A rational altruism story with a disappointing ending:
I recently moved across the country. I was originally planning to road-trip, but when I took my car to a mechanic in preparation for this, I discovered that it had a (possibly) cracked cylinder and could break down on such a trip.
I realized that this was a good opportunity for altruism, so with a week before my newly scheduled flight I tried to find a highly rated GiveWell charity to which I could donate my car, netting them the money they could obtain at auction without too much effort from me. I wouldn’t have tried this if not for the idea of optimizing altruistic effectiveness.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the only top-rated charity which had a headquarters nearby kept me waiting for a couple days, then told me they didn’t take donations. At that point (2 days before I left), my default remaining option was essentially a warm fuzzy donation (since a friend had donated them a car before, I knew it was a quick and reliable process).
So Less Wrong did improve the expected value of my altruism, but not the actual value in this branch. (Had I done better with respect to akrasia, of course, I could have found something much better.)
P.S. If you’re wondering why I didn’t check into donating it to SIAI, there was an additional criterion I wanted to satisfy. The car was my grandmother’s and was given to me by my parents; thus I felt obligated by my parents’ preferences as to who received its value. They’d be on board for GiveWell-style optimization, but disappointed if I donated it to a ‘weird’ cause.
A rational altruism story with a disappointing ending:
I recently moved across the country. I was originally planning to road-trip, but when I took my car to a mechanic in preparation for this, I discovered that it had a (possibly) cracked cylinder and could break down on such a trip.
I realized that this was a good opportunity for altruism, so with a week before my newly scheduled flight I tried to find a highly rated GiveWell charity to which I could donate my car, netting them the money they could obtain at auction without too much effort from me. I wouldn’t have tried this if not for the idea of optimizing altruistic effectiveness.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the only top-rated charity which had a headquarters nearby kept me waiting for a couple days, then told me they didn’t take donations. At that point (2 days before I left), my default remaining option was essentially a warm fuzzy donation (since a friend had donated them a car before, I knew it was a quick and reliable process).
So Less Wrong did improve the expected value of my altruism, but not the actual value in this branch. (Had I done better with respect to akrasia, of course, I could have found something much better.)
P.S. If you’re wondering why I didn’t check into donating it to SIAI, there was an additional criterion I wanted to satisfy. The car was my grandmother’s and was given to me by my parents; thus I felt obligated by my parents’ preferences as to who received its value. They’d be on board for GiveWell-style optimization, but disappointed if I donated it to a ‘weird’ cause.