Figure out how much money you have to have so that the marginal dollar is that many times more valuable to them than to you. Donate everything beyond that.
This is probably not a bad idea for a heuristic, but reality is more complicated.
For instance, they don’t share your values. You might not eat meat from animals who feel pain during the production, but they might. You might not circumcize babies without anaesthesia, but they might. You might not give money to harmful religious organizations, but they might.
You can factor all this is, but it is a lot more complicated than just figuring out how much marginal value a dollar would have for them. You have to figure out how much you value their having the marginal dollar, which requies modelling all the indirect consequences as well.
That’s tautological, if you absorb all relevant factors into “better to donate”. My point was you can’t just project your current mind into the recipient’s situation and then project how much they would value the dollar.
In addition to this, personal factors such as lack of long-term commitment devices, probability of motivation-breaking also have to be integrated.
On the upside, each additional dollar strenghtenes the market for effective charities, which incentivizes future people to create better and more attractive charities. (This is similar to the way in which marginal veg*anism incentivizes R&D of better and cheaper non-animal products.)
I personally find it near-impossible to factor all of this into one number.
I do not know how much the recipient should keep, but I still think it would be helpful for him to know that it’s independent of his current salary. For one thing, it’s awfully suspicious for the amount he should keep to be that close to the amount he earns.
Things like motivation-breaking also have to be integrated, but it’s not enough to justify keeping 99% of his money. At that point, almost nothing is lost of he loses motivation, so the benefits of greatly increasing donation would seem to easily outweigh the risks.
By the way, you were implying that giving money to poor Africans is optimal altruism.
This is clearly false.
By doing so, you merely make up for other people’s policy failures and create perverse incentives and moral hazards for the causes of poverty. In addition, other people are more likely than you to give money to the poor rather than to abstract causes, which means that you have an intellectual comparative advantage in focussing on those other causes.
I think all of the following are better candidates for hed.utils. than poverty relief:
lobbyism (only very narrow topic range)
technological and scientific research (again, only a small topic range)
liberal eugenics
research and advocacy against nonhuman suffering (not many good candidates, but some are better than all povery relief charities)
utilitarian munchkin ideas like hedonium or artificial utility monsters
singularity and x-risk stuff (again, not many good candidates, but some are better than all poverty relief)
This is probably not a bad idea for a heuristic, but reality is more complicated.
For instance, they don’t share your values. You might not eat meat from animals who feel pain during the production, but they might. You might not circumcize babies without anaesthesia, but they might. You might not give money to harmful religious organizations, but they might.
You can factor all this is, but it is a lot more complicated than just figuring out how much marginal value a dollar would have for them. You have to figure out how much you value their having the marginal dollar, which requies modelling all the indirect consequences as well.
True, but my point was that you figure out at what point it’s better to donate the marginal dollar, and you donate everything beyond that.
That’s tautological, if you absorb all relevant factors into “better to donate”. My point was you can’t just project your current mind into the recipient’s situation and then project how much they would value the dollar.
In addition to this, personal factors such as lack of long-term commitment devices, probability of motivation-breaking also have to be integrated.
On the upside, each additional dollar strenghtenes the market for effective charities, which incentivizes future people to create better and more attractive charities. (This is similar to the way in which marginal veg*anism incentivizes R&D of better and cheaper non-animal products.)
I personally find it near-impossible to factor all of this into one number.
I do not know how much the recipient should keep, but I still think it would be helpful for him to know that it’s independent of his current salary. For one thing, it’s awfully suspicious for the amount he should keep to be that close to the amount he earns.
Things like motivation-breaking also have to be integrated, but it’s not enough to justify keeping 99% of his money. At that point, almost nothing is lost of he loses motivation, so the benefits of greatly increasing donation would seem to easily outweigh the risks.
By the way, you were implying that giving money to poor Africans is optimal altruism.
This is clearly false.
By doing so, you merely make up for other people’s policy failures and create perverse incentives and moral hazards for the causes of poverty. In addition, other people are more likely than you to give money to the poor rather than to abstract causes, which means that you have an intellectual comparative advantage in focussing on those other causes.
I think all of the following are better candidates for hed.utils. than poverty relief:
lobbyism (only very narrow topic range)
technological and scientific research (again, only a small topic range)
liberal eugenics
research and advocacy against nonhuman suffering (not many good candidates, but some are better than all povery relief charities)
utilitarian munchkin ideas like hedonium or artificial utility monsters
singularity and x-risk stuff (again, not many good candidates, but some are better than all poverty relief)