LukeStebbing comments on [Link] Reddit, help me find some peace I'm dying young - Less Wrong

24 [deleted] 18 August 2012 03:17PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (181)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gwern 18 August 2012 04:18:19PM *  18 points [-]

I am not in a financial position to engage in philanthropy.

Of course you are, you just gave away $200. Good grief.

Not to pick on you... Well actually yes, to pick on you: What the hell is wrong with you people? If this were religious-oriented - for a pilgrimage to Mecca or buy Mormon underpants or pay for one last course of Scientology auditing - you'd be laughing your ass off hysterically! But because it's cryonics...

How could you fail and compartmentalize so epically? This is like, fractally bad: at every level, donating is a bad idea. It's probably a scam, so donating is a bad idea; if it weren't a scam, you still have no idea what she would really do with it or how close to the cryonics fee she'd come, so donating is a bad idea; even if she would collect enough, donating to ALCOR or the Brain Preservation Prize is a better idea; even if you wanted to donate to them, they're still almost certainly not as good as Givewell's best charity; and so on.

Comment author: khafra 18 August 2012 08:48:00PM 4 points [-]

Great textbook example of the biases affecting charitable giving, isn't it? People will give more to a single, identifiable person than to an anonymous person or a group. People want to feel like they actually changed something they can directly see, rather than contributing a small amount to a big goal; etc.

Comment author: LukeStebbing 18 August 2012 09:35:23PM *  7 points [-]

People will give more to a single, identifiable person than to an anonymous person or a group.

As a counterpoint to your generalization, JGWeissman has given 82x more to SIAI than he plans to give to this girl if her story checks out.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 August 2012 02:18:18AM 1 point [-]

And how many JGWs are there in the world?

Comment author: LukeStebbing 20 August 2012 02:37:59AM *  3 points [-]

More and more, if I can do anything about it. (Edit since someone didn't like this comment: That's a big if. I'm trying to make it smaller.)