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LessRightToo comments on “Be A Superdonor!”: Promoting Effective Altruism by Appealing to the Heart - Less Wrong Discussion
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My personal preference is that you promote honorable reasons for donating, while recognizing that dishonorable reasons exist. Donating so that I can feel superior to other donors who give less or give differently does not strike me as particularly honorable. I admit that I am using the term honor without ever having given much thought as to what it means.
Whether donating to a super-effective charity should make you feel "superior" to other donors is largely a matter of personal choice. But I don't think that pointedly conveying the message that charities vary widely in effectiveness is persay dishonorable.
Yup, agreed!
I'm confused by your use of the term "honor." Let's taboo that term. Can you explain what's wrong with desiring to be better than others?
In its purest form, giving is intentionally impoverishing yourself in order to enrich another (the terms impoverish, enrich, and another can be as defined as narrowly or as broadly as you'd like). A person who makes some gesture for the sole purpose of self-elevation is not actually giving, no matter how generous the gesture may appear to casual observers. The most effective campaigns I've seen in the charitable giving domain emphasize positive outcomes for others rather than appealing to a donor's vanity or encouraging narcissism.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. So it's a matter of purity of motivations. As a consequentialist I am mainly concerned with the outcome of people caring about effective giving and therefore giving to effective, evidence-based charities, and if getting them to desire self-elevation will motivate donors, then I'm happy to use that to achieve the outcome.