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curiousepic comments on Tallinn-Evans $125,000 Singularity Challenge - Less Wrong
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Comments (369)
I have not donated a significant amount before, but will donate $500 IF someone else will (double) match it.
Why did the SIAI remove the Grant Proposals page? http://singinst.org/grants/challenge#grantproposals
EDIT: Donated $500, in response to wmorgan's $1000
Your comment spurred me into donating an additional $1,000.
Excellent! Donated $500. Whether yours is a counter-bluff or not ;)
This is by far the most I've donated to a charity. I spent yesterday assessing my financial situation, something I've only done in passing because of my fairly comfortable position. It has always felt smart to me to ignore the existence of my excess cash, but I have a fair amount of it and the recent increase of discussion about charity has made me reassess where best to locate it. I will be donating to SENS in the near future, probably more than I have to SIAI. I'm aware of the argument for giving everything to a single charity, but it seems even Eli is conflicted about giving advice about SIAI vs. SENS, given this discussion.
I recently read that investing in the stock market (casually, not as a trader or anything) in the hopes that your wealth will grow such that you can donate even more at a later time is erroneous because the charity could be doing the same thing, with more of it. Is this true, and does anyone know if the SIAI, or SENS does this? It seems to me that both of these organizations have immediate use for pretty much all money they receive and do not invest at all. How much would my money have to make in an investment account to be able to contribute more (adjusting for inflation) in the future?
The logic of donating now is that if a charity would use your money now, it is because less money now is more useful than more money later. Not all charities may be smart enough to realize whether they should invest, but I feel confidant that if investing money rather than spending it right away were the best approach for their goals, the people at the SIAI would be smart enough to do so.
I think that a rational agent would donate the $500 eventually either way because the utility value of a $500 contribution would be greater than that of a $0 contribution, if the matching $500 was not forthcoming. Thus, the precommitment to withhold the donation if it is not matched seems to be a bluff (for even if the agent reported that he had not donated the money, he could do so privately without fear of exposure) Therefore, it seems to me that the matching arrangement is a device designed to convince irrational agents, because the matcher's contribution does not affect the amount of the original donor's contribution.
Am I missing something?
He may actually refrain from donating, by the reasoning that such offers would work iff someone deems them reasonable and that person is more likely to deem it reasonable if he does, by TDT/UDT. I could see myself doing such a thing.
But whether he does or doesn't donate does not affect how such offers are responded to in the future, since he is free to lie without fear of exposure. Given such, it seems that he should always maximize utility by donating.
Future offers do not matter. His precommitment not to donate if others do not acausally effects how this offer is responded to.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Would you mind explaining?
Are you familiar with UDT? There's a lot about it written on this site. It's complex and non-intuitive, but fascinating and a real conceptual advance. You can start by reading about http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Counterfactual_mugging . In general, decision theory is weird, much weirder than you'd expect.
I've read some of the posts on Newcomblike problems, but am not very familiar with UDT. I'll take a look -- thanks for the link.