It’s consistent with Landsburg’s analysis that everyone has their own utility function that emphasizes what that particular person considers important. So if everyone were a Landsburgian and donated only to a single charity, they would still donate all over the map to different charities—because, even if they all knew about SIAI, they either wouldn’t care as much about SIAI’s goals as other goals, or they would estimate SIAI’s effectiveness in reaching those goals as very low.
There probably would still be adverse impact to many charities which are second-choice for most their donors—and I’m sure there are many such—but not as catastrophic as you’re outlining, I think.
Personally, I believe that if everyone was presented with Landsburg’s argument, most people would fail to be Landsburgians not because they couldn’t stomach the math, or because they’d be wary of the more technical assumptions I wrote about in my post, but simply because they wouldn’t agree to characterize their charitable utility in unified single-currency utilons.
It’s consistent with Landsburg’s analysis that everyone has their own utility function that emphasizes what that particular person considers important. So if everyone were a Landsburgian and donated only to a single charity, they would still donate all over the map to different charities—because, even if they all knew about SIAI, they either wouldn’t care as much about SIAI’s goals as other goals, or they would estimate SIAI’s effectiveness in reaching those goals as very low. There probably would still be adverse impact to many charities which are second-choice for most their donors—and I’m sure there are many such—but not as catastrophic as you’re outlining, I think.
Personally, I believe that if everyone was presented with Landsburg’s argument, most people would fail to be Landsburgians not because they couldn’t stomach the math, or because they’d be wary of the more technical assumptions I wrote about in my post, but simply because they wouldn’t agree to characterize their charitable utility in unified single-currency utilons.