I noticed a bunch of people saying that they will donate the money if they win. I find that a surprisingly irrational sentiment for lesswrong. Unless I am missing something, it seems people are ignoring the principle of the fungibility of money. It seems like the more rational thing to do would be to commit to donating 60$ whether or not you win. (If your current wealth level is a factor in your decision, such that you will only donate with the higher wealth level with the prize, then this can be modified to donating whether or not you win if you receive a windfall of 60$ from any source (your grandmother gives a generous birthday present, your coworker takes you out to lunch every day this week, you find money in the street, you get a surprisingly large bonus at work, your stocks increase more then expected etc))
People intend to donate the money when they win because they don’t want the prospect of gaining money to influence their decision. Donating it is just an alternative to burning it. (It does also follow that those people who donate it for this reason must find the utility of such a donation to be very small.)
By ‘their decision’ do you mean the decision to cooperate or defect? If so you would predict people would not offer to donate if there was no choice involved (e.g. all participants in the survey automatically receive one entry)?
I noticed a bunch of people saying that they will donate the money if they win. I find that a surprisingly irrational sentiment for lesswrong. Unless I am missing something, it seems people are ignoring the principle of the fungibility of money. It seems like the more rational thing to do would be to commit to donating 60$ whether or not you win. (If your current wealth level is a factor in your decision, such that you will only donate with the higher wealth level with the prize, then this can be modified to donating whether or not you win if you receive a windfall of 60$ from any source (your grandmother gives a generous birthday present, your coworker takes you out to lunch every day this week, you find money in the street, you get a surprisingly large bonus at work, your stocks increase more then expected etc))
People intend to donate the money when they win because they don’t want the prospect of gaining money to influence their decision. Donating it is just an alternative to burning it. (It does also follow that those people who donate it for this reason must find the utility of such a donation to be very small.)
By ‘their decision’ do you mean the decision to cooperate or defect? If so you would predict people would not offer to donate if there was no choice involved (e.g. all participants in the survey automatically receive one entry)?
It does not seem like this is what people are describing e.g. http://lesswrong.com/lw/j4y/2013_less_wrong_censussurvey/a3xl http://lesswrong.com/lw/j4y/2013_less_wrong_censussurvey/a2zz and http://lesswrong.com/lw/j4y/2013_less_wrong_censussurvey/a36h