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Tuxedage comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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At risk of attracting the wrong kind of attention, I will publicly state that I have donated $5,000 for the MIRI 2013 Winter Fundraiser. Since I'm a "new large donor", this donation will be matched 3:1, netting a cool $20,000 for MIRI.
I have decided to post this because of "Why our Kind Cannot Cooperate". I have been convinced that people donating should publicly brag about it to attract other donors, instead of remaining silent about their donation which leads to a false impression of the amount of support MIRI has.
This post and reading "why our kind cannot cooperate" kicked me off my ass to donate. Thanks Tuxedage for posting.
Would anyone else be interested in pooling donations to take advantage of the 3:1 deal?
I'd be interested, but only the small sum of 100$. Did anybody else take you up on that offer? Of course I'd like to verify the pool-persons identity before transfering money.
You sir, are awesome.
Interesting.
It certainly seems to make sense for the sake of the cause for (especially large, well-informed) donors to make their donations public. The only downside seems to be a potentially conflicting signal on behalf of the giver.
I'm not sure this is true. Doesn't MIRI publish its total receipts? Don't most organizations that ask for donations?
Growing up Evangelical, it was taught that we should give secretly to charities (including, mostly, the church).
I wonder why? The official Sunday School answer is so that you remain humble as the giver, etc. I wonder if there is some other mechanism whereby it made sense for Christians to propogate that concept (secret giving) among followers?
There may not be anything to explain: the early Christian church grew very slowly. Perhaps secret almsgiving simply isn't a good idea.
Hm. Possibly. Though it does still seem to be a rather popular convention in churches today to adopt an interpretation of secret offerings.
I would imagine popular interprations of scriptures on giving would evolve based on the goals of the church (to get $$$), and kept in check only by being believable enough to the member congregations.
Tithing seems to work for the church, so lots of churches resurrect it from the OT and really shaky exegesis and make it a part of the rules. If tithing didn't work for the church, they could easily make it go away in the same way they get rid of tons of outdated stuff from the OT (and the NT).
Secret offerings seems similar to me. I'd imagine they could make the commands for secret giving go away with some simple hermeneutical waves of the hand if it didn't benefit them.
This gives the church an information advantage. Information is power. It gives them the opportunity to make it seem like everyone is donating less than their neighbors.
or that "Christians" donate a lot when it's really just a few of them.
Ah. So the leaders can give the ongoing message to "give generously" to a group and, as long as the giving data is kept in secret and no one ever speaks to anyone else about how much they gave, then each member will feel compelled to continue to give more in an effort to (a) "please God" and (b) gain favor in the eyes of the leaders by keeping up with, or outgiving, the other members. Is this what you are saying? If not can you elaborate?
Look at Mormons. They have a rule that you have to donate 10% of your income. If you don't than you aren't pleasing god and god might punish you.
In reality the average Mormon doesn't donate 10% but might feel guilty for not doing so. If someone who would donate 7% would know that they donate above average, they would feel less guilty about not meeting the goal of donating 10%.
Sure, but why 10%? Why not 15%? Or 20%?
It is possible that they are setting the bar too low. You might have many people who would have given 30% had not the command been for 10%, but for 30%?
Yes, it is. Choosing that particular number might not be optimal. But there a cost of setting the number to high. If you set it too high and people don't think they can reach that standard they might not even try.
Right.
I'd guess 10% is not an arbitrary number, but rather is a sort of market equilibrium that happens to be supportable by a certain interpretation of OT scripture. It might have just as well been 3% or 7% or 12% as these numbers are all pretty significant in the OT, and could have been used by leadership to impose that % on laypeople.
In any case, in my experience within the church, there are tithes... AND then there are offerings which include numerous different cause to give to on any given Sunday. It was often stated these causes (building projects, missions outreaches, etc.) were in addition to your tithe.
It is funny to me... it is almost like the reverse of a compensation plan you'd build for a team of commissioned sales people. Instead of trying to optimize the plan to best incentivize for sales performance by motivating your sales people to sell, the church may have evolved their doctrines and practices on giving to optimize for collecting revenue by motivating your members to give. Ha.
This is of course no argument against anything substantive you're saying, but while the numbers 3,7,12 are certainly all significant in the OT the idea of percentage surely wasn't. I can see 1/3, or 1/7, or 1/12, though.
Good point. Though, from my recall, there isn't much basis in the OT for the modern day concept of tithing at all, percentage or otherwise. Christianity points to verses about giving 1/10th of your crops to the priest as the basis.
If they really wanted to change the rules and up it to 1/7th, or 12% or anything they want, they could come up with some new basis for that match using fancy hermeneutics.
This is sort of what is happening right now with homosexuality. Many churches are changing their views. They are justifying that by reinterpreting the verses they've used to condemn it in the past.
In fact, you can pretty much get the Bible to support any position or far-fetched belief you'd like. You only need a few verses... and it's a big book.
This is one of my favorites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
Total receipts may not be representative. There's a difference between MIRI getting funding from one person with a lot of money and large numbers of people donating small(er) amounts. I was hoping this post to serve as a reminder that many of us on LW do care about donating, rather than a few rather rich people like Peter Thiel or Jaan Tallinn.
Also I suspect scope neglect can be at play -- it's difficult to, on an emotional level, tell the difference between $1 million worth of donations, or ten million, or a hundred million. Seeing each donation that led to adding up to that amount may help.
Yes, because it would show how many people donated. Number of people = power, at least in our brains.
The difference between one person donating 100 000, or one person donating 50 000 and ten people donating 5 000 is that in the latter case, your team has eleven people. It is the same amount of money, but emotionally it feels better. Probably it has other advantages (such as smaller dependence on whims of a single person), but maybe I am just rationalizing here.