That is to say, if I find out that saving lives (or some other easy metric of good) is cheaper than I thought, that would encourage me to devote a greater proportion of income to said cause. The cheaper the cost of good, the more urgent it becomes to me that the good is done.
This sort of makes sense to me, but it also doesn’t. My view is that even if causes were way worse than I currently think they are, they’ll still be much more important from an utilitarian perspective than spending on myself. Therefore, I do just construct a charity budget out of all the money I’m willing to give up. I can get the sense of feeling like it is even more urgent that you give up resources, but it already was tremendously urgent in the first place...
But, hey, as long as you’re doing altruistic stuff, I’m not going to begrudge you much!
~
So it’s not enough to simply compare charities in a relative sense to find the best. I think the magnitude of good per cost for the most efficient charity, in an absolute sense, is also pretty important for individual donors making decisions about whether to allocate resources to altruism or to themselves.
I agree magnitude is important, for more than just a PR perspective. But it’s possible to compare magnitudes without using figures like “$3400.47”. I think people go a lot less funny in the head when thinking about “approximately ten times better”.
Though I think I agree with Carl Shulman that producing figures like “$3400.47” is important for calibration, I don’t think our goal should be to equate the lowest estimated figure with the highest impact cause or even automatically assume that a lower estimated figure is a better cause (not that Shulman would say that, of course).
I’m still a student and am only planning how i might spend money when i have it (it seems like a good idea to have a plan for this sort of thing). Thus far I’ve been looking at both effective altruism and financial independence (mostly frugality+low risk investment) blogs as possible options. It’s quite possible that once money is actually in my hands and I’m actually in the position of making the trade-off, I’ll see the appeal of the “charity budget” method...or I might discover that my preferences are less or more selfish than I originally thought, etc.
Right now though...suppose the rate was 5$ a life. If I was going to go out and buy a 10$ sandwich instead of feeding myself via cheaper means for 5$, i’d be weighing that sandwich against one human life. I would be a lot more frugal and devote a greater portion of my income to charity, if reality was like that. I’d be relatively horrified by frivolous spending.
On the other extreme, if it costed a billion dollars to save a single life, I could spend all my days being frugal and giving to charity and probably wouldn’t significantly help even one person. I’d fulfill more of my preferences by just enjoying myself and not worrying about altruism beyond the interpersonal level.
More realistically, If it costs $2000 to save a life, buying a sandwich at the opportunity cost of saving <1% of a life … it’s still sort of selfish to choose the sandwich, but I’m simply not that good of a person that I wouldn’t sometimes trade 1/100th of a strangers life for a small bit of luxury. But I’d certainly think about getting, say, a smaller house if it meant I could save an additional 1-2 people a year.
Of course, the “charity budget” model is simple and makes sense on a practical level when the good / dollar rate remains relatively constant—as I suppose it generally does. But I wouldn’t actually know how large to make my charity budget, unless I had a sense of how much good I could potentially do.
This sort of makes sense to me, but it also doesn’t. My view is that even if causes were way worse than I currently think they are, they’ll still be much more important from an utilitarian perspective than spending on myself. Therefore, I do just construct a charity budget out of all the money I’m willing to give up. I can get the sense of feeling like it is even more urgent that you give up resources, but it already was tremendously urgent in the first place...
But, hey, as long as you’re doing altruistic stuff, I’m not going to begrudge you much!
~
I agree magnitude is important, for more than just a PR perspective. But it’s possible to compare magnitudes without using figures like “$3400.47”. I think people go a lot less funny in the head when thinking about “approximately ten times better”.
Though I think I agree with Carl Shulman that producing figures like “$3400.47” is important for calibration, I don’t think our goal should be to equate the lowest estimated figure with the highest impact cause or even automatically assume that a lower estimated figure is a better cause (not that Shulman would say that, of course).
I’m still a student and am only planning how i might spend money when i have it (it seems like a good idea to have a plan for this sort of thing). Thus far I’ve been looking at both effective altruism and financial independence (mostly frugality+low risk investment) blogs as possible options. It’s quite possible that once money is actually in my hands and I’m actually in the position of making the trade-off, I’ll see the appeal of the “charity budget” method...or I might discover that my preferences are less or more selfish than I originally thought, etc.
Right now though...suppose the rate was 5$ a life. If I was going to go out and buy a 10$ sandwich instead of feeding myself via cheaper means for 5$, i’d be weighing that sandwich against one human life. I would be a lot more frugal and devote a greater portion of my income to charity, if reality was like that. I’d be relatively horrified by frivolous spending.
On the other extreme, if it costed a billion dollars to save a single life, I could spend all my days being frugal and giving to charity and probably wouldn’t significantly help even one person. I’d fulfill more of my preferences by just enjoying myself and not worrying about altruism beyond the interpersonal level.
More realistically, If it costs $2000 to save a life, buying a sandwich at the opportunity cost of saving <1% of a life … it’s still sort of selfish to choose the sandwich, but I’m simply not that good of a person that I wouldn’t sometimes trade 1/100th of a strangers life for a small bit of luxury. But I’d certainly think about getting, say, a smaller house if it meant I could save an additional 1-2 people a year.
Of course, the “charity budget” model is simple and makes sense on a practical level when the good / dollar rate remains relatively constant—as I suppose it generally does. But I wouldn’t actually know how large to make my charity budget, unless I had a sense of how much good I could potentially do.
I’m also a student about to graduate and have looked a lot at both EA and financial independence. I think you’re thinking about things correctly.