When I put on my donor hat, that is, when I imagine my becoming a significant donor, I tend in my imaginings and my plans to avoid anything that interferes with deriving warm fuzzies from the process of donating or planning to donate—because when we say “warm fuzzies” we are referring to (a kind of) pleasure, and pleasure is the “gasoline” of the mind: it is certainly not the only thing that can “power” or “motivate” mental work, but it is IMHO the best fuel for work that needs to be sustained over a span of years. (And, yes, that is probably an argument against “Purchasing Fuzzies and Utilons Separately” in some situations although I did not have time today to re-read that article to see whether it can be reconciled with this comment.)
And, yeah, seeing money I donate (or simply imagining the money I will donate in the future) go to improving the lives of people who are probably not much better than me, but who spent a big fraction of their time and energy competing for status within the singularitarian community, jobs and donations with the likes of me, is one of the things that would probably interfere with my deriving warm fuzzies from the whole years-long and hopefully decades-long long process of my becoming a significant donor.
Certainly I am not alone in this aspect of my psychology. Now I will grant that a philanthropist can get a lot of donations by ignoring people who react like I do (namely, react with resentment) to high levels of prestige-seeking and impression management. But I tend to believe that to a philanthropist, donors are like customers are to a consultancy or investors are to a fast-growing company: the quality of the thinking of one’s donors (and in particular whether those donors got into donating out of a subconscious desire to affiliate with high-status folk) will tend to have a large effect on one’s sanity and ability to reach one’s goals.
And let me stress again that at present the level of prestige-seeking and impression management by insiders at SI is low enough not to cause my resentment to build up to levels that would cause me to start thinking about directing my donations elsewhere. But that might change if enough people with Holden-Karnofsky levels of credibility and influence exhort SI to increase their levels of prestige-seeking and impression management.
ADDED. The thing that is wrong with this comment and probably some of my other comments in this thread is that some of my remarks seem to be addressed to people seeking donations. If I were a better communicator, I would have made it clear that the target audience for my comments is donors. I am not worried about persuading people seeking donations because I am confident that if there were some barrier to my donating to, e.g., SI and FHI, I will manage to find other ways of purchasing utilons of comparable or almost-comparable efficiency.
One last thing I would say to donors and wanna-be donors is that this tendency towards resentment I have been describing in this comment (and the resulting inhibitory effect on my motivation) can be considered a feature (rather than a bug) of my personal psychology. In particular, it can be viewed as a form of pre-commitment to penalize (by withholding something I would otherwise be tempted to supply) certain behaviors which not only cause people like me to be overlooked and outcompeted for attractive jobs in charities, but also make the charitable world function less efficiently than it other would through a dynamic similar to a tragedy of the commons.
And this tendency I detect in myself really does feel like a precommitment in the sense that (as is true of almost all human precommitments that operate through the emotions) I have no recollection or impression of having chosen it and in the sense that it would probably require the expenditure of a very great deal of mental resources on my part to act contrary to it.
Your explanation is more or less what I’d gathered from your earlier statement. It makes sense.
The org. that can convince passionate supporters of the cause to work for $ and donate may be different from the one that can get the most mainstream donations.
This conversation suggests a good habit to practice: being open about how and why I feel about something real, or would about something hypothetical. Since it’s hard to separate internal openness from public openness, even though it’s really the internal practice I want, maybe airing real motivations/desires more often (as you just did) is better than my conservative semi-stoic default.
When I put on my donor hat, that is, when I imagine my becoming a significant donor, I tend in my imaginings and my plans to avoid anything that interferes with deriving warm fuzzies from the process of donating or planning to donate—because when we say “warm fuzzies” we are referring to (a kind of) pleasure, and pleasure is the “gasoline” of the mind: it is certainly not the only thing that can “power” or “motivate” mental work, but it is IMHO the best fuel for work that needs to be sustained over a span of years. (And, yes, that is probably an argument against “Purchasing Fuzzies and Utilons Separately” in some situations although I did not have time today to re-read that article to see whether it can be reconciled with this comment.)
And, yeah, seeing money I donate (or simply imagining the money I will donate in the future) go to improving the lives of people who are probably not much better than me, but who spent a big fraction of their time and energy competing for status within the singularitarian community, jobs and donations with the likes of me, is one of the things that would probably interfere with my deriving warm fuzzies from the whole years-long and hopefully decades-long long process of my becoming a significant donor.
Certainly I am not alone in this aspect of my psychology. Now I will grant that a philanthropist can get a lot of donations by ignoring people who react like I do (namely, react with resentment) to high levels of prestige-seeking and impression management. But I tend to believe that to a philanthropist, donors are like customers are to a consultancy or investors are to a fast-growing company: the quality of the thinking of one’s donors (and in particular whether those donors got into donating out of a subconscious desire to affiliate with high-status folk) will tend to have a large effect on one’s sanity and ability to reach one’s goals.
And let me stress again that at present the level of prestige-seeking and impression management by insiders at SI is low enough not to cause my resentment to build up to levels that would cause me to start thinking about directing my donations elsewhere. But that might change if enough people with Holden-Karnofsky levels of credibility and influence exhort SI to increase their levels of prestige-seeking and impression management.
ADDED. The thing that is wrong with this comment and probably some of my other comments in this thread is that some of my remarks seem to be addressed to people seeking donations. If I were a better communicator, I would have made it clear that the target audience for my comments is donors. I am not worried about persuading people seeking donations because I am confident that if there were some barrier to my donating to, e.g., SI and FHI, I will manage to find other ways of purchasing utilons of comparable or almost-comparable efficiency.
One last thing I would say to donors and wanna-be donors is that this tendency towards resentment I have been describing in this comment (and the resulting inhibitory effect on my motivation) can be considered a feature (rather than a bug) of my personal psychology. In particular, it can be viewed as a form of pre-commitment to penalize (by withholding something I would otherwise be tempted to supply) certain behaviors which not only cause people like me to be overlooked and outcompeted for attractive jobs in charities, but also make the charitable world function less efficiently than it other would through a dynamic similar to a tragedy of the commons.
And this tendency I detect in myself really does feel like a precommitment in the sense that (as is true of almost all human precommitments that operate through the emotions) I have no recollection or impression of having chosen it and in the sense that it would probably require the expenditure of a very great deal of mental resources on my part to act contrary to it.
Wow. Coordination is hard ;)
Your explanation is more or less what I’d gathered from your earlier statement. It makes sense.
The org. that can convince passionate supporters of the cause to work for $ and donate may be different from the one that can get the most mainstream donations.
It is possible that this is just a phase I am going through, but if it is, it is a long phase.
This conversation suggests a good habit to practice: being open about how and why I feel about something real, or would about something hypothetical. Since it’s hard to separate internal openness from public openness, even though it’s really the internal practice I want, maybe airing real motivations/desires more often (as you just did) is better than my conservative semi-stoic default.