I can definitely see the argument for that, but I think there's just too much of that going on in charity today. "I'm going to fool you for a good cause" is the justification for a lot of shoddy practices supporting what usually turn out to be pretty mediocre causes.

I think it's worth keeping a higher standard with appeals to rational charity. There's long term benefit in a complete renunciation of the dark arts.

donate any leftover money to CFAR, so as to avoid the donor illusion

Then there would be a partial donor illusion if people thought they were causing money go to effective charity that wouldn't otherwise when they're really just influencing how I divide money between the AMF and CFAR.

(This is all assuming I think CFAR is about as good as AMF. I haven't looked into CFAR enough to have a good idea on that account.)

I'm curious as to what people think about the hypothetical ethics

Let's move one step further in that direction. Now hypothetical-jkaufman commits to match donations ... but what he doesn't say is that he fully expects to have a shedload more money available for giving, and for every $1 he matches he will give $2 less of that shedload. So now if you give $1 and tell hypothetical-jkaufman you're doing so, the charity gets exactly the same as if you had done nothing at all. (And less than if you'd given and not told.)

That seems pretty damn unethical, and so far as I can tell by introspection (which is of course VERY UNRELIABLE) that's because hypothetical-jkaufman is seriously misleading people about the consequences of their action: they expect it to result in more money going to the charity, and it doesn't.

In Eliezer's hypothetical, people are being misled about the consequences of their giving-and-telling in a similar sort of way. There isn't the same actual sign reversal, but it seems like someone could easily prefer, say, $2 to AMF > $1 to [other-charity] > $1 to AMF, in which case hypothetical-jkaufman could be fooling them into an action that by their lights makes the world worse.

In practice it seems more likely that the choice would be $1 to AMF versus $1 of selfishness, and that for just about any potential donor the former is actually better (even if not matched) although they wouldn't have chosen it without the prompting. So I think Eliezer's hypothetical is ethical roughly iff stealing from potential donors and donating the money is ethical.

(Not quite; actual stealing has other consequences, such as making people feel insecure, taking up police time, etc. So make it stealing almost undetectably from potential donors.)

Some people have demonstrated how telling a very similar lie, but for any case other than a "good cause," is clearly unethical. I definitely agree with that

As much as I'm reluctant to say it, though... I think "The Ends Justify The Means" comes into play, though. If hypothetical jkafuman didn't mention that he would ALSO donate that same amount if you DIDN'T donate, I wouldn't blame him. (In fact I may thank him, possibly.)

(I'm not advocating purely utilitarian morality - I think the morality is ultimately a balance between "don't mislead people" and "save lives from malaria")

Thanks! I'll send my share this week. (I'm waiting to batch yours with others so as to reduce their processing effort.)

Awesome; thanks! I'll let you know when I send in my match.

ambivalent on how to trade off between their selfish and philanthropic desires

Imagine I offered a real match, pulling from some pool of money that wasn't yet allocated for giving or self-spending. The leftover money would go into my self-spending pool. Then I need to not adjust future years self/giving division based on this extra self money.

This only works because I have carefully divided self-spending and giving pools of money. Otherwise while you and I both might think I was providing a real match, in reality the money might have been going to end up being donated anyway a little later.

I'm set up now. If you send bitcoins to 1MtLKoe8H1mJraCy9jiZ2Cpd19Hqm1dy9U [EDIT: don't send money there; no one did at the time and I don't have the key anymore] I will send money to the AMF (that I wouldn't otherwise donate) at the current Mt. Gox exchange rate.

I'm willing to move up to $500 (25 BTC) this way.

I'm all for efficient allocation of resources, but could you describe more why you think distribution of insecticide-treated antimalarial nets is inefficient?

(I'm not sure what neocolonialism entails, and am even less sure after trying to read the wikipedia article.)