What you say might be true if the only way to do good was to get money from donors. But of course that is not true: a do-gooder can become a donor himself or if he is too poor to donate, he can devote his energies to becoming richer so that he can donate time or money in the future (which is in fact the course that most of the young people inspired by SI’s mission are taking).
I am more comfortable speaking about individual altruists rather than charitable organizations. If an individual altruist can find a charity to employ him or find a patron to support his charitable work, then great! If not, then since money is an important resource, he should probably figure out how to get a supply of it. My point in this thread is that if the individual altruist is contemplating spending more than, oh, say 10% or 20% of his life force in becoming more impressive so that he can get a good job at a charity or can get more money from donors, then his plan is probably faulty and that he should instead plan to exchange goods and services he creates for money until money is no longer the constraining resource for his charitable goals.
(For individual altruists who live in countries where it is not as easy to exchange goods and services for money as it is in the English-speaking countries and who cannot emigrate to an English-speaking country, my figure of 10% to 20% might have to be adjusted upward.)
Individuals who make up SI are IMO already investing enough of their time and energy on impressing potential charitable employers, donors and endorsers, hence my request to Holden to clarify what he means when he says, “I feel that [SI] ought to be able to get more impressive endorsements than it has,” and, “SI seems to have passed up opportunities to test itself and its own rationality by e.g. aiming for objectively impressive accomplishments.”
Many more people would choose to have a paid position with SI than can be given a paid position with SI. What these people who wanted jobs at SI but did not get them usually do is earn as much money as possible with the goal of donating it to the cause. Many of these people are almost as qualified as the people who got jobs at SI. (Although they do not pay much, these are attractive jobs, e.g., because of the quality of the people one gets to spend one’s workday with.) It would tend to have a demoralizing effect on those that did not get jobs at SI for the people who did get jobs at SI to spend a significant fraction of their resources consolidating their access to high-status contacts, endorsements, charitable jobs and donor money.
So, not all effort at impressing others is bad, but there is need for a balance.
It would tend to have a demoralizing effect on those that did not get jobs at SI for the people who did get jobs at SI to spend a significant fraction of their resources consolidating their access to high-status contacts, endorsements, charitable jobs and donor money.
I agree with the above observation, but I don’t see how this is an argument supporting your 10-20% limit on investment in seeming impressive. Do you project overall funding would decrease as a result of the legitimate early-donor let-down you describe, or is it more that you expect actual enthusiasm for the cause to wane as the ‘charity overhead’ factor worsens?
When I put on my donor hat, that is, when I imagine my becoming a significant donor, I tend in my imaginings and my plans to avoid anything that interferes with deriving warm fuzzies from the process of donating or planning to donate—because when we say “warm fuzzies” we are referring to (a kind of) pleasure, and pleasure is the “gasoline” of the mind: it is certainly not the only thing that can “power” or “motivate” mental work, but it is IMHO the best fuel for work that needs to be sustained over a span of years. (And, yes, that is probably an argument against “Purchasing Fuzzies and Utilons Separately” in some situations although I did not have time today to re-read that article to see whether it can be reconciled with this comment.)
And, yeah, seeing money I donate (or simply imagining the money I will donate in the future) go to improving the lives of people who are probably not much better than me, but who spent a big fraction of their time and energy competing for status within the singularitarian community, jobs and donations with the likes of me, is one of the things that would probably interfere with my deriving warm fuzzies from the whole years-long and hopefully decades-long long process of my becoming a significant donor.
Certainly I am not alone in this aspect of my psychology. Now I will grant that a philanthropist can get a lot of donations by ignoring people who react like I do (namely, react with resentment) to high levels of prestige-seeking and impression management. But I tend to believe that to a philanthropist, donors are like customers are to a consultancy or investors are to a fast-growing company: the quality of the thinking of one’s donors (and in particular whether those donors got into donating out of a subconscious desire to affiliate with high-status folk) will tend to have a large effect on one’s sanity and ability to reach one’s goals.
And let me stress again that at present the level of prestige-seeking and impression management by insiders at SI is low enough not to cause my resentment to build up to levels that would cause me to start thinking about directing my donations elsewhere. But that might change if enough people with Holden-Karnofsky levels of credibility and influence exhort SI to increase their levels of prestige-seeking and impression management.
ADDED. The thing that is wrong with this comment and probably some of my other comments in this thread is that some of my remarks seem to be addressed to people seeking donations. If I were a better communicator, I would have made it clear that the target audience for my comments is donors. I am not worried about persuading people seeking donations because I am confident that if there were some barrier to my donating to, e.g., SI and FHI, I will manage to find other ways of purchasing utilons of comparable or almost-comparable efficiency.
One last thing I would say to donors and wanna-be donors is that this tendency towards resentment I have been describing in this comment (and the resulting inhibitory effect on my motivation) can be considered a feature (rather than a bug) of my personal psychology. In particular, it can be viewed as a form of pre-commitment to penalize (by withholding something I would otherwise be tempted to supply) certain behaviors which not only cause people like me to be overlooked and outcompeted for attractive jobs in charities, but also make the charitable world function less efficiently than it other would through a dynamic similar to a tragedy of the commons.
And this tendency I detect in myself really does feel like a precommitment in the sense that (as is true of almost all human precommitments that operate through the emotions) I have no recollection or impression of having chosen it and in the sense that it would probably require the expenditure of a very great deal of mental resources on my part to act contrary to it.
Your explanation is more or less what I’d gathered from your earlier statement. It makes sense.
The org. that can convince passionate supporters of the cause to work for $ and donate may be different from the one that can get the most mainstream donations.
This conversation suggests a good habit to practice: being open about how and why I feel about something real, or would about something hypothetical. Since it’s hard to separate internal openness from public openness, even though it’s really the internal practice I want, maybe airing real motivations/desires more often (as you just did) is better than my conservative semi-stoic default.
What you say might be true if the only way to do good was to get money from donors. But of course that is not true: a do-gooder can become a donor himself or if he is too poor to donate, he can devote his energies to becoming richer so that he can donate time or money in the future (which is in fact the course that most of the young people inspired by SI’s mission are taking).
I am more comfortable speaking about individual altruists rather than charitable organizations. If an individual altruist can find a charity to employ him or find a patron to support his charitable work, then great! If not, then since money is an important resource, he should probably figure out how to get a supply of it. My point in this thread is that if the individual altruist is contemplating spending more than, oh, say 10% or 20% of his life force in becoming more impressive so that he can get a good job at a charity or can get more money from donors, then his plan is probably faulty and that he should instead plan to exchange goods and services he creates for money until money is no longer the constraining resource for his charitable goals.
(For individual altruists who live in countries where it is not as easy to exchange goods and services for money as it is in the English-speaking countries and who cannot emigrate to an English-speaking country, my figure of 10% to 20% might have to be adjusted upward.)
Individuals who make up SI are IMO already investing enough of their time and energy on impressing potential charitable employers, donors and endorsers, hence my request to Holden to clarify what he means when he says, “I feel that [SI] ought to be able to get more impressive endorsements than it has,” and, “SI seems to have passed up opportunities to test itself and its own rationality by e.g. aiming for objectively impressive accomplishments.”
Many more people would choose to have a paid position with SI than can be given a paid position with SI. What these people who wanted jobs at SI but did not get them usually do is earn as much money as possible with the goal of donating it to the cause. Many of these people are almost as qualified as the people who got jobs at SI. (Although they do not pay much, these are attractive jobs, e.g., because of the quality of the people one gets to spend one’s workday with.) It would tend to have a demoralizing effect on those that did not get jobs at SI for the people who did get jobs at SI to spend a significant fraction of their resources consolidating their access to high-status contacts, endorsements, charitable jobs and donor money.
So, not all effort at impressing others is bad, but there is need for a balance.
I agree with the above observation, but I don’t see how this is an argument supporting your 10-20% limit on investment in seeming impressive. Do you project overall funding would decrease as a result of the legitimate early-donor let-down you describe, or is it more that you expect actual enthusiasm for the cause to wane as the ‘charity overhead’ factor worsens?
When I put on my donor hat, that is, when I imagine my becoming a significant donor, I tend in my imaginings and my plans to avoid anything that interferes with deriving warm fuzzies from the process of donating or planning to donate—because when we say “warm fuzzies” we are referring to (a kind of) pleasure, and pleasure is the “gasoline” of the mind: it is certainly not the only thing that can “power” or “motivate” mental work, but it is IMHO the best fuel for work that needs to be sustained over a span of years. (And, yes, that is probably an argument against “Purchasing Fuzzies and Utilons Separately” in some situations although I did not have time today to re-read that article to see whether it can be reconciled with this comment.)
And, yeah, seeing money I donate (or simply imagining the money I will donate in the future) go to improving the lives of people who are probably not much better than me, but who spent a big fraction of their time and energy competing for status within the singularitarian community, jobs and donations with the likes of me, is one of the things that would probably interfere with my deriving warm fuzzies from the whole years-long and hopefully decades-long long process of my becoming a significant donor.
Certainly I am not alone in this aspect of my psychology. Now I will grant that a philanthropist can get a lot of donations by ignoring people who react like I do (namely, react with resentment) to high levels of prestige-seeking and impression management. But I tend to believe that to a philanthropist, donors are like customers are to a consultancy or investors are to a fast-growing company: the quality of the thinking of one’s donors (and in particular whether those donors got into donating out of a subconscious desire to affiliate with high-status folk) will tend to have a large effect on one’s sanity and ability to reach one’s goals.
And let me stress again that at present the level of prestige-seeking and impression management by insiders at SI is low enough not to cause my resentment to build up to levels that would cause me to start thinking about directing my donations elsewhere. But that might change if enough people with Holden-Karnofsky levels of credibility and influence exhort SI to increase their levels of prestige-seeking and impression management.
ADDED. The thing that is wrong with this comment and probably some of my other comments in this thread is that some of my remarks seem to be addressed to people seeking donations. If I were a better communicator, I would have made it clear that the target audience for my comments is donors. I am not worried about persuading people seeking donations because I am confident that if there were some barrier to my donating to, e.g., SI and FHI, I will manage to find other ways of purchasing utilons of comparable or almost-comparable efficiency.
One last thing I would say to donors and wanna-be donors is that this tendency towards resentment I have been describing in this comment (and the resulting inhibitory effect on my motivation) can be considered a feature (rather than a bug) of my personal psychology. In particular, it can be viewed as a form of pre-commitment to penalize (by withholding something I would otherwise be tempted to supply) certain behaviors which not only cause people like me to be overlooked and outcompeted for attractive jobs in charities, but also make the charitable world function less efficiently than it other would through a dynamic similar to a tragedy of the commons.
And this tendency I detect in myself really does feel like a precommitment in the sense that (as is true of almost all human precommitments that operate through the emotions) I have no recollection or impression of having chosen it and in the sense that it would probably require the expenditure of a very great deal of mental resources on my part to act contrary to it.
Wow. Coordination is hard ;)
Your explanation is more or less what I’d gathered from your earlier statement. It makes sense.
The org. that can convince passionate supporters of the cause to work for $ and donate may be different from the one that can get the most mainstream donations.
It is possible that this is just a phase I am going through, but if it is, it is a long phase.
This conversation suggests a good habit to practice: being open about how and why I feel about something real, or would about something hypothetical. Since it’s hard to separate internal openness from public openness, even though it’s really the internal practice I want, maybe airing real motivations/desires more often (as you just did) is better than my conservative semi-stoic default.