Risk aversion is not unselfish. It implies a willingness to trade away expected good for greater assurance that you were responsible for good. I wouldn’t fault you for that choice, but it’s not effective altruism in the egoless sense.
I’d like to reemphasize that if you donate to multiple effective charities you are doing awesome stuff. Switching from average charities to a diversified portfolio of effective charities can make you hugely more effective—it’s like turning yourself into 10 people. Switching from a diversified portfolio of effective charities to the single most effective charity might make you maybe a few percentage points more effective. That’s not nearly as important as doing whatever makes your brain enthusiastic about effective altruism. *The point I’m made in the parent comment is not of practical concern.
*I am making up these numbers—don’t quote me on this.
Not generally. It’s usually just there to counteract overconfidence bias. You want something that will never fail instead of something that will fail 1% of the time, because something that you think will never fail will only fail about 1% of the time, and something that you think will fail 1% of the time will fail around 10% of the time. It’s much more than the apparent 1% advantage.
If you donate all your money to Deworm the World because you want a lot of good to still get done if SCI turns out to be a fraud, you’re not being selfish. If you donate half you money because you personally want to be doing the good even if one of them is a fraud, then you’re selfish.
I alluded to this with the sentence:
That makes sense if you care about how many lives you save, but not if you care about how many people die.
Risk aversion is not unselfish. It implies a willingness to trade away expected good for greater assurance that you were responsible for good. I wouldn’t fault you for that choice, but it’s not effective altruism in the egoless sense.
I’d like to reemphasize that if you donate to multiple effective charities you are doing awesome stuff. Switching from average charities to a diversified portfolio of effective charities can make you hugely more effective—it’s like turning yourself into 10 people. Switching from a diversified portfolio of effective charities to the single most effective charity might make you maybe a few percentage points more effective. That’s not nearly as important as doing whatever makes your brain enthusiastic about effective altruism. *The point I’m made in the parent comment is not of practical concern.
*I am making up these numbers—don’t quote me on this.
Not generally. It’s usually just there to counteract overconfidence bias. You want something that will never fail instead of something that will fail 1% of the time, because something that you think will never fail will only fail about 1% of the time, and something that you think will fail 1% of the time will fail around 10% of the time. It’s much more than the apparent 1% advantage.
If you donate all your money to Deworm the World because you want a lot of good to still get done if SCI turns out to be a fraud, you’re not being selfish. If you donate half you money because you personally want to be doing the good even if one of them is a fraud, then you’re selfish.
I alluded to this with the sentence: