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gjm comments on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You say this as if it's a silly thing that no one could have good reason to believe. I've no idea whether it's actually true but it's not silly. Here, let me put it differently. "It just happens that the amount some outstandingly smart people with a known interest in world-optimization and effectively unlimited resources have decided to leave their children is the optimal amount."
I mean, sure, they may well have got it wrong. But they have obvious incentives to get it right, and should be at least as capable of doing so as anyone else.
I doubt they would claim to know precisely. But they have to choose some amount, no? You can't leave your children a probability distribution over inheritances. (You could leave them a randomly chosen inheritance, but that's not the same.)
It seems like whatever the Gateses were allegedly planning, you could say "And you know precisely that doing X is okay, but doing similar-other-thing-Y is not" and that would have just the same rhetorical force.
I don't know. Could you? Have you? If so, why not argue "If the Gateses really had the goals they say, they would do X instead" rather than "If the Gateses really had the goals they say, they would do something else instead; I'm not saying what, but I bet it would be better than what they are doing."?
Again, I'm not claiming that what the Gateses are allegedly planning is anything like optimal; for that matter, I have no good evidence that they are actually planning what they're allegedly planning. But the objections you're raising seem really (and uncharacteristically) weak.
But I'm not sure I've grasped what your actual position is. Would you care to make it more explicit?
My actual position is that:
1) Gateses had some true reason for donating most of the money -- probably a combination of "want to do a lot of good", "want to become famous", etc. -- and they decided that these goals are more important for them than maximizing the inheritance of their children. I am not criticizing them for making that decision; I think it is a correct one, or at least in a good direction.
2) But the explanation that they want their children to "make their own mark on the world" is most likely a rationalization of the previous paragraph. It's like, where the true version is "saving thousand human lives is more important for me than making my child twice as rich", this explanation is trying to add "...and coincidentally, not making my child twice as rich is actually better for my child, so actually I am optimizing for my child", which in my opinion is clearly false, but obviously socially preferable.
3) What specifically would one do to literally optimize for the chance that their children would "make their own mark on the world"? I am not going into details here, because that would depend on specific talents and interests of the child, but I believe it is a combination of giving them more resources; spending more resources on their teachers or coaches; spending my own time helping them with their own projects.
4) I can imagine being the child, and selfishly resenting that my parents did not optimize for me.
5) However I think that the child still has more money than necessary to have a great life.
My whole point is that (2) is a rationalization.
OK, I understand. Thanks.
Does this work? I don't know; I have no children.