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Punoxysm comments on What is the most anti-altruistic way to spend a million dollars? - Less Wrong Discussion

-4 Post author: Punoxysm 24 March 2014 09:50PM

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Comment author: Punoxysm 25 March 2014 01:37:37AM 2 points [-]

Your proposal has a lot to like. It takes EA principles of targeting developing nations where costs are lower and your own infrastructure can, relatively, go further, as well as a focus on anti-development and un-education. We can also see that similar work has been tremendously effective, for instance, in making Uganda a hotbed of homophobia.

But at the same time I worry you're getting into a crowded market and also overestimating how far your budget will take you. Even in developing areas, establishing a school is not cheap or easy. And your plan of running your organization with fabulous meritocratic rewards is sure to ad to this. The incoherence of your curriculum is another issue that could prevent it from drawing the support you'd need for the long-term. Plus, so many other ideologies are competing in the same fertile grounds you hope to enter.

And of course, if the right/wrong people get into your movement, it could all backfire. Think of the Mormons - an insular, highly-fundamentalist sect who originally lived with in borderline socialism, with some disturbing teachings in their past (and one's most people here strongly disagree with still today), but their legacy in today's Utah is largely positive, and many members are highly successful as individuals and as contributors to larger society.

I still think your plan is one of the worse ones here. Well done!

Comment author: mwengler 25 March 2014 05:38:21PM 0 points [-]

But at the same time I worry you're getting into a crowded market and also overestimating how far your budget will take you.

I suspect the constraint of proposing something that is legal will result in all the effectively bad ideas being some version of something somebody out there is already doing. But I would love to be proved wrong by a genuinely novel, legal, and effective bad suggestion.