knb comments on It's okay to be (at least a little) irrational - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 12 April 2009 09:06PM

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Comment author: knb 12 April 2009 11:54:57PM 0 points [-]

"As most readers will know by now, if you're donating to a charity, it doesn't make sense to spread your donations across several charities. You'll want to pick the charity where your money does the most good, and then donate as much as possible to that one."

This is not necessarily true. For some charities, the marginal utility is very high up to, say, the first $10 million. After that point, returns on each dollar donated might start to rapidly decline.

Admittedly this is mainly a problem for larger donors, though.

Comment author: MBlume 13 April 2009 07:23:19AM 1 point [-]

The rule becomes general as long as the income you have available for altruism is orders of magnitude lower than the budgets of the charities you might wish to fund.