Not sure about Jesus, maybe he just made a status move against his competitors, but in general...
Goodhart’s Law applies to bragging about donations too—if you make it a norm, people will optimize for visibility instead of doing good; there will be charities helping them to optimize for this goal… and soon you may get a culture where people donate a lot to charities that actually don’t do much good, because most of their spending goes on increasing the visibility somehow.
Taking a wider view, maybe we would agree that maximizing donations to EA is still a positive goal, even if it brings some negative side-effects. But remember that most people don’t care about effective altruism, and would consider other charities more worthy. So you might be effectively creating a culture where people get points for publicly donating to organizations that you might find useless or even harmful. (Imagine organizations for effectively spreading a religion, or effectively spreading a totally mindkilled version of a political movement you disagree with.) Now you would be stuck in a situation where you either have to “voluntary donate” money to a cause you hate, or become a visible defector because everyone else around you already made their donations public.
Goodhart’s Law applies to bragging about donations too—if you make it a norm, people will optimize for visibility instead of doing good; there will be charities helping them to optimize for this goal… and soon you may get a culture where people donate a lot to charities that actually don’t do much good, because most of their spending goes on increasing the visibility somehow.
That is pretty much what Jesus said in the cited passage:
So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.
And similarly, further on:
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.
...
When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting
Not sure about Jesus, maybe he just made a status move against his competitors, but in general...
Goodhart’s Law applies to bragging about donations too—if you make it a norm, people will optimize for visibility instead of doing good; there will be charities helping them to optimize for this goal… and soon you may get a culture where people donate a lot to charities that actually don’t do much good, because most of their spending goes on increasing the visibility somehow.
Taking a wider view, maybe we would agree that maximizing donations to EA is still a positive goal, even if it brings some negative side-effects. But remember that most people don’t care about effective altruism, and would consider other charities more worthy. So you might be effectively creating a culture where people get points for publicly donating to organizations that you might find useless or even harmful. (Imagine organizations for effectively spreading a religion, or effectively spreading a totally mindkilled version of a political movement you disagree with.) Now you would be stuck in a situation where you either have to “voluntary donate” money to a cause you hate, or become a visible defector because everyone else around you already made their donations public.
That is pretty much what Jesus said in the cited passage:
And similarly, further on:
...