Offer: I'll match donations to the Against Malaria Foundation

jefftk

Giving money to effective charities is one of the ways we can have the biggest positive impact in the world. If you've been thinking about giving to GiveWell's top-rated charity, the Against Malaria Foundation, but haven't gotten around to it, perhaps this will help: make a donation of up to $2K and I will match it 100%. I'll match up to $20K this way.

(Any money left over at the end of the year will also go to the AMF. That makes this a donor illusion, in that you're not actually affecting the amount I give them this year.)

I made the same offer on my blog

(Any money left over at the end of the year will also go to the AMF. That makes this a donor illusion, in that you're not actually affecting the amount I give them this year.)

I made the same offer on my blog

Maybe you should instead donate any leftover money to CFAR, so as to avoid the donor illusion. Also, that way everyone who doesn't donate gets to feel a warm glow, too!

I'm curious as to what people think about the hypothetical ethics of jkaufman expecting to donate leftover money at the end of the year to AMF, but not announcing the fact and only committing to the matched money. This seems to me like it would be ethically okay but I am interested if anyone thinks otherwise. (In particular, one reason this seems ethical to me, is that it seems to me that the state of having a public commitment to do something importantly differs from the state of not having such a commitment, and differs even more under the outside view. Another reason it seems ethical is that the results are both good and nonselfish, hence subject to less suspicion than usual :).)

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")

7gjm14y

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.)

10syllogism14y

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.

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Offer: I'll match donations to the Against Malaria Foundation

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Offer: I'll match donations to the Against Malaria Foundation

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