even if you supposed that the lives saved all occurred 300 years in the future, a reasonable discount rate would still only give you a couple of orders of magnitude.
Sounds about right to me.
For example, 1.05^300 = 2.3 * 10^6
Huh? You think 6 is “a couple”? I wish I had your sex life!
But 5% per annum is far too high. It discounts the next generation to only a quarter of the current generation. Way too steep.
Which is nowhere near enough.
Double huh? And huh? some more. You wrote:
a yearly donation of $1 saves an expected 10^18 lives
You imagine (conservatively) that there are a potential 10^18 lives to save 300 years into the future? Boy, I really wish I had your sex life.
Sounds about right to me.
Huh? You think 6 is “a couple”? I wish I had your sex life!
But 5% per annum is far too high. It discounts the next generation to only a quarter of the current generation. Way too steep.
Double huh? And huh? some more. You wrote:
You imagine (conservatively) that there are a potential 10^18 lives to save 300 years into the future? Boy, I really wish I had your sex life.
If people 300 years from now are whole brain emulations or AIs, then they could reproduce like software with high population densities.
Alternatively, if the human-size brains were all sucked into the matrix long ago, there may well be about 1 person per-planet.