Maybe you should instead donate any leftover money to CFAR, so as to avoid the donor illusion. Also, that way everyone who doesn’t donate gets to feel a warm glow, too!
I’m curious as to what people think about the hypothetical ethics of jkaufman expecting to donate leftover money at the end of the year to AMF, but not announcing the fact and only committing to the matched money. This seems to me like it would be ethically okay but I am interested if anyone thinks otherwise. (In particular, one reason this seems ethical to me, is that it seems to me that the state of having a public commitment to do something importantly differs from the state of not having such a commitment, and differs even more under the outside view. Another reason it seems ethical is that the results are both good and nonselfish, hence subject to less suspicion than usual :).)
Maybe you should instead donate any leftover money to CFAR, so as to avoid the donor illusion.
He could start a giving war by setting up a fund for AMF and a fund for CFAR. At the end of the year, he could donate a total of 30% of his income to both charities, splitting the fund in proportion to how much each charity raised in the giving war.
To get a real war going you want some advantage to escalation. Simply spitting it in proportion to the total giving diminishes the value of a marginal dollar. Maybe an all-pay auction (like a dollar auction) would be better: whichever of AMF and CFAR got more donations would get the full match from me. Among rational mixed-strategy-utilizing donors this should result in $X moved by an $X pool on average, but people being imperfect I would expect to see more than $X moved.
I can definitely see the argument for that, but I think there’s just too much of that going on in charity today. “I’m going to fool you for a good cause” is the justification for a lot of shoddy practices supporting what usually turn out to be pretty mediocre causes.
I think it’s worth keeping a higher standard with appeals to rational charity. There’s long term benefit in a complete renunciation of the dark arts.
donate any leftover money to CFAR, so as to avoid the donor illusion
Then there would be a partial donor illusion if people thought they were causing money go to effective charity that wouldn’t otherwise when they’re really just influencing how I divide money between the AMF and CFAR.
(This is all assuming I think CFAR is about as good as AMF. I haven’t looked into CFAR enough to have a good idea on that account.)
I’m curious as to what people think about the hypothetical ethics
Let’s move one step further in that direction. Now hypothetical-jkaufman commits to match donations … but what he doesn’t say is that he fully expects to have a shedload more money available for giving, and for every $1 he matches he will give $2 less of that shedload. So now if you give $1 and tell hypothetical-jkaufman you’re doing so, the charity gets exactly the same as if you had done nothing at all. (And less than if you’d given and not told.)
That seems pretty damn unethical, and so far as I can tell by introspection (which is of course VERY UNRELIABLE) that’s because hypothetical-jkaufman is seriously misleading people about the consequences of their action: they expect it to result in more money going to the charity, and it doesn’t.
In Eliezer’s hypothetical, people are being misled about the consequences of their giving-and-telling in a similar sort of way. There isn’t the same actual sign reversal, but it seems like someone could easily prefer, say, $2 to AMF > $1 to [other-charity] > $1 to AMF, in which case hypothetical-jkaufman could be fooling them into an action that by their lights makes the world worse.
In practice it seems more likely that the choice would be $1 to AMF versus $1 of selfishness, and that for just about any potential donor the former is actually better (even if not matched) although they wouldn’t have chosen it without the prompting. So I think Eliezer’s hypothetical is ethical roughly iff stealing from potential donors and donating the money is ethical.
(Not quite; actual stealing has other consequences, such as making people feel insecure, taking up police time, etc. So make it stealing almost undetectably from potential donors.)
not announcing the fact and only committing to the matched money
Since the donated amounts are usually public, the conspiracy will be blown eventually.
This happens on occasion in more public cases, with the unconditional donation clause buried in some fine print, though I can’t find any links ATM (was it Wikipedia? 2010 Olympics?). I recall that when something like that makes it into the media, there is a bit of grumbling from the small donors about being tricked into donating, but never too much fuss.
From a consequentialist point of view the worst thing that can happen is that the donors read the fine print the next time a matching drive is announced and some might refrain from donating if the matching part is fake. Or they might assume that it is a ruse and not donate because of that. So it might be somewhat unethical in that sense (you get more donations now at the expense of unspecified future matching drives, probably by someone else).
Some people have demonstrated how telling a very similar lie, but for any case other than a “good cause,” is clearly unethical. I definitely agree with that
As much as I’m reluctant to say it, though… I think “The Ends Justify The Means” comes into play, though. If hypothetical jkafuman didn’t mention that he would ALSO donate that same amount if you DIDN’T donate, I wouldn’t blame him. (In fact I may thank him, possibly.)
(I’m not advocating purely utilitarian morality—I think the morality is ultimately a balance between “don’t mislead people” and “save lives from malaria”)
Maybe you should instead donate any leftover money to CFAR, so as to avoid the donor illusion. Also, that way everyone who doesn’t donate gets to feel a warm glow, too!
I’m curious as to what people think about the hypothetical ethics of jkaufman expecting to donate leftover money at the end of the year to AMF, but not announcing the fact and only committing to the matched money. This seems to me like it would be ethically okay but I am interested if anyone thinks otherwise. (In particular, one reason this seems ethical to me, is that it seems to me that the state of having a public commitment to do something importantly differs from the state of not having such a commitment, and differs even more under the outside view. Another reason it seems ethical is that the results are both good and nonselfish, hence subject to less suspicion than usual :).)
He could start a giving war by setting up a fund for AMF and a fund for CFAR. At the end of the year, he could donate a total of 30% of his income to both charities, splitting the fund in proportion to how much each charity raised in the giving war.
To get a real war going you want some advantage to escalation. Simply spitting it in proportion to the total giving diminishes the value of a marginal dollar. Maybe an all-pay auction (like a dollar auction) would be better: whichever of AMF and CFAR got more donations would get the full match from me. Among rational mixed-strategy-utilizing donors this should result in $X moved by an $X pool on average, but people being imperfect I would expect to see more than $X moved.
I can definitely see the argument for that, but I think there’s just too much of that going on in charity today. “I’m going to fool you for a good cause” is the justification for a lot of shoddy practices supporting what usually turn out to be pretty mediocre causes.
I think it’s worth keeping a higher standard with appeals to rational charity. There’s long term benefit in a complete renunciation of the dark arts.
Then there would be a partial donor illusion if people thought they were causing money go to effective charity that wouldn’t otherwise when they’re really just influencing how I divide money between the AMF and CFAR.
(This is all assuming I think CFAR is about as good as AMF. I haven’t looked into CFAR enough to have a good idea on that account.)
Let’s move one step further in that direction. Now hypothetical-jkaufman commits to match donations … but what he doesn’t say is that he fully expects to have a shedload more money available for giving, and for every $1 he matches he will give $2 less of that shedload. So now if you give $1 and tell hypothetical-jkaufman you’re doing so, the charity gets exactly the same as if you had done nothing at all. (And less than if you’d given and not told.)
That seems pretty damn unethical, and so far as I can tell by introspection (which is of course VERY UNRELIABLE) that’s because hypothetical-jkaufman is seriously misleading people about the consequences of their action: they expect it to result in more money going to the charity, and it doesn’t.
In Eliezer’s hypothetical, people are being misled about the consequences of their giving-and-telling in a similar sort of way. There isn’t the same actual sign reversal, but it seems like someone could easily prefer, say, $2 to AMF > $1 to [other-charity] > $1 to AMF, in which case hypothetical-jkaufman could be fooling them into an action that by their lights makes the world worse.
In practice it seems more likely that the choice would be $1 to AMF versus $1 of selfishness, and that for just about any potential donor the former is actually better (even if not matched) although they wouldn’t have chosen it without the prompting. So I think Eliezer’s hypothetical is ethical roughly iff stealing from potential donors and donating the money is ethical.
(Not quite; actual stealing has other consequences, such as making people feel insecure, taking up police time, etc. So make it stealing almost undetectably from potential donors.)
Since the donated amounts are usually public, the conspiracy will be blown eventually.
This happens on occasion in more public cases, with the unconditional donation clause buried in some fine print, though I can’t find any links ATM (was it Wikipedia? 2010 Olympics?). I recall that when something like that makes it into the media, there is a bit of grumbling from the small donors about being tricked into donating, but never too much fuss.
From a consequentialist point of view the worst thing that can happen is that the donors read the fine print the next time a matching drive is announced and some might refrain from donating if the matching part is fake. Or they might assume that it is a ruse and not donate because of that. So it might be somewhat unethical in that sense (you get more donations now at the expense of unspecified future matching drives, probably by someone else).
While I make my donations public someone else could easily make an offer like this and only publicize their matching donations.
Some people have demonstrated how telling a very similar lie, but for any case other than a “good cause,” is clearly unethical. I definitely agree with that
As much as I’m reluctant to say it, though… I think “The Ends Justify The Means” comes into play, though. If hypothetical jkafuman didn’t mention that he would ALSO donate that same amount if you DIDN’T donate, I wouldn’t blame him. (In fact I may thank him, possibly.)
(I’m not advocating purely utilitarian morality—I think the morality is ultimately a balance between “don’t mislead people” and “save lives from malaria”)