That sounds like it’d work, but at the cost of eliminating most of the fuzzies you’d get from your altruism and most of your donation’s social signaling value. (The tax paperwork might also be more complicated if you’re claiming a deduction, but that’s less important.) As such I suspect it’d be a hard sell for anyone whose altruism isn’t a terminal value but is rather a consequence of one of those functions, which I expect is a substantial fraction of all the altruists out there. Seems like it has the potential to be a good idea for LWers, though.
Setting it up to mail you periodic summaries of your donations over some conveniently large period of time would fix this, but would also have the potential to reestablish the “earned selfishness” problem we’re trying to avoid.
As an aside, setting up that kind of repeating donation isn’t likely to be that difficult. Most banks will allow you to schedule repeating payments to some entity even if you aren’t being billed; I pay my dojo dues that way.
That sounds like it’d work, but at the cost of eliminating most of the fuzzies you’d get from your altruism and most of your donation’s social signaling value.
Doesn’t that inherently make it a stronger signal when observed?
Choosing to donate in a self-thankless way might in general, but in this case I think that’s dominated by the convenience factor and per-donation triviality. Most people would be probably be less impressed by someone who’s donated $50 every month for the last year by some automatic process than by someone who’s made a $500 lump donation: the former is higher in absolute terms and makes for a stabler cash flow to the charity, but also carries a fairly strong message of “I don’t want to be inconvenienced by my altruism”.
That sounds like it’d work, but at the cost of eliminating most of the fuzzies you’d get from your altruism and most of your donation’s social signaling value. (The tax paperwork might also be more complicated if you’re claiming a deduction, but that’s less important.) As such I suspect it’d be a hard sell for anyone whose altruism isn’t a terminal value but is rather a consequence of one of those functions, which I expect is a substantial fraction of all the altruists out there. Seems like it has the potential to be a good idea for LWers, though.
Setting it up to mail you periodic summaries of your donations over some conveniently large period of time would fix this, but would also have the potential to reestablish the “earned selfishness” problem we’re trying to avoid.
As an aside, setting up that kind of repeating donation isn’t likely to be that difficult. Most banks will allow you to schedule repeating payments to some entity even if you aren’t being billed; I pay my dojo dues that way.
Doesn’t that inherently make it a stronger signal when observed?
Choosing to donate in a self-thankless way might in general, but in this case I think that’s dominated by the convenience factor and per-donation triviality. Most people would be probably be less impressed by someone who’s donated $50 every month for the last year by some automatic process than by someone who’s made a $500 lump donation: the former is higher in absolute terms and makes for a stabler cash flow to the charity, but also carries a fairly strong message of “I don’t want to be inconvenienced by my altruism”.
Interesting, and quite possible correct.