons who have made donations and the eagerness of the celebrated to disclose their contribution.

Donations are almost entirely signaling. The donations disclosed in comments here signal your values, or more precisely, what you want others to believe are your values. The Singularity Institute is hailed here; donations signal devotion to a common cause. Yes, even donating based on efficiency criteria is signaling and much as other donations. It signals that the donor is devoted to rationality.

The inconsistent over-valuation of the Singularity Institute might be part of the explanation for why rationality sometimes seems not to pay off: the "rational" analyze everyone's behavior but their own. When dealing with their own foibles, rationalists abdicate rationality when evaluating their own altruism,