I suspect that the usual taboo about good deeds is connected to the status-regulation emotion. Essentially, doing good deeds puts you in a positive light. But you have some status in your group, and if you try to take more positive light than appropriate for your status, someone is going to slap you in the face.
High-status people, such as kings or presidents, are allowed to do as much good as they want. For the average Joe, little good makes him admirable, but too much good makes everyone around him feel uncomfortable. The usual reaction is to devalue the good deed, however irrationally, because other people who also feel uncomfortable will not object against the irrationality.
Being public about your good deeds means claiming high status, whether you intended it this way or not.
Viliam, nice insight on the status-regulation emotion. I think being public about one’s good deeds does face that challenge, as well as the weirdness challenge. However, it’s a question of how we want to spend our weirdness points. If we’re spending them to cultivate the social norm of being public about our good deeds, and therefore advance that social norm, the outcome seems quite worthwhile to me.
An unintended consequence is that you are effectively creating an extra income tax. If it becomes a social norm to donate 10% of your income, then the status distribution will incorporate this social norm, so status-aware people will feel compelled to donate just to have the same social status.
But this makes it harder to achieve the same level of spending and status with the same productivity, resulting in a reduced incentive for productivity.
This can lead to compensating behavior, just like a increased income tax. Maybe people disvalue the relative status because it becomes too expensive, or they disvalue the remaining spending power and therefore the productivity. Combined with the norm that omissions are morally neutral and you don’t have an obligation to be the most productive you could be, this could have negative consequences.
I, for one, have no intention of doing anything for anyone unless it’s worth it for me.
I’m not sure that “effectively creating an extra income tax” is an unintended consequence. The whole point of being public about one’s donations is to make it easier for others to do likewise and harder for them not to.
Of course it will never go so far as actually “effectively creating an extra income tax” unless (1) it’s easy to determine all of a person’s donations and (2) whatever social sanctions attend failure to give the expected amount are as severe as the sanctions governments can impose on people who don’t pay their taxes.
It isn’t clear to me why an extra effective income tax would actually reduce incentives for productivity. Not even assuming—as you are doing, without making it explicit—that no one really values the good done by their charitable donations very much. E.g., suppose your utility looks something like A + B log(consumption) - C hours_worked, and suppose consumption = k hours_worked on the grounds that income is proportional to work and consumption is proportional to income. Lots of crude approximations here, but they’ll do. Then u = A + B log(kw) - Cw = A + B log k + B log w—Cw, and the only effect of varying k is to shift the utility curve up and down. It makes no difference, in particular, to the utility-maximizing choice of w.
If there were really a norm that “omissions are morally neutral” then it would be difficult for failing to donate enough to have very bad social consequences, since failing to donate enough is an omission rather than an act.
I, for one, have no intention of doing anything for anyone unless it’s worth it for me.
In which case, presumably your comments about alleged unintended consequences of a social norm of charitable donation were made because you hope making those comments will benefit you personally—e.g., by reducing the danger that you will find yourself socially obligated to give any of your hard-earned money to benefit anyone other than yourself. That might help to explain why those comments are so full of errors—one is seldom as careful when rationalizing as when actually reasoning.
“One is seldom as careful when rationalizing as when actually reasoning.” This is equally true whether you wish to avoid charitable donations or to encourage them.
Absolutely true. It just so happens that the comment I was referring to was on one side rather than the other, but I’m sure the same thing happens on the other side too.
Nope, I don’t think it would be good for the EA movement at all! It’s important to have life balance in doing good for the world, and getting fun things for oneself with disposable income helps ensure that doing good for the world is a marathon, not a sprint.
On a separate note about giving, it would be worthwhile for some people in the EA movement to shift from an earn-to-give orientation to one where they use their work time to make a contribution, due to the current talent gap in the EA movement. I myself am doing that, not teaching additional classes and instead orienting to working more on Intentional Insights to promote effective giving, for example.
I suspect that the usual taboo about good deeds is connected to the status-regulation emotion. Essentially, doing good deeds puts you in a positive light. But you have some status in your group, and if you try to take more positive light than appropriate for your status, someone is going to slap you in the face.
High-status people, such as kings or presidents, are allowed to do as much good as they want. For the average Joe, little good makes him admirable, but too much good makes everyone around him feel uncomfortable. The usual reaction is to devalue the good deed, however irrationally, because other people who also feel uncomfortable will not object against the irrationality.
Being public about your good deeds means claiming high status, whether you intended it this way or not.
Viliam, nice insight on the status-regulation emotion. I think being public about one’s good deeds does face that challenge, as well as the weirdness challenge. However, it’s a question of how we want to spend our weirdness points. If we’re spending them to cultivate the social norm of being public about our good deeds, and therefore advance that social norm, the outcome seems quite worthwhile to me.
An unintended consequence is that you are effectively creating an extra income tax. If it becomes a social norm to donate 10% of your income, then the status distribution will incorporate this social norm, so status-aware people will feel compelled to donate just to have the same social status.
But this makes it harder to achieve the same level of spending and status with the same productivity, resulting in a reduced incentive for productivity.
This can lead to compensating behavior, just like a increased income tax. Maybe people disvalue the relative status because it becomes too expensive, or they disvalue the remaining spending power and therefore the productivity. Combined with the norm that omissions are morally neutral and you don’t have an obligation to be the most productive you could be, this could have negative consequences.
I, for one, have no intention of doing anything for anyone unless it’s worth it for me.
I’m not sure that “effectively creating an extra income tax” is an unintended consequence. The whole point of being public about one’s donations is to make it easier for others to do likewise and harder for them not to.
Of course it will never go so far as actually “effectively creating an extra income tax” unless (1) it’s easy to determine all of a person’s donations and (2) whatever social sanctions attend failure to give the expected amount are as severe as the sanctions governments can impose on people who don’t pay their taxes.
It isn’t clear to me why an extra effective income tax would actually reduce incentives for productivity. Not even assuming—as you are doing, without making it explicit—that no one really values the good done by their charitable donations very much. E.g., suppose your utility looks something like A + B log(consumption) - C hours_worked, and suppose consumption = k hours_worked on the grounds that income is proportional to work and consumption is proportional to income. Lots of crude approximations here, but they’ll do. Then u = A + B log(kw) - Cw = A + B log k + B log w—Cw, and the only effect of varying k is to shift the utility curve up and down. It makes no difference, in particular, to the utility-maximizing choice of w.
If there were really a norm that “omissions are morally neutral” then it would be difficult for failing to donate enough to have very bad social consequences, since failing to donate enough is an omission rather than an act.
In which case, presumably your comments about alleged unintended consequences of a social norm of charitable donation were made because you hope making those comments will benefit you personally—e.g., by reducing the danger that you will find yourself socially obligated to give any of your hard-earned money to benefit anyone other than yourself. That might help to explain why those comments are so full of errors—one is seldom as careful when rationalizing as when actually reasoning.
“One is seldom as careful when rationalizing as when actually reasoning.” This is equally true whether you wish to avoid charitable donations or to encourage them.
Absolutely true. It just so happens that the comment I was referring to was on one side rather than the other, but I’m sure the same thing happens on the other side too.
There’s a reason there’s a disclaimer at the top of the post saying it will mainly be of interest to those interested in Effective Altruism :-)
So if it became socially mandatory for EA members to donate all their disposable income, do you think that would be good for the EA movement?
Nope, I don’t think it would be good for the EA movement at all! It’s important to have life balance in doing good for the world, and getting fun things for oneself with disposable income helps ensure that doing good for the world is a marathon, not a sprint.
On a separate note about giving, it would be worthwhile for some people in the EA movement to shift from an earn-to-give orientation to one where they use their work time to make a contribution, due to the current talent gap in the EA movement. I myself am doing that, not teaching additional classes and instead orienting to working more on Intentional Insights to promote effective giving, for example.