You also don't provide an argument that Harvard has a high use for marginal dollars.

My argument is precisely the opposite. My argument is that Harvard is so rich that it has very low use for marginal dollars, but at the same time it has a credible commitment to its future state, so large donations to Harvard will serve to swell its endowment. And also that Harvard has demonstrated the ability to manage its endowment well. Therefore funds donated to Harvard are likely to be invested indefinitely - and therefore to provide increasing amounts of economic tools that will benefit mankind, both now and in the future.

Unfortunately, most of the funds invested to finance people like Norman Borlaug turned out not to be financing Norman Borlaug.

Sure, I wasn't suggesting that Borlaug's work was replicable.

Still, if you want to generalize from that example, feel free.

When did I generalize from that example? I was merely refuting the crass claim that giving money to a starving woman and child (note the incidental misandry!) must be better than creating economic tools.

That's true. But conditions in sub-Saharan Africa have improved by a lot less than in other regions that were extremely poor 50 years ago, such as China and South-East Asia. For most of that period, growth in Africa was slower than growth in the West, despite the fact that catch-up growth is much easier. Indeed, sub-Saharan Africa continues to fall further behind China (growth rate of 4.24% versus 7.7%, both for 2013) despite the fact that catch-up growth should favour Africa.

This is not a success story.

I am astonished by this comment, and even more so that it has been upvoted. I wrote (and it's clear for all to see):

Providing cash transfers to [the people there] mostly merely raises consumption, rather than substantially raising productivity.

This is backed up by the paper, which notes that just 39% of the cash transfers boosted assets (see pg 12 and Table1), meaning that 61% of the transfer had been consumed. The productivity effects were similarly modest. And note that these figures were taken just one year after the transfer, and so likely overestimate the long-term effect; if more time had elapsed, it is likely that more of the capital would have been spent down. Note that this is the opposite of what we want. If the transferees were able to invest this money wisely, their assets after a period would be greater by more than 100% of the transfer.

You misquoted me, leaving out the "mostly" and "substantially," and then claim that I am misrepresenting the paper, because the paper does show some (small) effects on assets and productivity. Indeed it does, but this in no way contradicts what I wrote.

Do you have so little faith in your own position that you cannot bring yourself to quote me honestly?

I think you are confused. You say I don't suggest an alternative, but then you correctly identify my suggested alternative in the very next sentence.

To be clear: None of the top recommended charities on GiveWell, including Give Directly, are aimed at famine relief, so if your top concern is starvation, your complaint should be directed at them. But if you want specific examples of such tools, I would certainly say that the funds invested to finance Norman Borlaug 's research were better spent than wasting them on aid, because that investment created the economic tools to prevent future famines, as opposed to temporary relief. See the Maimonides quote at the top.

To expand on what OrphanWilde wrote:

The Just World Hypothesis can be summarised as "you reap what you sow." If you wish to argue that you don't "deserve" to reap what you sow (perhaps because you didn't have access to better seeds), or that it's not "just" to reap what you sow (because everyone should reap in rough equality, regardless of how they sowed), or similar, that's fine, but you aren't arguing against the Just World Hypothesis.

So when we see the fruit, the Just World Hypothesis tells us: that's probably how the person sowed the seeds. And yes, there is noise, which is why it's a heuristic, not an infallible rule. But the whole reason to sow the seeds in the first place was to cause them to bear fruit. "Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" In other words, Coherent Extrapolated Volition.

So to take an example from the original post - smoking. If I meet someone with lung cancer, the overwhelming likelihood is that they are responsible for their own problem, through smoking. But if I smoke and then I get lung cancer, I'll want to make excuses for myself, and will stubbornly refuse to make the connection between my own culpable past behaviour (the sowing) and my present misfortune (the reaping). People who complain about the Just World Hypothesis want me to extend this non-judgemental behaviour to everyone else. But just as with the Fundamental Attribution Error, the problem is not that I am being too harsh on other people, but that I am being too easy on myself. I am right to draw the connection between behaviour and outcomes for everyone else, and I should do the same for myself.

You will pay extra, as in you will pay more than the ring is worth. If you buy a diamond ring, turn around and try to sell it back, they'll give you something like 30% for it.

This has always struck me as such a strange argument against buying a diamond ring, because it's true about every retail purchase. If you buy a chair, then turn around and try to sell it back to the store, you'd be lucky to get 30%, but no-one thinks that's an argument for sitting on the floor. You buy a chair because you want to sit on it, not as the start of a complicated chair-resale scheme. Similarly, you buy a diamond ring because you (or your beloved) want to wear it.

Note: I am not blaming you in particular, because this is a popular argument, but talk about a selective demand for rigour!

Biology may include studying traditions of behaviour, but biology is not itself a tradition of behaviour.

Regarding the question of what ancient Greeks meant by "the good," I'd start with the SEP.

I have no idea about anthropological data from non-Western cultures.