WhyAsk comments on The Charity Impact Calculator - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Gleb_Tsipursky 26 January 2016 05:01AM

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Tags: calculator impact tlycs thelifeyoucansave outreach intentionalinsights wordspreading effectivealtruism

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Comment author: WhyAsk 27 January 2016 05:23:27PM -1 points [-]

IIRC, Ms. Vos Savant says don't give money, just go in person to the soup kitchens or whatever and put in your own labor.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 27 January 2016 06:06:21PM 1 point [-]

Not efficient.

There is this very, very old puzzle/observation in economics about the lawyer who spends an hour volunteering at the soup kitchen, instead of working an extra hour and donating the money to hire someone to work for five hours at the soup kitchen.

Comment author: Lumifer 27 January 2016 06:25:47PM 2 points [-]

A puzzle?

Economists tend to call a mismatch between their model and reality "a puzzle". Most other people call that "a failure of the model".

Comment author: Gleb_Tsipursky 27 January 2016 09:12:01PM *  -1 points [-]

Agreed with Lumifer on "puzzle." This is why behavioral economics arose in the first place.

There might be a case made that the lawyer doesn't realize this and is caught in a cached pattern of thinking. However, it could also be the case that the lawyer wants to buy hedons by working in the soup kitchen and getting warm fuzzies from that.

Comment author: ChristianKl 27 January 2016 09:37:00PM 0 points [-]

Without a link to Vos Savant's argument I don't think this comment is helpful.

Comment author: WhyAsk 27 January 2016 10:35:52PM 1 point [-]

She didn't provide her reasoning and I was not able to pull up this particular answer to her readers from the Web.

I guess she wants to remove the middleman costs & admin costs from your "donation." And you get direct feedback on "the fruits of your labor". There might also be psych benefits in that you can see your troubles might not be so bad in the big picture view of things.

For the class of people who think their troubles are better than anyone's (e.g., the "inverse pride" of paranoids) I guess I recommend the monetary contribution route.

Am I putting too much stock in Marilyn's high IQ and that women are biologically superior in any case?

Comment author: ChristianKl 28 January 2016 09:25:16PM 2 points [-]

Am I putting too much stock in Marilyn's high IQ and that women are biologically superior in any case?

In general Argument by Authority is one of those logical fallacies. There are valid ways of citing authorities but on LW, simply saying that an high IQ person holds a certain opinion is no convincing argument.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 28 January 2016 09:56:39PM 1 point [-]

and that women are biologically superior in any case?

This says far more about you than you could possibly imagine. I suggest being more cautious going forward.

Comment author: WhyAsk 29 January 2016 12:34:53AM -2 points [-]

It says that I take for fact what people say who study this type of thing.

I suggest that your conduct in this post is offensive.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 29 January 2016 02:20:05AM 0 points [-]

If that is all it says, you have nothing to be offended about.

Comment author: WhyAsk 29 January 2016 08:30:50PM -2 points [-]

It's not your call.

Who are you?

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