(This is a general comment about the argument, not about the revisions.)
Neither scenario suggests that small donors should try to fill this funding gap. If they trust big donors, they should just give to the big donors. If they don’t, why should they believe a story clearly meant to extract money from them?
Because some people are trustworthy and others aren’t.
The reason why I believe the EA claims is pretty simple: I trust the people making them. The fact that there is a lot of altruistic value sort of lying on the sidewalks may be a-priori surprising, but we have so much evidence that maximizing altruism is extremely rare that I don’t see much of an argument left at this point. EY made this point in Inqadequate Equiliria:
Eliezer: Well, mostly I’m implying that maximizing altruism is incredibly rare, especially when you also require sufficiently precise reasoning that you aren’t limited to cases where the large-scale, convincing study has already been done; and then we’re demanding the executive ability to start a new project on top of that. But yes, I’m also saying that here on Earth we have much more horrible problems to worry about.
(This is a general comment about the argument, not about the revisions.)
Because some people are trustworthy and others aren’t.
The reason why I believe the EA claims is pretty simple: I trust the people making them. The fact that there is a lot of altruistic value sort of lying on the sidewalks may be a-priori surprising, but we have so much evidence that maximizing altruism is extremely rare that I don’t see much of an argument left at this point. EY made this point in Inqadequate Equiliria: