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STL comments on On Charities and Linear Utility - Less Wrong
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Do "finite charitable causes" require special consideration here?
For example, Bill Gates is pushing hard for polio eradication. Polio is a special kind of problem: once solved, it will stay solved forever. I see two special features of finite problems: first, solving them earlier is better than solving them later. The eradications of smallpox and rinderpest are delivering benefits forever while consuming zero additional resources. Second, the marginal utility of donation is pretty unusual - for disease eradication, donating more helps to suppress it more (which is good in its own right), donating lots delivers the huge benefit you're looking for, and donating even more than that would do nothing. Other finite problems, like research, will feature different curves (notably without the property of "slipping away" if insufficient resources are devoted to them for a time) but still seem unusual.
Note: By "finite", I mean that the solution is within sight. World hunger is a finite problem in the sense that bringing the world up to a post-scarcity economy, or even to the level of the industrialized economies (without changing the climate from original recipe to extra crispy), would solve it - but nobody has achieved the former yet, and even the latter is very far away. Commercial nuclear fusion is on the threshold of what I consider finite: we know it's possible, we know solving it is a matter of engineering and not discovering new physics, but at the same time it's very difficult and very expensive and will take a long time.
Let's look at some relevant quotes I noticed when I read that a few days ago and was posting excerpts into #lesswrong:
(I believe there is a fine Eliezer post on exactly the fallacious argument Mr. Gates is using there.)
Smallpox has no natural reservoirs; its vaccine is made from cowpox, not weakened or dead smallpox, while polio vaccines are made from weakened or dead polio viruses and may themselves undo eradication. No one speaks of eradicating anthrax because it's impossible to reach all the natural sources of anthrax spores in deserts in Mongolia or where-ever. Nor do we speak of eradicating ebola because we don't want to extinguish various primate species.
Does squeezing polio jell-o offer the best marginal returns? Are we appealing to sunk-costs here? Eradicating polio may offer permanent benefits (though this is dubious for previously mentioned reasons), but still be a bad investment - similar to how one rarely invests in perpetual bonds.
I see no reason why the usual apparatus of highest marginal return and discount rates do not cover your finite charity distinction.
Correcting factual errors:
Neither does polio. "Some diseases have no non-human reservoir: poliomyelitis and smallpox are prominent examples."
First, the inactivated/killed polio vaccine cannot come back to life. Second, that risk for the attenuated vaccine is well known.
Will.
You can disagree as to whether the benefits are worth the costs, of course. And perhaps finite problems can be analyzed within the usual framework - but I wanted to bring them up.
No, may. Even if you have zero known cases, you have not eradicated polio for sure because of the carriers and natural reservoirs and obscure little hidden villages. So you still need vaccines. And your own links point out that the attenuated vaccine can still be infectious!
To quote from one of the references:
What is a "contaminated natural source"? I am genuinely curious.
A variation on natural reservoir.