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wedrifid comments on Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, and Meta-Charity - Less Wrong
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It might be slightly deceptive (and thus not worth doing), but what about changing "people" to "persons"? Those who think about animal welfare more liberally would recognize "persons" as referring to both humans and non-humans, while those who are more conservative that GWWC is trying to reach will just automatically assume it means "people".
I would prefer this to your reformulation of "do good" because it explicitly takes other types of "doing good" out of the equation. (Unless possibly there's some reason why being more inclusive of "doing good" is worthwhile to use in such a pledge? It seems at first glance to me that specificity is important in pledges of this kind.)
The usage of "people" in the context seems to be referring to actors with the means and inclination to take significant altruistic action through economic leverage. If you can find some horses or dogs who have such capabilities and interests then the change may become useful.
To clarify I meant changing the pledge from:
to:
I don't think the usage in this context is referring to the actors with the means and inclination to take altruistic action; the context instead is on those acted upon. (Of course, this is not a very good way of saying it, especially as there is ample evidence that money given directly to the poor in developing countries might be better than developed countries giving what they incorrectly think the poor need, but this is beside the point.)
When conservative people read "persons in poverty", they will automatically think "humans living in poverty", whereas those more familiar with the use of "person" being inclusive with non-humans might instead interpret "persons living in poverty" much more liberally. (I realize this is nonstandard usage of the term, but my intent here is to allow a liberal interpretation while maintaining specificity.)
That being the case I agree with your previous comment. (The proposal is clever but a little on the deceptive side!)