what would happen to your money if you don’t make the bet
what would happen to your and your counterparty’s money if you do and you win
but (1) if you don’t place the bet then presumably your counterparty will do something with that money (which might have value or disvalue from your perspective) and (2) if you place the bet and lose then all the money goes to your counterparty’s chosen charity (which almost certainly will have value or disvalue from your perspective).
Unless your expectation is that your counterparty’s chosen charity has negligible effectiveness (for good or bad) relative to yours, it seems to me that this calculation is unlikely to be the one you actually want to do.
2. My impression (which could be very wrong) is that making a Long Bet is usually at least as much about raising publicity as it is about directing money where you’d like it to go. It’s a thing pairs of people do when they want to get everyone talking about the issue about which they disagree. If I’m right about this, then in many cases the final disbursement of money is likely to matter less than the consciousness-raising.
Unless your expectation is that your counterparty’s chosen charity has negligible effectiveness (for good or bad) relative to yours, it seems to me that this calculation is unlikely to be the one you actually want to do.
Great point! I think this is often the case for bets between people who do or don’t consider effectiveness in choosing charities, or where people have sufficiently strong value disagreements that each thinks of the other’s charity as neutral, but you’re right that this is unusual.
1. The calculation here seems to consider only
what would happen to your money if you don’t make the bet
what would happen to your and your counterparty’s money if you do and you win
but (1) if you don’t place the bet then presumably your counterparty will do something with that money (which might have value or disvalue from your perspective) and (2) if you place the bet and lose then all the money goes to your counterparty’s chosen charity (which almost certainly will have value or disvalue from your perspective).
Unless your expectation is that your counterparty’s chosen charity has negligible effectiveness (for good or bad) relative to yours, it seems to me that this calculation is unlikely to be the one you actually want to do.
2. My impression (which could be very wrong) is that making a Long Bet is usually at least as much about raising publicity as it is about directing money where you’d like it to go. It’s a thing pairs of people do when they want to get everyone talking about the issue about which they disagree. If I’m right about this, then in many cases the final disbursement of money is likely to matter less than the consciousness-raising.
Great point! I think this is often the case for bets between people who do or don’t consider effectiveness in choosing charities, or where people have sufficiently strong value disagreements that each thinks of the other’s charity as neutral, but you’re right that this is unusual.