A Google search for “save the world” yields 11,000,000 results. A search for “harm the world” yields 242,000. Also, the top results for the latter are framed as cautionary tales, rather than normative instructions, or communities for how to accomplish the malignant goal.
Saving the world is a very commonly expressed sentiment, which is why compiling a list of people who want to save the world seems a little redundant to me. A list about people who have saved the world might be a tad more useful.
As far as I know, an infinitesimal amount of the world population consciously sets out to be evil, or to do harm to the world. It’s more a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. I’m pretty sure there have been many studies about this, though I’d have to dig for them again. Perhaps someone else can post them.
Neither the stated desire nor the action implies donating to charities. Even you have admitted to this in the past.
I thought your claim might be based on the replies to your HELP! I want to do good thread. In that case, I thought I should point out that no equivalent “HELP! I want to do bad” or “HELP! I want to be completely benign” threads were ever created.
One could easily verify your claim by making such posts, and counting the replies. If one wanted to be really accurate about it, one could also go through the post history of the respondants, to be sure they’re not just being contentious, but truly ill-intentioned.
Extending the survey to the population at large would be similarly trivial. One could tell people on the street about a one-question survey, and if they decide to participate, alternate between: “Do you want to save/improve the world?” and “Do you want to harm the world?”
(This might be a fun exercise for the Toronto LW group, now that I think about it. Both to find the answer out for ourselves, and to get people thinking about the subject. Because thinking often precedes action. Or at least it should… )
A Google search for “using world quality as a free variable when optimizing for other purposes” yields… 0 results.
Though a search for “I don’t care about the world” yields a respectable 58,600,000. If -cup is introduced in the search query, the result drops by 10,000,000 or so.
In somewhat related news, I’m starting to doubt my own heuristic.