This is a heart-wrenching series of anecdotes. But I don’t see how it connects to LessWrong’s purpose, ‘improving human reasoning and decision-making.’ I’m actually really confused by why it was so heavily upvoted. If anything, it seems counterproductive; an important early theme of LessWrong is how thoroughly the human brain is hijacked by cute pictures and heart-wrenching anecdotes into making bad decisions about charitable spending[1]. I wonder whether any readers of this essay were moved to spend money on homelessness fuzzies?
I can understand how Mr. Keating could have been moved to write this post. But this is currently the 27th-most-upvoted post for the 2024 review, and (as Grinch-ish as I feel saying so) I really don’t think it ought to be. I can get heart-wrenching anecdotes lots of places, but there are very few places that help me push back against getting misled by them.
This is a heart-wrenching series of anecdotes. But I don’t see how it connects to LessWrong’s purpose, ‘improving human reasoning and decision-making.’ I’m actually really confused by why it was so heavily upvoted. If anything, it seems counterproductive; an important early theme of LessWrong is how thoroughly the human brain is hijacked by cute pictures and heart-wrenching anecdotes into making bad decisions about charitable spending[1]. I wonder whether any readers of this essay were moved to spend money on homelessness fuzzies?
I can understand how Mr. Keating could have been moved to write this post. But this is currently the 27th-most-upvoted post for the 2024 review, and (as Grinch-ish as I feel saying so) I really don’t think it ought to be. I can get heart-wrenching anecdotes lots of places, but there are very few places that help me push back against getting misled by them.
Eg: Scope Insensitivity; Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately; Money: The Unit of Caring.