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Metus comments on Should we go all in on existential risk? - Considering Effective Altruism - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Capla 10 November 2014 11:23PM

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Comment author: Metus 11 November 2014 11:21:31PM 0 points [-]

If I am sincerely concerned about the well being of others and effective charity, then there is no significant change in marginal impact per dollar I spend.

Oh, you are sincerely concerned? Then of course any contribution you make to any efficient cause like world poverty will be virtually zero relative to the problem and spend away. But personally I can see people go "ten lives saved is good enough, let's spend the rest on booze". Further arguments could be made that it is unfair that only people in Africa get donations but not people in India, or similar.

But that is only the marginal argument knocked down. The risk argument still stands is way stronger anyway.

While it is a fair critique that I may not actually care, I want to care, meaning I have a second-order term on my utility function that is not satisfied unless I am being effective with my altruism.

Signaling, signaling, signaling all the way down.

Comment author: Capla 12 November 2014 01:04:17AM *  0 points [-]

Ok. Fine maybe it's signaling. I'm ok with that since the part of me that does really care thinks "if my desire to signal leads me to help effectively, then it's fine in my book", but then I'm fascinated because that part of me may, actually, be motivated by the my desire to signal my kindness. It may be signalling "all the way down", but it seems to be alternating levels of signaling motivated by altruism motivated by signalling. Maybe it eventually stabilizes at one or the other.

I don't care. Whether I'm doing it out of altruism or doing it for signaling (or, as I personally think, neither, but rather something more complex, involving my choice of personal identity which I suspect uses the neural architecture that was developed for playing status games, but has been generalized to be compared to an abstract ideal instead of other agent), I do want to be maximally effective.

If I know what my goals are, what motivates them is not of great consequence.

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