I guess there'll be a fair bit of traffic coming from people looking it up?

Well xkcd just reminded me that I have an account here, so there's that. Not that I want to waste time on this crackpot deposit of revisionist history, stolen ideas, poor reasoning and general crank idiocy.

edit: and again I disappear into the night

I think a more likely explanation is that people just like to complain. Why would people do things that everyone thought were a waste of time? (At my office, we have meetings and email too, but I usually think they are good ways to communicate with people and not a waste of time)

Also, you didn't answer my question. It sounds like your answer is that you are compelled to waste 20 hours of time every week?

I don't understand. Are you saying you could get 2x as much work done in your 40 hour week, or that due to dependencies on other people you cannot possibly do more than 20 hours of productive work per week no matter how many hours you are in the office?

I'm a pro-U.S. military libertarian. I have the standard free market libertarian beliefs but think that the world is a vastly better place because of U.S. military power which has done much to reduce the harm that governments cause.

I'm about the same. But it's not just the US military. Most of the freedom and prosperity in the world is due to the military dominance of the entire Anglosphere.

I would probably be able to get the same amount of work done in a 30 or even 20 hour week, given the amount of time wasted on meetings/email/waiting for data in an average office. Boss wouldn't want to pay me the same for a 20hr work week though.

The entire community is extremely insular and is weighed down with it's own established ideas. Most of the writers speak with total conviction, absolutely convinced of their own conclusions, despite the entire point of the endeavor being the pursuit of ever increasing amounts of correctness, thus making them 'less wrong'.

It consists mostly of extremely narrow demographics, cutting it's objectivity off at the knees by creating a culture that is perfect for serving as echo chambers despite their criticism of one another. It has also engaged in censorship of ideas, something that CANNOT be allowed in a group that is trying to further rational thought.

Aside from that there is also the personality cult surrounding Eliezer Yudkowsky. Objectivity is impossible if people weight the merit of your arguments by your popularity, which is inevitable in such a situation.

Vitamin D, since sunshine is in short supply all winter where I live

Rationalism is a toolset with which to approach problems, not a belief system. By my perception, at least.

For people like Nassim Taleb religion is also about following a bunch of habits such as praying and going to church every sunday and not centrally about belief.

Based on the phrase "change which charities I donate to" I had assumed he or she was already donating to multiple charities, presumably including action in subsaharan africa.

The money being donated to charities that are not in Sub-Saharan Africa would be better donated to charities that are. Even if that were not the case, that would just mean that the money that is donated to charities that are in Sub-Saharan Africa would be better donated to charities that are not. The money from a single donor isn't enough to change which continent you should donate to.

Also can you explain the "magnitude" thing?

An order of magnitude is a power of ten.

I'm not sure I follow your definition of "effectiveness".

Here's an example of what I mean.

The Seeing Eye trains dogs to help mitigate the effects of blindness for about $50,000 each. The Fred Hollows Foundation performs cataract surgeries to cure blindness for about 25$ each. It's not generally clear how to relate how much good two different charities are, but it is pretty obvious that a cataract surgery does more good than a guide dog, and for 2,000 times less. Thus, the Fred Hollows Foundation is more than three orders of magnitude more cost-effective than The Seeing Eye. Even if The Seeing Eye was tax-free and the Fred Hollows Foundation was taxed at 99.9%, it would be worth while to donate to The Seeing Eye.

They don't publish very long write-ups, it's more like a checklist of their particular criteria.

I do think the length of the analysis of GiveDirectly is fairly long (http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-directly). If you think that the recommendation of GiveDirectly is a mistake based on naive assumptions it makes sense to read the article.