I’m not sure this is true. Doesn’t MIRI publish its total receipts? Don’t most organizations that ask for donations?
Total receipts may not be representative. There’s a difference between MIRI getting funding from one person with a lot of money and large numbers of people donating small(er) amounts. I was hoping this post to serve as a reminder that many of us on LW do care about donating, rather than a few rather rich people like Peter Thiel or Jaan Tallinn.
Also I suspect scope neglect can be at play—it’s difficult to, on an emotional level, tell the difference between $1 million worth of donations, or ten million, or a hundred million. Seeing each donation that led to adding up to that amount may help.
Seeing each donation that led to adding up to that amount may help.
Yes, because it would show how many people donated. Number of people = power, at least in our brains.
The difference between one person donating 100 000, or one person donating 50 000 and ten people donating 5 000 is that in the latter case, your team has eleven people. It is the same amount of money, but emotionally it feels better. Probably it has other advantages (such as smaller dependence on whims of a single person), but maybe I am just rationalizing here.
Total receipts may not be representative. There’s a difference between MIRI getting funding from one person with a lot of money and large numbers of people donating small(er) amounts. I was hoping this post to serve as a reminder that many of us on LW do care about donating, rather than a few rather rich people like Peter Thiel or Jaan Tallinn.
Also I suspect scope neglect can be at play—it’s difficult to, on an emotional level, tell the difference between $1 million worth of donations, or ten million, or a hundred million. Seeing each donation that led to adding up to that amount may help.
Yes, because it would show how many people donated. Number of people = power, at least in our brains.
The difference between one person donating 100 000, or one person donating 50 000 and ten people donating 5 000 is that in the latter case, your team has eleven people. It is the same amount of money, but emotionally it feels better. Probably it has other advantages (such as smaller dependence on whims of a single person), but maybe I am just rationalizing here.