Upvoted for calculation. Shakes fist for arguing against my pet cause. Although I didn’t do the math, I suspected that it might turn out this way. I didn’t mention that because of a chain of thought similar to grouchymusicologist’s. I figure that people will not disrupt their money-earning time to sign up for this and for that reason donate less to charity. I think it’s far more likely that they will be fooling around on the internet, reading LessWrong, and might feel motivated to use some time that would otherwise be spent unproductively on signing up. I hoped that the easy fuzzies might motivate some people into an act of “charity” that they otherwise might not make.
Even if you get 100 Less Wrongers to register, it seems that the expected number of transplant patient lives saved will be less than the expected number of malaria victims saved by giving $40 yourself to AMF. It seems that wasting people’s time (which works in small increments through willpower depletion, interrupting serendipity and other probabilistic or finely graduated effects), or conversely producing an interesting post and discussion about efficient charity (I enjoyed the post), will altruistically dominate the marrow effects.
ETA: Also, if you’re going to pitch thousands of people, it’s much, much, better for you to do that kind of basic background work rather than make the readers either go on faith or wastefully spend more cycles in parallel. General rule: if you can save the average reader 1 minute of processing with 20 minutes of work, that’s a good deal.
The calculation doesn’t mention the warm fuzzy feeling of getting personally involved. Registering might be a more involved way of support than donating, and make someone feel good about it. So best do both :-)
Upvoted for calculation. Shakes fist for arguing against my pet cause. Although I didn’t do the math, I suspected that it might turn out this way. I didn’t mention that because of a chain of thought similar to grouchymusicologist’s. I figure that people will not disrupt their money-earning time to sign up for this and for that reason donate less to charity. I think it’s far more likely that they will be fooling around on the internet, reading LessWrong, and might feel motivated to use some time that would otherwise be spent unproductively on signing up. I hoped that the easy fuzzies might motivate some people into an act of “charity” that they otherwise might not make.
Even if you get 100 Less Wrongers to register, it seems that the expected number of transplant patient lives saved will be less than the expected number of malaria victims saved by giving $40 yourself to AMF. It seems that wasting people’s time (which works in small increments through willpower depletion, interrupting serendipity and other probabilistic or finely graduated effects), or conversely producing an interesting post and discussion about efficient charity (I enjoyed the post), will altruistically dominate the marrow effects.
ETA: Also, if you’re going to pitch thousands of people, it’s much, much, better for you to do that kind of basic background work rather than make the readers either go on faith or wastefully spend more cycles in parallel. General rule: if you can save the average reader 1 minute of processing with 20 minutes of work, that’s a good deal.
The calculation doesn’t mention the warm fuzzy feeling of getting personally involved. Registering might be a more involved way of support than donating, and make someone feel good about it. So best do both :-)