Maybe this should be posted in Discussion? That way more people will see it.

Great offer.

Would you consider extending the offer to MIRI, Living Goods or Development Media International (for those unfamiliar: the first being the AI organisation that sponsors this website, the last two being 2 of GiveWell's standout charities?

Comprehensive, evidence-based toolkits for policy makers and planners on Improving Educational Quality through Interactive Radio Instruction exists. Development Media International is one of GiveWell's standout organisations and implements radio-based behaviour change health education to "save the greatest number of lives in the most cost effective way.

GiveWell's most compelling reason for not including Living Good's as one of their 4 recommended charities is room for more funding. However, the premise for the lack of room for more funding rested on the assumption that it would be funded by a big donor soon. There is no evidence to suggest this has taken place since GiveWell's analysis.

The size of Living Goods' funding gap for the next year is highly uncertain because major funders are considering supporting the program. If Living Goods raises enough funds to scale up the program studied with the RCT, it may allocate additional funds to programs with less of a track record.

I favour living goods since their approach doesn't disincentivise rational market behaviour and there are methodological issues re: the effectiveness of the 4 recommended GiveWell charities that are described elsewhere.

I favour DMI for complex reasons including the integrity of their frontier scientific methodology which I may elaborate upon at a later stage. They do their work very well but I still have concerns that it may be increasing the survivability of those who neglect somewhat easily researched solutions to everyday problems and therefore sustain unwellbeing in the long term.

Update: I have been doing some thinking about making a bequest, prompted by this offer. So, suddenly the urgency of donating feels less great to me, and dying with savings is suddenly valuable. When I think about how to maximise my savings, one thing that comes to mind is maximising my inheritence. My sister rents a house from my parents below market price. I feel like this is unjust, since it will take away from the some of my inheritence. She is a wealthy quant and just 'doesn't have the time or need' to change arrangements. I feel bad about this, like I'm being robbed or they are favouring her. At the same time, I'm not entitled to their money. This is stressful!

When I was 16, I spent a lot of time "analyzing signals", and it never went well.

To address your first question: this has to do with scope insensitivity, hyperbolic discounting, and other related biases. To put it bluntly, most humans are actually pretty bad at maximizing expected utility. For example, when I first head about x-risk, my thought process was definitely not "humanity might be wiped out - that's IMPORTANT. I need to devote energy to this." It was more along the lines of "huh; That's interesting. Tragic, even. Oh well; moving on..."

Basically, we don't care much about what happens in the distant future, especially if it isn't guaranteed to happen. We also don't care much more about humanity than we do about ourselves plus our close ones. Plus we don't really care about things that don't feel immediate. And so on. Then end result is that most people's immediate problems are more important to them then x-risk, even if the latter might be by far the more essential according to utilitarian ethics.

Also see this reply by econblogger Noah Smith.

Solution: get an eBook edition or get a used hardcover and take off the dust jacket.

Also, it's not going to make you meaner than the general population. It just teaches you how to do consciously what some people can do unconsciously.

If it's morally good for me, as an autistic person, to improve my social/manipulation skills such that they're closer to the average NT, then why would it be immoral for you to improve your social skills? Unless there's some morally optimal level of social skills that is quite conveniently the level of the average person, this seems strange.