It seems like he had some problems distinguishing short- & long-term. Yes, opening your house & letting homeless people sleep there will help them in the short-term, but if it destroys your life in the long-term & makes you completely unable to help them, well then it isn’t the correct decision for maximizing the amount of altruism you can perform. It seems like he was trying to be a good altruist, but wasn’t a very good rationalist. Apologies if that seems offensive to anyone. I’m not trying to insult the man, he did much more good than many people do, I’m just trying to think about it in a broad sense.
On the other hand, he may have done a reasonable job of implementing the specific altruistic algorithm specified by Jesus (“sell your possessions, give to the poor, and follow me” — Matthew 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22).
It seems like he had some problems distinguishing short- & long-term. Yes, opening your house & letting homeless people sleep there will help them in the short-term, but if it destroys your life in the long-term & makes you completely unable to help them, well then it isn’t the correct decision for maximizing the amount of altruism you can perform. It seems like he was trying to be a good altruist, but wasn’t a very good rationalist. Apologies if that seems offensive to anyone. I’m not trying to insult the man, he did much more good than many people do, I’m just trying to think about it in a broad sense.
On the other hand, he may have done a reasonable job of implementing the specific altruistic algorithm specified by Jesus (“sell your possessions, give to the poor, and follow me” — Matthew 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22).