Surely people who give money to charity in their wills are giving to specific charities, so they have already decided who gets the money. They could have given the money to the same charity instead of writing “When I die, $X goes to charity Y” in their wills.
I’d have thought more obvious explanations for the fact that people give money to charity in their wills are (1) that they want the money available as long as they’re alive and might need it, so they don’t give it up until it’s demonstrably not going to help them, and (2) that they want to demonstrate how generous they are without being seen to boast.
(#1 may not make much sense in the case of the very rich. #2 doesn’t make much sense for anyone since reputation isn’t much use once you’re dead. But that doesn’t stop them being motivations, human nature being the overgeneralizing thing it is.)
2) as stated demonstrates a persistent problem i see here and elsewhere: just because a behavior signals something to observers does not mean the behavior was chosen because it signals something to observers.
we use the same evaluative criteria to assess ourselves as we use to determine the relative value of our peers. for example, if i evaluate the relative worth of members of my peer group within the context of ″athletics″ using a criterion like their vertical leap, i will likely apply the same evaluative criterion to myself when assessing -my- value. when i spend hours alone at the gym doing plyometric training to improve my vertical leap i am not signalling, or improving myself with the intention of signalling something later on: i am just doing something that will let me score higher on the metric i use to evaluate my worth. it will make me more estimable in my own eyes and i will get a kick from internal self-approval.
Er, I didn’t say that the behaviour was chosen because it signals something. I offered that as one possible explanation.
In this instance, signalling-to-self seems like about as good an explanation as signalling-to-others for the fact that people give to charities at all (though I’m sure these are nothing like the whole explanation). But it doesn’t work for explaining why someone would do it in their will rather than earlier, whereas signalling-to-others does.
For what it’s worth, I think my #1 is likely more important than my #2. I would hazard a guess that, e.g., Robin Hanson might disagree. But I’m not sure what your objection is: do you think “signalling” explanations are never an interesting part of the story?
Surely people who give money to charity in their wills are giving to specific charities, so they have already decided who gets the money. They could have given the money to the same charity instead of writing “When I die, $X goes to charity Y” in their wills.
I’d have thought more obvious explanations for the fact that people give money to charity in their wills are (1) that they want the money available as long as they’re alive and might need it, so they don’t give it up until it’s demonstrably not going to help them, and (2) that they want to demonstrate how generous they are without being seen to boast.
(#1 may not make much sense in the case of the very rich. #2 doesn’t make much sense for anyone since reputation isn’t much use once you’re dead. But that doesn’t stop them being motivations, human nature being the overgeneralizing thing it is.)
2) as stated demonstrates a persistent problem i see here and elsewhere: just because a behavior signals something to observers does not mean the behavior was chosen because it signals something to observers.
we use the same evaluative criteria to assess ourselves as we use to determine the relative value of our peers. for example, if i evaluate the relative worth of members of my peer group within the context of ″athletics″ using a criterion like their vertical leap, i will likely apply the same evaluative criterion to myself when assessing -my- value. when i spend hours alone at the gym doing plyometric training to improve my vertical leap i am not signalling, or improving myself with the intention of signalling something later on: i am just doing something that will let me score higher on the metric i use to evaluate my worth. it will make me more estimable in my own eyes and i will get a kick from internal self-approval.
Er, I didn’t say that the behaviour was chosen because it signals something. I offered that as one possible explanation.
In this instance, signalling-to-self seems like about as good an explanation as signalling-to-others for the fact that people give to charities at all (though I’m sure these are nothing like the whole explanation). But it doesn’t work for explaining why someone would do it in their will rather than earlier, whereas signalling-to-others does.
For what it’s worth, I think my #1 is likely more important than my #2. I would hazard a guess that, e.g., Robin Hanson might disagree. But I’m not sure what your objection is: do you think “signalling” explanations are never an interesting part of the story?