Implicit in the question is the idea that aiding the third world costs money. The World Bank claims that America's three billion a year subsidy to its own cotton farmers has knock on effects that make African cotton farmers three hundred million dollars a year worse off. But the American subsidy is a very wasteful internal transfer. If America wants to give African cotton farmers three hundred million dollars in aid, it need only scrap its subsidy at a net benefit to America of perhaps two billion dollars.
Notice that I'm saying something different from "aid is actively harmful". I'm saying that we haven't plucked the low hanging fruit of passive win/win where we stop doing dumb shit and every nation is better off. After that comes active win/win such as building harbours and roads that increase the value of African products by making it cheaper to transport them to First World markets (win for Africans) while making African products more available to First World markets (win for First World). Mobile phones have reduced Third World poverty by letting farmers and fishermen direct their produce to the best markets, even while the mobile phone operators have profited by providing services. Fostering a zero-sum mentality with questions that assume that aiding the Third World costs the same amount of money as the benefit provided is misleading.
Indeed, in the 'most important world saving causes' list earlier, ending agricultural subsidies wasn't even mentioned but that would probably be top of my list (battling with greatly relaxing immigration restrictions for the top spot).
Related to: Practical Rationality Questionnaire
Here among this community of prior-using, Aumann-believing rationalists, it is a bit strange that we don't have any good measure of what the community thinks about certain things.
I no longer place much credence in raw majoritarianism: the majority is too uneducated, too susceptible to the Dark Arts, and too vulnerable to cognitive biases. If I had to choose the people whose mean opinion I trusted most, it would be - all of you.
So, at the risk of people getting surveyed-out, I'd like to run a survey on the stuff Anna Salamon didn't. Part on demographics, part on opinions, and part on the interactions between the two.
I've already put up an incomplete rough draft of the survey I'd like to use, but I'll post it here again. Remember, this is an incomplete rough draft survey. DO NOT FILL IT OUT YET. YOUR SURVEY WILL NOT BE COUNTED.
Incomplete rough draft of survey
Right now what I want from people is more interesting questions that you want asked. Any question that you want to know the Less Wrong consensus on. Please post each question as a separate comment, and upvote any question that you're also interested in. I'll include as many of the top-scoring questions as I think people can be bothered to answer.
No need to include questions already on the survey, although if you really hate them you can suggest their un-inclusion or re-phrasing.
Also important: how concerned are you about privacy? I was thinking about releasing the raw data later in case other people wanted to perform their own analyses, but it might be possible to identify specific people if you knew enough about them. Are there any people who would be comfortable giving such data if only one person were to see the data, but uncomfortable with it if the data were publically accessible?