So let’s say I’m planning to donate once. If I want to make sure it has the most marginal utility, I’ll just donate during 1am hour even though many other LWers probably also give during that time given that it’s the first item on the list?
The reason is that we have no real data about how many donations in any given hour will be enough to win the $2,000. So the trade off we decided to take is to increase our likelihood of winning a few hours, at the expense of having an even distribution over more hours. Since I’m happier to win a few by a landslide, than loose all of them by a hair. Also, more practically, coordinating the latter approach is much more difficult on a large scale.
So let’s say I’m planning to donate once. If I want to make sure it has the most marginal utility, I’ll just donate during 1am hour even though many other LWers probably also give during that time given that it’s the first item on the list?
Yes.
The reason is that we have no real data about how many donations in any given hour will be enough to win the $2,000. So the trade off we decided to take is to increase our likelihood of winning a few hours, at the expense of having an even distribution over more hours. Since I’m happier to win a few by a landslide, than loose all of them by a hair. Also, more practically, coordinating the latter approach is much more difficult on a large scale.