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Torgo comments on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 24 November 2014 08:56AM

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Comment author: Torgo 24 November 2014 11:19:18AM 9 points [-]

I've long been convinced that donating all the income I can is the morally right thing to do. However, so far this has only taken the form of reduced consumption to save for donations down the road. Now that I have a level of savings I feel comfortable with and expect to start making more money next year, I no longer feel I have any excuse; I aim to start donating by the end of this year.

I’m increasingly convinced that existential risk reduction carries the largest expected value; however, I don’t feel like I have a good sense of where my donations would have the greatest impact. From what I have read, I am leaning towards movement building as the best instrumental goal, but I am far from sure. I’ll also mention that at this point I’m a bit skeptical that human ethics can be solved and then programmed into an FAI, but I also may be misunderstanding MIRI’s approach. I would hope that by increasing the focus on the existential risks of AI in elite/academic circles, more researchers could eventually begin pursuing a variety of possibilities for reducing AI risk.

At this point, I am primarily considering donating to FHI, CSER, MIRI or FLI, since they are ER focused. However, I am open to alternatives. What are others’ thoughts? Thanks a lot for the advice.

Comment author: Gurkenglas 25 November 2014 08:53:55PM *  2 points [-]

An upper bound on the loss incured by waiting another year before you donate your savings to an organization is the interest they would have to pay on a loan of your saving's size in that time. If you estimate the chance that you will regret your choice of donation target in a year highly enough, that means waiting may be prudent. Just a thought.

(The cost might be increased by their reduced capacity for planning with the budget provided by you in mind; but with enough people acting like you, the impact of this factor should disappear in the law of large numbers)

Comment author: Torgo 26 November 2014 01:49:25AM 2 points [-]

Certainly that is an important point to consider. I could always place funds in a donor advised fund for now. However, if an organization that I donated to thought the funds would be best spent later, they could invest the funds. Considering this, my current thinking is that I should donate to an organization if they share the goal of reducing existential risk and I think they would be better at deciding on the best course of action than I would. Considering I am not currently an expert in areas which would prove useful to reducing existential risk, I'm leaning towards donating. Does this seem like a sensible course of action?

Comment author: jkaufman 01 December 2014 12:14:47PM 2 points [-]

In practice, charities don't really invest excess money or take out loans to spend money sooner. I'm not sure why. Possible explanations:

  • No one will lend much to charities, because they don't have much collateral and their income expectations are so uncertain. Or this leads to very high interest rates.
  • Investing money instead of spending it looks bad and is visible externally through things like the US Form 990.
  • You're required to spend at least X% of the money that comes in each year.
  • If you take a loan, having already spent the money makes it harder to fundraise. People want to pay for things to happen.
  • Investing extra money signals that you don't have room for more funding and so should get less money in the future.

Regardless, if you're thinking that your decision doesn't matter because the recipient can just do X or Y, and it turns out X and Y aren't really options for them, then your decision does still matter.

Comment author: jkaufman 01 December 2014 12:45:45PM 1 point [-]

If you think general EA movement building is what makes the most sense currently, then funding the Centre for Effective Altruism (the people who run GWWC and 80k) is probably best.

If you think X-risk specific movement building is better, then CSER and FLI seem like they make the most sense to me: they're both very new, and spreading the ideas into new communities is very valuable.

(And congratulations on getting to where you're ready to start donating!)

Comment author: Torgo 01 December 2014 02:55:21PM 0 points [-]

Thanks.

At this point, I'm leaning towards CSER. Do you happen to know how it compares to other X-risk organizations in terms of room for more funding?

Comment author: jkaufman 01 December 2014 04:33:52PM 1 point [-]

I don't know, sorry! Without someone like GiveWell looking into these groups individuals need to be doing a lot of research on their own. Write to them and ask? And then share back what you learn?

(Lack of vetting and the general difficulty of evaluating X-risk charities is part of why I'm currently not giving to any.)

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