Charity falls in the same category as investing to the extent that you care about the effectiveness of the different charities (as opposed to feeling good about yourself, for example). Here’s why.
For the sake of simplicity, suppose that you have $2000 to give to charity, and $1000 can either save a child in Africa or a dog in Michigan. For now, we assume that you care about the number of children and dogs saved.
If the charities currently have enough money to save 999 dogs and 999 children, then preferring an even split to a $2000/$0 split means preferring 1000 dogs and 1000 children saved, to 1001 dogs and 999 children. Nothing wrong with this, by itself.
However, we aren’t precisely certain about these numbers; and if the charities have enough money to save 1000 dogs and 998 children, then preferring an even split to a $0/$2000 split reveals exactly the opposite preference. This is a problem.
In general, as long as our uncertainty about how much the charities are doing is much greater than the impact of our own donations, a similar thing happens. It’s easy to have enough information to prefer a $2000/$0 split or a $0/$2000 split above all: for instance, if you think it’s best to have 1000 children and 1000 dogs saved, and currently there’s money to save about 500+/-100 children and 1500+/-100 dogs, you should definitely donate all your money to the children charity.
But having enough information to definitely prefer an even split is nearly impossible. The best we can do is consider the case where the difference is probably small, so you shouldn’t really care one way or the other. This is probably rare, though, and even that doesn’t argue in favor of an even split.
Now, obviously our assumption that we only care about the totals is unrealistic. But then, the usual argument runs, maybe we should figure out how much we care about the totals, and efficiently distribute that portion of our money (most likely, only to one charity). After that, the remaining money can go to making yourself feel good about yourself, or to signaling that you care about dogs, or whatever.
Notably, argument says nothing about color TVs, because you’re certain of the exact impact: you definitely go from 0 color TVs to 1. If we had that much information about the impact of charity, maybe even splits would more often be a good idea.
Charity falls in the same category as investing to the extent that you care about the effectiveness of the different charities (as opposed to feeling good about yourself, for example). Here’s why.
For the sake of simplicity, suppose that you have $2000 to give to charity, and $1000 can either save a child in Africa or a dog in Michigan. For now, we assume that you care about the number of children and dogs saved.
If the charities currently have enough money to save 999 dogs and 999 children, then preferring an even split to a $2000/$0 split means preferring 1000 dogs and 1000 children saved, to 1001 dogs and 999 children. Nothing wrong with this, by itself.
However, we aren’t precisely certain about these numbers; and if the charities have enough money to save 1000 dogs and 998 children, then preferring an even split to a $0/$2000 split reveals exactly the opposite preference. This is a problem.
In general, as long as our uncertainty about how much the charities are doing is much greater than the impact of our own donations, a similar thing happens. It’s easy to have enough information to prefer a $2000/$0 split or a $0/$2000 split above all: for instance, if you think it’s best to have 1000 children and 1000 dogs saved, and currently there’s money to save about 500+/-100 children and 1500+/-100 dogs, you should definitely donate all your money to the children charity.
But having enough information to definitely prefer an even split is nearly impossible. The best we can do is consider the case where the difference is probably small, so you shouldn’t really care one way or the other. This is probably rare, though, and even that doesn’t argue in favor of an even split.
Now, obviously our assumption that we only care about the totals is unrealistic. But then, the usual argument runs, maybe we should figure out how much we care about the totals, and efficiently distribute that portion of our money (most likely, only to one charity). After that, the remaining money can go to making yourself feel good about yourself, or to signaling that you care about dogs, or whatever.
Notably, argument says nothing about color TVs, because you’re certain of the exact impact: you definitely go from 0 color TVs to 1. If we had that much information about the impact of charity, maybe even splits would more often be a good idea.