I strongly disagree with the idea of impulse donations in this thread. Rigorous evaluation of charitable effectiveness, even where the aims are well-defined (e.g. saving lives or life-years over a short local time-horizon) is very difficult work: read about the adventures of GiveWell, a nonprofit that analyzes charities for effectiveness in various such categories. Making donations based on these short comments would be like investing in a startup company based on a 2 minute elevator pitch with no other data.
I would advise giving to pay for research into charitable effectiveness before any specific charity, e.g. GiveWell or the MIT Poverty Action Lab, but neither has a broad enough mandate (yet, GiveWell is interested in going into evaluation of the existential risk category in addition to their current domains) to evaluate the highest return domains.
I never give to any charity, all information I have makes me strongly believe that increasing per capita income is the best long term solution to most of the problems. I believe there are a few exceptions, polio eradication effort comes to mind, that can give important and lasting results for little money, but I have seen very little research supporting any of them.
So GiveWell gets my vote, even if not my money—no rationalist should be giving any money to any charity that doesn’t publish its effectiveness data.
“I never give to any charity, all information I have makes me strongly believe that increasing per capita income is the best long term solution to most of the problems.”
There’s no logical connection between these. If you think that working at your job and maximizing your income/productivity is your best personal contribution, there’s still the question of what to spend your disposable income on.
I strongly disagree with the idea of impulse donations in this thread. Rigorous evaluation of charitable effectiveness, even where the aims are well-defined (e.g. saving lives or life-years over a short local time-horizon) is very difficult work: read about the adventures of GiveWell, a nonprofit that analyzes charities for effectiveness in various such categories. Making donations based on these short comments would be like investing in a startup company based on a 2 minute elevator pitch with no other data.
I would advise giving to pay for research into charitable effectiveness before any specific charity, e.g. GiveWell or the MIT Poverty Action Lab, but neither has a broad enough mandate (yet, GiveWell is interested in going into evaluation of the existential risk category in addition to their current domains) to evaluate the highest return domains.
Watch out for Scope Insensitivity!
I never give to any charity, all information I have makes me strongly believe that increasing per capita income is the best long term solution to most of the problems. I believe there are a few exceptions, polio eradication effort comes to mind, that can give important and lasting results for little money, but I have seen very little research supporting any of them.
So GiveWell gets my vote, even if not my money—no rationalist should be giving any money to any charity that doesn’t publish its effectiveness data.
taw,
“I never give to any charity, all information I have makes me strongly believe that increasing per capita income is the best long term solution to most of the problems.”
There’s no logical connection between these. If you think that working at your job and maximizing your income/productivity is your best personal contribution, there’s still the question of what to spend your disposable income on.