But surely you wouldn’t be donating enough to, say, fighting existential risks so that the marginal utility of the next dollar spent there drops below that of the marginal utility spent on cryonics. Not that I’m suggesting that fighting existential risks necessarily has a higher marginal utility than cryonics. Rather, you probably don’t have enough money to change the relative rankings, so you should donate to the cause with the highest marginal utility. Not both.
The exception may be donating enough to make sure YOU are reanimated after you die (I don’t know what your utility function looks like), but in that case you aren’t really donating.
Surely you should be asking about the marginal utility of money spent on eating out before you ask about money spent on cryonics. What is this strange mental accounting where money spent on cryonics is immediately available to be redirected to existential risks, but money spent on burritos or French restaurants or an extra 100sqft in an apartment is not?
I have a theory about this, actually. How it works is: people get paid at the beginning of the month, and then pay their essential bills, food, rent, electricity, insurance, Internet, etc. What happens next is, people have a certain standard of living that they think they’re supposed to have, based somewhat on how much money they make, but much more on what all their friends are spending money on. They then go out and buy stuff like fancy dinners and a house in the suburbs and what not, and this spending is not mentally available as something that can be cut back on, because they don’t see it as “spending”, so much as “things I need to do to maintain my standard of living”; people see it as a much larger burden to write a single check for $2,000 than to spend $7 every day on coffee, because they come out of different mental pools. Anything left over after that gets put into cryonics, or existential risk, or savings, or investments, etc. That’s why you see so many more millionaire plumbers than millionaire attorneys, because the attorney has a higher standard of living, and so has less money left over to save.
“A man does not ‘by nature’ wish to earn more and more, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and earn as much is necessary for that purpose… & a people only work because and so long as they are poor.”
--Max Weber, Protestant Ethic
That’s why you see so many more millionaire plumbers than millionaire attorneys, because the attorney has a higher standard of living, and so has less money left over to save.
That’s why you see so many more millionaire plumbers than millionaire attorneys, because the attorney has a higher standard of living, and so has less money left over to save.
We do?
I was going to comment on that, but I don’t see any millionaires at all, so I thought I shouldn’t.
It cites statistics, and actually says that there are X millionaire lawyers, and X+Y plumbers? It isn’t just giving a lot of anecdotes?
I would be very surprised to hear that, because it implies that one is substantially more likely to become a millionaire by plumbing than by lawyering, since there are ~500,000 plumbers in the US and >1.1million lawyers.
It cites statistics, and actually says that there are X millionaire lawyers, and X+Y plumbers? It isn’t just giving a lot of anecdotes?
According to wikipedia it (1) generally cites statistics and (2) says that doctors, lawyers, and accountants save a much lower proportion of money than other occupations. google books says that it doesn’t mention plumbers at all.
I would guess that pretty much all lawyers permanently employed at BIGLAW are millionaires and pretty much no other lawyers are; but that’s probably enough to beat plumbers. I think the other lawyers have a similar income distribution to plumbers.
That seems natural enough to me, it’s the net income of the very limited part of you that identifies as “you” because it can sometimes talk and think about abstractions.
On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, I sometimes worry that we’re getting a little too cynical around these Hansonian parts.
In any case, cryonics is a one-time expenditure for that part of you. It looms large in the imagination in advance, but afterward the expenditure almost instantly fades into the background of the monthly rent, less salient than burritos.
The deliberative part of “you” that thinks about cryonics may not be the same part that chooses restaurants, but doesn’t it play a role in choosing apartments?
Agreed, but the deliberative part may actually think that the larger and better located apartment contributes more to global utility, at least if you are the head of the Singularity Institute and you just spent the last 6 years living with a wife in 200 square feet.
If you have a sufficiently selfish utility function, it may make sense to spend that extra money on french restaurants and the bigger apartment. But otherwise, yes, the lowest hanging fruit are spending less money on things like going out or new electronic toys.
It occurs to me to suggest that donating to both allows you to hedge your bets; one or the other might end up not producing results at all.
Which seems to be a similar impulse to the one causing guess 70% blue and 30% red, though the situation is different enough that it might make sense here.
But surely you wouldn’t be donating enough to, say, fighting existential risks so that the marginal utility of the next dollar spent there drops below that of the marginal utility spent on cryonics. Not that I’m suggesting that fighting existential risks necessarily has a higher marginal utility than cryonics. Rather, you probably don’t have enough money to change the relative rankings, so you should donate to the cause with the highest marginal utility. Not both.
The exception may be donating enough to make sure YOU are reanimated after you die (I don’t know what your utility function looks like), but in that case you aren’t really donating.
Surely you should be asking about the marginal utility of money spent on eating out before you ask about money spent on cryonics. What is this strange mental accounting where money spent on cryonics is immediately available to be redirected to existential risks, but money spent on burritos or French restaurants or an extra 100sqft in an apartment is not?
I have a theory about this, actually. How it works is: people get paid at the beginning of the month, and then pay their essential bills, food, rent, electricity, insurance, Internet, etc. What happens next is, people have a certain standard of living that they think they’re supposed to have, based somewhat on how much money they make, but much more on what all their friends are spending money on. They then go out and buy stuff like fancy dinners and a house in the suburbs and what not, and this spending is not mentally available as something that can be cut back on, because they don’t see it as “spending”, so much as “things I need to do to maintain my standard of living”; people see it as a much larger burden to write a single check for $2,000 than to spend $7 every day on coffee, because they come out of different mental pools. Anything left over after that gets put into cryonics, or existential risk, or savings, or investments, etc. That’s why you see so many more millionaire plumbers than millionaire attorneys, because the attorney has a higher standard of living, and so has less money left over to save.
--Max Weber, Protestant Ethic
We do?
I was going to comment on that, but I don’t see any millionaires at all, so I thought I shouldn’t.
The main point of “the Millionaire Next Door” is that you might not notice millionaires.
See The Millionaire Next Door, http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-Stanley/dp/0671015206 .
It cites statistics, and actually says that there are X millionaire lawyers, and X+Y plumbers? It isn’t just giving a lot of anecdotes?
I would be very surprised to hear that, because it implies that one is substantially more likely to become a millionaire by plumbing than by lawyering, since there are ~500,000 plumbers in the US and >1.1million lawyers.
According to wikipedia it (1) generally cites statistics and (2) says that doctors, lawyers, and accountants save a much lower proportion of money than other occupations. google books says that it doesn’t mention plumbers at all.
I would guess that pretty much all lawyers permanently employed at BIGLAW are millionaires and pretty much no other lawyers are; but that’s probably enough to beat plumbers. I think the other lawyers have a similar income distribution to plumbers.
That seems natural enough to me, it’s the net income of the very limited part of you that identifies as “you” because it can sometimes talk and think about abstractions.
On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, I sometimes worry that we’re getting a little too cynical around these Hansonian parts.
In any case, cryonics is a one-time expenditure for that part of you. It looms large in the imagination in advance, but afterward the expenditure almost instantly fades into the background of the monthly rent, less salient than burritos.
Cynicism is boring. Build a map that matches the territory. That map looks terribly Hansonian but doesn’t have its ‘cynical’ bit set to ‘yes’.
The deliberative part of “you” that thinks about cryonics may not be the same part that chooses restaurants, but doesn’t it play a role in choosing apartments?
Agreed, but the deliberative part may actually think that the larger and better located apartment contributes more to global utility, at least if you are the head of the Singularity Institute and you just spent the last 6 years living with a wife in 200 square feet.
If you have a sufficiently selfish utility function, it may make sense to spend that extra money on french restaurants and the bigger apartment. But otherwise, yes, the lowest hanging fruit are spending less money on things like going out or new electronic toys.
It occurs to me to suggest that donating to both allows you to hedge your bets; one or the other might end up not producing results at all.
Which seems to be a similar impulse to the one causing guess 70% blue and 30% red, though the situation is different enough that it might make sense here.