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Ishaan comments on Open Thread, May 18 - May 24, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I do not accept that a dollar is a unit of caring.
I do not think that contributing money to an organization which runs programs which statistically save lives can be legitimately called "I saved X lives". Compare: "I bought some war bonds so I can say I personally killed X enemy soldiers".
I think that strutting one's charitable activities is in very poor taste.
It's not intended as a unit of caring - it's a unit of achievement, a display of power, focused on outcomes. Consequences over virtue ethics, utils over fuzzies.
Don't get me wrong, I do see the ugliness in it. I too have deeply held prejudices against materialism and vanity, and the whole thing bites against the egalitarian instinct for giving even more status to the wealthy. But helping people is something worthy of pride, unlike the mercedes or thousand dollar suits or flashy diamonds and similar trifles people use for the same purpose.
My point is, you said they were signalling. I'm not approving of signalling so much as saying, why not signal productively, in a manner that actually does what you've signaled to do?
Some people think otherwise.
How about buying status signals with the the minor side-effect of helping people?
Of course they do. "So much money, so little taste" is a common attitude. "Unnecessarily large houses" are known as McMansions in the US.