The logical thing to do seems to be: figure out how much more you value yourself than a random African. 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.
I just plan on trying to spend as little as I can, and just donating the rest.
It’s really difficult to ‘shut up and multiply’ in some cases.
I mean, I’m going to get personal here because it feels like the best way to articulate my problems with mathematical utilitarianism. But right now, I don’t produce anything like what I cost my society (in terms of socialized medicine, and support I receive from my parents).
I feel very strongly that I shouldn’t value myself more than a random African. But there are charities that claim I could save at least one life with what I spend on prescription fees every month. In terms of pure utilitarianism, unless I’m certain that I’m going to produce a lot more in the future and give some of that away, I probably ought to persuade my parents to give the help they give me with the rent to effective charities, borrow a bunch of money and give that to effective charities, then give the money I spend on my meds to effective charities until I basically kill myself.
That doesn’t feel right, but it’s what I get from shutting up and multiplying.
That is sort of what I meant by it being the “logical thing”. I don’t expect many people to actually manage it. You have to work around your emotions. But it’s still a useful first approximation for what you should be doing.
[Jodika] I probably ought to persuade my parents to give the help they give me with the rent to effective charities, borrow a bunch of money and give that to effective charities, then give the money I spend on my meds to effective charities until I basically kill myself.
[DanielLC] it’s still a useful first approximation for what you should be doing.
I don’t think that’s true? I think that, in practice, people value themselves more. But I think that it’s a fairly common tenet of normal peoples’ moralities that people are equal in value, and that if you asked random people, most of them would not say that they consider themselves to be more valuable or important than everyone else.
Which, yes, means that there’s a discrepancy between what people say they believe and what their actions say they believe, but that’s pretty normal too.
Most people don’t analyze things much at all. It’s possible to ask a random person and be told he values everyone equally, and that’s in some literal sense not saying what he believes. But if you just rephrased the question as “do you care more about yourself than someone else—would you pay my mortgage as readily as your own”, he would answer “oh, if that’s what you mean, then of course I care about myself more”. Technically he’s inconsistent, but it’s a very shallow sort of inconsistency based mostly on the fact that he doesn’t analyze things much; it isn’t some kind of hypocrisy or denial.
Maybe I am amoral, but I don’t value myself the same as a random person even in a theoretical sense. What I do is I recognize that in some sense I am no more valuable to humanity than any other person. But I am way more valuable to me—if I die, that brings utility to 0, and while it can be negative in some circumstances (aka Life is not worth living), some random person’s death clearly cannot do so, people are constantly dying in huge numbers all the time, and the cost of each death is non-zero to me, but must be relatively small, else I would easily be in the negative territory, and I am not.
The problem with this is that you have to be extremely honest about just how much more you value yourself than a random African. In absolute terms, a dollar can do so much good in Africa that you’d go rather broke even if you “only” considered yourself as valuable as a hundred Africans. If you lie to yourself about your preferences, as people tend to do, you’ll quickly see your true preferences reveal themselves.
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)
The logical thing to do seems to be: figure out how much more you value yourself than a random African. 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.
I just plan on trying to spend as little as I can, and just donating the rest.
Don’t tell us what you plan on doing, tell us what you are already doing.
Spending as little as I can and going to college.
It’s really difficult to ‘shut up and multiply’ in some cases.
I mean, I’m going to get personal here because it feels like the best way to articulate my problems with mathematical utilitarianism. But right now, I don’t produce anything like what I cost my society (in terms of socialized medicine, and support I receive from my parents).
I feel very strongly that I shouldn’t value myself more than a random African. But there are charities that claim I could save at least one life with what I spend on prescription fees every month. In terms of pure utilitarianism, unless I’m certain that I’m going to produce a lot more in the future and give some of that away, I probably ought to persuade my parents to give the help they give me with the rent to effective charities, borrow a bunch of money and give that to effective charities, then give the money I spend on my meds to effective charities until I basically kill myself.
That doesn’t feel right, but it’s what I get from shutting up and multiplying.
That is sort of what I meant by it being the “logical thing”. I don’t expect many people to actually manage it. You have to work around your emotions. But it’s still a useful first approximation for what you should be doing.
Really?
Maybe this means your feelings are wrong, and you should value yourself more than a random African.
If you go outside LW and EA, the idea that anyone values themselves only as much as a random other person would be considered bizarre.
I don’t think that’s true? I think that, in practice, people value themselves more. But I think that it’s a fairly common tenet of normal peoples’ moralities that people are equal in value, and that if you asked random people, most of them would not say that they consider themselves to be more valuable or important than everyone else.
Which, yes, means that there’s a discrepancy between what people say they believe and what their actions say they believe, but that’s pretty normal too.
Most people don’t analyze things much at all. It’s possible to ask a random person and be told he values everyone equally, and that’s in some literal sense not saying what he believes. But if you just rephrased the question as “do you care more about yourself than someone else—would you pay my mortgage as readily as your own”, he would answer “oh, if that’s what you mean, then of course I care about myself more”. Technically he’s inconsistent, but it’s a very shallow sort of inconsistency based mostly on the fact that he doesn’t analyze things much; it isn’t some kind of hypocrisy or denial.
Maybe I am amoral, but I don’t value myself the same as a random person even in a theoretical sense. What I do is I recognize that in some sense I am no more valuable to humanity than any other person. But I am way more valuable to me—if I die, that brings utility to 0, and while it can be negative in some circumstances (aka Life is not worth living), some random person’s death clearly cannot do so, people are constantly dying in huge numbers all the time, and the cost of each death is non-zero to me, but must be relatively small, else I would easily be in the negative territory, and I am not.
The problem with this is that you have to be extremely honest about just how much more you value yourself than a random African. In absolute terms, a dollar can do so much good in Africa that you’d go rather broke even if you “only” considered yourself as valuable as a hundred Africans. If you lie to yourself about your preferences, as people tend to do, you’ll quickly see your true preferences reveal themselves.
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)