Writing a letter, ringing a politician or giving blood are not actions that maximise your altruistic preferences!
Sure, but they beat the heck out of endless navel-gazing on an ethereal blog. Compared to reading your 3,000th LW comment, giving blood might be a strictly dominant strategy—it beats “read another comment” in almost all of the possible worlds in which we might find ourselves.
How many years should we spend optimizing our decision trees before we begin to devote some fraction of our time and energy to action? Why?
Sure, but they beat the heck out of endless navel-gazing on an ethereal blog. Compared to reading your 3,000th LW comment, giving blood might be a strictly dominant strategy—it beats “read another comment” in almost all of the possible worlds in which we might find ourselves.
How many years should we spend optimizing our decision trees before we begin to devote some fraction of our time and energy to action? Why?
If all someone does is post here, that does sound sad.
I doubt that’s actually the case. People just aren’t posting about everything else they do.
30 seconds would seem to be sufficient in this case.