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The Valentine’s Day Gift That Saves Lives
This is mainly of interest to Effective Altruism-aligned Less Wrongers. Thanks to Agnes Vishnevkin, Jake Krycia, Will Kiely, Jo Duyvestyn, Alfredo Parra, Jay Quigley, Hunter Glenn, and Rhema Hokama for looking at draft versions of this post. At least one aspiring rationalist who read a draft version of this post, after talking to his girlfriend, decided to adopt this new Valentine's Day tradition, which is some proof of its impact. The more it's shared, the more this new tradition might get taken up, and if you want to share it, I suggest you share the version of this post published on The Life You Can Save blog. It's also cross-posted on the Intentional Insights blog and on the EA Forum.
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The Valentine’s Day Gift That Saves Lives
Last year, my wife gave me the most romantic Valentine’s Day gift ever.
We had previously been very traditional with our Valentine’s Day gifts, such as fancy candy for her or a bottle of nice liquor for me. Yet shortly before Valentine’s Day, she approached me about rethinking that tradition.
Did candy or liquor truly express our love for each other? Is it more important that a gift helps the other person be happy and healthy, or that it follows traditional patterns?
Instead of candy and liquor, my wife suggested giving each other gifts that actually help us improve our mental and physical well-being, and the world as a whole, by donating to charities in the name of the other person.
She described an article she read about a study that found that people who give to charity feel happier than those that don’t give. The experimenters gave people money and asked them to spend it either on themselves or on others. Those who spent it on others experienced greater happiness.
Not only that, such giving also made people healthier. Another study showed that participants who gave to others experienced a significant decrease in blood pressure, which did not happen to those who spent money on themselves
So my thoughtful wife suggested we try an experiment: for Valentine’s Day, we'd give to charity in the name of the other person. This way, we could make each other happier and healthier, while helping save lives at the same time. Moreover, we could even improve our relationship!
I accepted my wife’s suggestion gladly. We decided to donate $50 per person, and keep our gifts secret from each other, only presenting them at the restaurant when we went out for Valentine’s Day.
While I couldn’t predict my wife’s choice, I had an idea about how she would make it. We’ve researched charities before, and wanted to find ones where our limited dollars could go as far as possible toward saving lives. We found excellent charity evaluators that find the most effective charities and make our choices easy. Our two favorites are GiveWell, which has extensive research reports on the best charities, and The Life You Can Save, which provides an Impact Calculator that shows you the actual impact of your donation. These data-driven evaluators are part of the broader effective altruism movement that seeks to make sure our giving does the most good per dollar. I was confident my wife would select a charity recommended by a high-quality evaluator.
On Valentine’s Day, we went to our favorite date night place, a little Italian restaurant not far from our house. After a delicious cheesecake dessert, it was time for our gift exchange. She presented her gift first, a donation to the Against Malaria Foundation. With her $50 gift in my name, she bought 20 large bed-size nets that would protect families in the developing world against deadly malaria-carrying mosquitoes. In turn, I donated $50 to GiveDirectly, in her name. This charity transfers money directly to recipients in some of the poorest villages in Africa, who have the dignity of using the money as they wish. It is like giving money directly to the homeless, except dollars go a lot further in East Africa than in the US.
We were so excited by our mutual gifts! They were so much better than any chocolate or liquor could be. We both helped each other save lives, and felt so great about doing so in the context of a gift for the other person. We decided to transform this experiment into a new tradition for our family.
It was the most romantic Valentine’s Day present I ever got, and made me realize how much better Valentine’s Day can be for myself, my wife, and people all around the world. All it takes is a conversation about showing true love for your partner by improving her or his health and happiness. Is there any reason to not have that conversation?
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Comments (77)
I would prefer LW not to be spammed by HuffPo-quality advertisement pieces for charity donations, even if it's for a charity many people here like.
Harsh, but this does have two HuffPo-like traits: first, he uses his opening line to make a point that's grossly misleading, and repackages his generic pitch for EA as something relevant to an upcoming holiday. "Hey, you know what's the most romantic thing to do? Turns out that it's the same thing we recommend doing all the time. What a coincidence!"
Second, his factoids about the psychology of generosity are as misleading as HuffPo-tier science reporting. Generally speaking, the psych/neuropsych studies I've read don't really support the conclusions that EAs seem to want them to, including those studies that they cite as evidence. Specifically speaking, in this case, the studies don't seem to indicate that charitable giving is special, broadly or vis-a-vis the activity that this post is contrasting them with. I.e., neither of the articles provide evidence that giving to charity has a particular advantage in making people feel good over other forms of generous behavior, including the conventional Valentine's Day one of giving something nice and romantic to someone you love. Indeed, most of the research I've seen on the subject indicates that a wide range of actions taken on behalf of others produce neurological rewards.
I'd find it very strange if actions toward other people you didn't know produced greater psychological rewards than those you knew and loved, and I've yet to see any evidence that it's true. Anecdotally, it seems vastly more likely that the opposite is true: that if you're trying to maximize your own happiness, being generous to the people you love is the best way to push this psychological button.
But the question here is not whether giving to charity beats acting romantic to one's partner (Gleb and his wife are obviously being romantic to each other; indeed, they're also choosing to enjoy an experience which will likely make them happier in the long term - dining in a nice cozy restaurant), but whether it's better than buying expensive stuff for themselves. And the evidence seems to be that getting a costly material gift raises the giver's status in your mind, but doesn't really make you happier. So why not replace this part with charitable giving?
This is all so bass-ackward. Your premise seems to be that the Valentine Day is all about spending money, so if you're spending money anyway why not spend it on charity. However "buying expensive stuff" is not a terminal goal, but merely instrumental -- replacing it with something that does not achieve the same terminal goal is counterproductive.
Valentine Day is about expressing very personal attention to and care for another person. It is NOT about yourself and demonstrating your admirable qualities like willingness to give money to charity. If you think it's just an opportunity to status-signal, you're doing it wrong.
Sure, there are lots of people who take the easy way and substitute "took time and effort to find/make/pick" with "expensive". But these are precisely the kind of people who will look at a suggestion to replace the flowers/diamonds/etc. with condoms for Africans with incredulity. These are not your target audience.
Besides, if a S-RCN (Self-Respecting Conventional Neurotypical) girl gets "I gave some condoms to Africans as a present to you" for Valentine Day, her immediate first instinct would be to kick the giver in the yarbles. If she's quick-thinking, though, she'll realize he doesn't have any yarbles, so she'll just give up and leave.
The two solutions to this situation are (a) pick something other than conventional neurotypical; (b) don't be a bloody idiot.
So, remember this discussion next time LW guys complain about having trouble getting girls... X-D
I don't think that's the question. You aren't constrained to the options of an "expensive" gift (carrying the connotation of low emotional resonance) or a charitable donation. You can also spend that $50 on another nice experience with your loved one, or you can buy a cool accessory that goes with their sense of style, or you can buy a beautifully bound journal and fill it with thoughts you have about them over the course of months, etc. You can do a lot of things. I'd guess that around 100% of people I know and >99.5% of genpop would find one or all of those options more romantic than a charitable donation, and that it would make them happier. I have no churlish objection to this particular couple finding a donation to be the most meaningful possible gift. But the overwhelming majority of people won't, so presenting this as the option that'll make them happiest is likely to fall flat.
I haven't seen this evidence--can you link me? Nothing in the post, or linked in anything linked in the post, seems to show that. Does this evidence apply to romantic partners, and does it include "personalized" gifts? (I.e., those the giver put a lot of thought into, and which were selected specifically for a partner they know very well.) I would be quite surprised if that were true. I would be completely unsurprised if it was true of arbitrary material gifts, but I think the takeaway there is "don't buy your wife a washing machine for your first anniversary" rather than "don't buy your wife a gift."
The effect of gift-giving on the giver isn't to be neglected, either. Doing something nice for a loved one makes most people feel particularly good about themselves. There's also some indication that such actions make most people feel more connected with and devoted to the recipient. (Essentially an extended form of the Ben Franklin effect,)
Sure, but how many people do that? Let's face it, most people are lazy. So they celebrate V-Day by buying wasteful $#!+ for each other. Charitable gifts could be less romantic than well-chosen experiences, and still beat $#!+ by a huge margin.
If the argument being put forward is that it's not good to give terrible romantic gifts (i.e., those that make neither the giver nor the receiver happy), and that, as such, any nonnegative alternative activities--including charitable gifts-- might be better, I find that very difficult to disagree with. Personally, I think that the correct response to that situation is to get better at giving gifts, though.
Wow. A Grinchier grinch than me.
I'm a big UnFan of HuffPo. Not really into the EA business.
But I didn't find this propaganda. I found this somebody sharing something in his life that he found moving in his relationship.
You could read this and generalize it to simply doing something to live your shared values with your partner. That's how I took it. I thought it was sweet, if not exactly my cup of tea.
So there, Mr. Grinchy old Grinch.
If this were his first post along these lines, maybe possibly. Unfortunately, this post is but one amongst many and they all stink the same.
Maybe my preferences have been programmed to be hopelessly irrational by decades of conditioning via Hallmark and the rest of this damned capitalist society, but this strikes me as terribly unromantic.
I think two people can agree that (A) giving to charity is good, and (B) that lavish gift giving at invented holidays is excessive, but to combine the two on Valentine's Day and pretend it is romantic according to some strange definition of the word is a stretch, methinks.
How do you define "romance", by the way?
It's certainly not for everyone :-) Works for me though.
Regarding romance, I think of it as a feeling that I want to help the other person have a great life, be happy, and flourish, and a confidence that they want the same for me, with sex thrown in.
Not so much of a stretch. Part of romance is often a sense of shared values and purpose. A Valentine's day where you really acted out to help each other achieve those values could end up being very bonding and very romantic.
A shared commitment to live your values, particularly in the context of Valentine's Day, also implies a shared commitment to live your values in terms of your love for one another.
In practice, it may or may not work. No doubt success would depend on a lot of things. The exchange of gift certificates is a bit too intellectually mediated for my tastes. Like giving them an orgasm pill instead of having sex - "Happy Valentine's Day!".
But I wouldn't pooh pooh it out of hand - and I'm generally a cranky old pooh pooher.
So is a good business partnership.
Agreed. It is, dare I say, unromantic according to some huge chuck of the population.
Thoughtful because it required some time and consideration? Sure. Creative in a shaking up the status quo sort of way? Yep. Rational in a utilitarian sense? Yes, sir.
Romantic? Only if you want to redefine traditional/classic romance to mean something else.
You could substitute any holiday and any relationship in Gleb's article. It's not like giving to charities on behalf of another in lieu of exchanging gifts is a novel idea (my family has been doing it for years). He just wrote it and pretended it was a good display of "romance" because Valentine's Day is coming up.
This wasn't my intention. I actually think Gleb gets too much resistance on LW for his efforts. This just seemed off to me, and kept seeming off the more I thought about it. So I commented.
I think "helping and encouraging each other to achieve their values" is especially apt for Valentine's Day, and your partner.
False dichotomy! Candy and liquor do help me be happy! stops reading
This seems to fall under http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/n7w/beware_surprising_and_suspicious_convergence/ . Isn't it a little unusual that EA just happens to be a good Valentine's Day substitute?
I like the convergences article, saw it before. But why wouldn't EA be a good substitute? In one world, we're paying money to the consumer industry for candy and liquor. In the other world, we're paying money to help people have better lives. I certainly like the second world better, and so does my wife :-)
I'm wondering how one offers a way out-- suppose that one partner is much more enthusiastic about EA than the other. The couple tries the combination of reasonably priced fun and EA one year, and the less enthusiastic one doesn't feel it's satisfying. Can that partner say "let's not do it that way next year?" without feeling shamed for it?
Nancy, sure, I think it's quite doable. Saying something like "that experience wasn't satisfying/romantic for me" is quite appropriate. This is why my wife and I, when we first did it, framed it in the form of an experiment, and having that framing is important, I think.
I was expecting this gift to be charity, yes, given that it was you who wrote the article, but I was hoping for it to be condoms.
In the competition for the most romantic gift ever they lost to cash.
Hey, maybe the people who got cash directly used it to buy condoms - you never know :-)