Most people don't analyze things much at all. It's possible to ask a random person and be told he values everyone equally, and that's in some literal sense not saying what he believes. But if you just rephrased the question as "do you care more about yourself than someone else--would you pay my mortgage as readily as your own", he would answer "oh, if that's what you mean, then of course I care about myself more". Technically he's inconsistent, but it's a very shallow sort of inconsistency based mostly on the fact that he doesn't analyze things much; it isn't some kind of hypocrisy or denial.

My current rationalisation for my level of charitable giving is "if, say, the wealthiest top billion humans gave as much as me, most of the worlds current problems that can be solved by charity would be solved in short order".

I use this as a labor-saving angst prevention device.

Me: "Am I a good person ? Am I giving too little ? How should I figure out how much to give ? What does my giving reveal about my true preferences ? What would people I admire think of me if they knew ?"

Me: "Extra trillions thing. Get back to work."

This thread is interesting, but off-topic. There is lots of useful discussion on the most effective ways to give, but that wasn't my question.

My temporary solution is to max out my employer's annual match. That the maximum match is somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of my income is very convenient, as that makes me feel like I'm contributing the "expected" amount for an EA (this feeling is only important for fuzzies) but still leaves me with what seems to be a good amount to save and spend. It also allows me to avoid committing an answer to the question of whether to donate now or invest and donate later. The guaranteed, almost-immediate, soon-to-expire 100% return provided by the match wins pretty clearly over the EV of investing and donating later, and since I feel like I'm donating enough for now, I can evaluate what to do with what's being invested later on, based on my wants and needs.

The only reason that medical bills and supporting a family are even questions is that he values his family's well being more than he does that of someone who might be helped by charity. Phrasing things in utilitarian terms, he puts a much higher utility on his family than on a random person. As such, he should only donate to charity once he has spent enough money on his family that the utility from doing is, per dollar, so much less that that factor overwhelms the large multiplier that he gives for his family's welfare compared to a random person's. Given his description, he clearly hasn't reached that point yet, so he should spend nothing on charity.

This leaves guilt (or warm fuzzies, which are the flip side) as the only reason to spend anything at all. The rational amount (ignoring questions like "what utility to I get from assuaging my guilt") is zero. Take care of your family, who needs it, and stop feeling guilty for not donating.

The important thing is not to burn out, which would substantially reduce future giving. Right now I'm aiming only to max out Google's $6K/year matching limit. I probably won't increase that until I have a lot of savings, like on the order of several months of salary. Then if my partner is OK with it I'll head towards giving 10%, and after that I'd hope to give away 50% of future pay rises; whether we go beyond that will depend on how our income and outgoings compare at that point.

I wouldn't pay any attention to any comments that don't discuss the commenter's giving, by the way! You would probably get more informative answers if the question was "How did you decide how much of your income to give to charity?"

I have a good intuition on how to allocate the money

Isn't that a far more formidable problem than just deciding how much to give? Maybe you should tell us your allocation method.

I am precisely questioning the assumption that effective altruism == charitable giving.

In that case your example of bike rides is pretty bad. It's a strawman. The comparison is bed nets or deworming.

Well, it seems possible to set up an equivalent game (with the same probabilities etc) where the sorcerer is affecting a card deck that's shown to you.

Maybe I should have drawn the distinction differently. If the sorcerer can only affect your experiences, that's basically the same as affecting a card deck. But if the sorcerer can affect the way you process these experiences, e.g. force you to not do a Bayesian update where you normally would, or reach into your mind and make you think you had a different prior all along, that's different because it makes you an imperfect reasoner. We know how to answer questions like "what should a perfect reasoner do?" but we don't know much about "what should such-and-such imperfect reasoner do?"