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jkaufman comments on When should you give to multiple charities? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: jkaufman 27 February 2013 02:56AM

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Comment author: jkaufman 27 February 2013 03:19:51PM 6 points [-]

On a very modest donation of, say, $200 per year, the difference amounts to between ~3 and ~500 years of suffering. It doesn't seem that the fact that "you find it painful to pick only one" charity is, in itself, a good reason to pick both

If I'm giving $200/year there are lots of options I could take to improve my impact:

  • I could spend less on myself so I can give more.
  • I could earn more so I could give more.
  • I could put more time into choosing the most effective charity.
  • I could limit my donations to only my top charity, even when I think other charities are almost as good.

All of these are painful to myself but have benefits to others, so to maximize my positive impact I should prioritize them based on the ratio of self-pain to other-beneft. What I'm claiming here is that the last option has a poor ratio, for charities that are close enough together in impact.

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