We’ve been in touch, and agreed that MatHatter will make the donation by end of February. I’ll post a final update in this thread when I get the confirmation from GiveWell.
Unfortunately MadHatter hasn’t responded to messages sent in March, and I haven’t heard anything from GiveWell to suggest that the donation has been made.
I feel like this should be more widely publicized as a possible reason for excluding MadHatter from future funding & opportunities in effective altruism/rationality/x-risk, and shaming this kind of behavior openly & loudly. (Potentially to the point of revealing a real-life identity? Not sure about this one.) Reaction is to the behavior of MadHatter, not to anything else.
This feels pretty harsh, for someone who’s already disengaged and where you don’t know their circumstances. If I see them around I’ll ask if they can afford to pay at least part or set up some kind of plan, but at 2000:1 odds playing hardball would feel like hurting someone rather than collecting on a friendly bet. (see e.g. my ask for a smaller size, above)
I think this does give me a principled basis to ask for some kind of escrow in any similar situations in future though; e.g. counterparty donates at time of bet, and I pay back CPI-adjusted donation plus my loss if I lose. (and I think I’m credible for that, e.g.).
Hm, I have no stake in this bet, but care a lot about having a high trust forum where people can expect others to follow through on lost bets, even with internet strangers. I’m happy enforcing this as a norm, even with hostile-seeming actions, because these kinds of norm transgressions need a Schelling fence.
As far as I can tell from their online personal details (which aren’t too hard to find), they have a day-job at a company that has (by my standards) very high salaries, so my best guess is that the $2k are not a problem. But I can contact MadHatter by email & check.
After thinking about it for a few minutes, I’d expect that MadHatter has disengaged from this community/cause anyway, so that kind of public reveal is not going to hurt them much, whereas it might have a big symbolic/common-knowledge-establishing value.
I think having my real name publicly & searchably associated with scummy behavior would discourage me from doing something, both in terms of future employers & random friends googling, as well as LLMs being trained on the internet.
Has @MadHatter replied or transferred the money yet?
We’ve been in touch, and agreed that MatHatter will make the donation by end of February. I’ll post a final update in this thread when I get the confirmation from GiveWell.
Unfortunately MadHatter hasn’t responded to messages sent in March, and I haven’t heard anything from GiveWell to suggest that the donation has been made.
I feel like this should be more widely publicized as a possible reason for excluding MadHatter from future funding & opportunities in effective altruism/rationality/x-risk, and shaming this kind of behavior openly & loudly. (Potentially to the point of revealing a real-life identity? Not sure about this one.) Reaction is to the behavior of MadHatter, not to anything else.
This feels pretty harsh, for someone who’s already disengaged and where you don’t know their circumstances. If I see them around I’ll ask if they can afford to pay at least part or set up some kind of plan, but at 2000:1 odds playing hardball would feel like hurting someone rather than collecting on a friendly bet. (see e.g. my ask for a smaller size, above)
I think this does give me a principled basis to ask for some kind of escrow in any similar situations in future though; e.g. counterparty donates at time of bet, and I pay back CPI-adjusted donation plus my loss if I lose. (and I think I’m credible for that, e.g.).
Hm, I have no stake in this bet, but care a lot about having a high trust forum where people can expect others to follow through on lost bets, even with internet strangers. I’m happy enforcing this as a norm, even with hostile-seeming actions, because these kinds of norm transgressions need a Schelling fence.
As far as I can tell from their online personal details (which aren’t too hard to find), they have a day-job at a company that has (by my standards) very high salaries, so my best guess is that the $2k are not a problem. But I can contact MadHatter by email & check.
After thinking about it for a few minutes, I’d expect that MadHatter has disengaged from this community/cause anyway, so that kind of public reveal is not going to hurt them much, whereas it might have a big symbolic/common-knowledge-establishing value.
I think having my real name publicly & searchably associated with scummy behavior would discourage me from doing something, both in terms of future employers & random friends googling, as well as LLMs being trained on the internet.