While donating may make people happier, is anything known about the donating habits of people who exhibit above-average happiness (controlling, of course, for how difficult it is to measure happiness)?
It would be interesting to see if it goes both ways.
I understand the SI needs money and I understand a lot of discussion about this has ensued elsewhere, but I’m still skeptical that I can have the most impact with my money by donating to the SI, when I could be funding malaria nets, for instance.
Thanks. You’re right I’ve been thinking about it wrong, I’ll have to reconsider how I approach philanthropy. It’s valuable to donate to research anyway, since research is what comes up with things like “malaria nets”.
8 lives per dollar is an awful, awful lot, but I’ll definitely check out those resources. If the 8 lives per dollar claim is true, I’ll be spending my money on SI.
Yeah, I intend to donate a good portion to Village Reach after I do some more thorough research on charity. I don’t have that much of an income yet, anyway.
Lol, good point. What I meant to say was “I probably intend to donate a good portion to Village Reach, if I don’t encounter anything in my research to change my mind.” It’s still probably a biased approach, but I can’t pretend I don’t already have a base point for my donations.
What if the problem were phrased like this?
Set Four:
1.) Save 24000 lives, with certainty
2.) 0.0001% chance of saving 27 billion lives, 99.9999% chance of saving no lives.
If you think “don’t pay off Pascal’s Muggers” is a rule to follow in rule utilitarianism, then you think it’s a rule that maximizes utility, and therefore you’ve already found a reason why paying off Pascal’s Muggers is bad utility before even considering rule utilitarianism. Therefore, I don’t think “it’s a rule in my rule utilitarianism to not do this” is your true rejection to Pascal’s Mugging.
For the purposes of this obscure hypothetical, let’s say the total human population is arbitrarily 40 billion.
This is very close to how I feel about it—I’m really tempted to take Set Four, Choice 1 on the assumption that “events with odds of one in a million don’t happen to me” too, but I’m not sure if that’s just pure scope insensitivity or an actually rational strategy.
You’re right, but I was looking at the question in terms of the (bad) assumption of linear utility for money.
You’re right and I think I touched on that a bit—people seem to see a larger difference between 100% and 99% than between 67% and 66%. Maybe I didn’t touch on that enough, though.
Could you elaborate? I don’t see how it solves the paradox. What percentage chance would you need to reasonably approximate a “real” 97%?
Is this really the only motivator, though? What stated percentage would you need it to say to think you’ve got a “real” 50%?
I’m reminded of Yudkowsky’s Not For the Sake of Happiness Alone.
It’s a lot of pages, but it looks like just the resource I was looking for. Thanks.
I’m worried by the amount of psychological trickery you have to do in order to make a donation. If you thought that making a large donation to SIAI was the right thing to do, why do you need to trick yourself?
Maybe it’s a sign of my very weak understanding of human psychology and introspection (the kind of things I came to Less Wrong to learn), but this still is intuitively raising alarm bells to me.
But still, I’m glad you made a donation, even if you didn’t donate with the mindset that I like. You still deserve some glowy feelings …even if I don’t think charity normatively should be about glowy feelings. I’m reminded of “Purchase Fuzzies and Uitlons Separately” here.
I’m a fellow teenager (though I’m 19, so not for long) and I also share your experiences. I hope I can still keep up with mental flexibility when I’m older.
I myself have just joined Less Wrong and am working to figure out what gets upvoted and what doesn’t, so I feel a sense of camaraderie with you.
But still, new guy to newish guy, here’s why I was unimpressed with your post: you didn’t actually offer anything you’ve done to overcome akrasia. You just outlined that akrasia is a problem, and something that can be overcome, something that LW already knows well. I like how you drew an analogy to your own life, but I’m not really honestly interested in what your specific struggles are unless you’re either (a) asking for help, or (b) telling me what you’ve done to overcome them.
I also agree with others here that you’ve plugged in a lot of LW “buzzwords” (Tsuyoku Naritai, Litany of Tarski, wanting to save the world, etc.), which are all in themselves admirable ideas, but in this post, only loosely connected to your main idea. I doubt you did this intentionally, but it looks like you’re just name-dropping terms to gain favor. Including them all is doing too much at once.
I think that you should complete your journey a little bit, and when you actually have some solutions to contribute, post them. I’ll look forward to it.
Also, don’t live by karma—I think it’s a good idea to sacrifice karma in order to learn about what works. Ensuing discussions in the spiral of downvotes can still tell you what you’ve done wrong, allowing you to fix yourself to a point where you can have good karma. (I also don’t think karma is a good terminal value anyway.)
I hope this isn’t harsh and helps a little bit. I don’t have that much other advice to give (being new myself), but I do hope you do well in your future postings.
I’m a 19 year old college student (rising sophomore) who is studying political science and economics. Throughout my entire life that I can remember, I’ve been extensively interested in how people work, why they do the things they do, and how these things could be done better. This seems to make me a natural fit for the content of Less Wrong.
I’m personally involved in Political Science research, specifically dealing with the political psychology of how people acquire opinions, use them to make decisions, and update them with new information. Since encountering Less Wrong, I’ve learned that this is another thing that could be done better—the whole idea of rationality.
I’ve also been studying philosophy on my own time and writing on my blog (greatplay.net), which has borrowed heavily from the Less Wrong sequences. I’ve personally looked into philosophy of religion (ended up atheist), philosophy of language (Less Wrong seems the best for this), and philosophy of ethics (less wrong seems muddled here).
I personally value both curiosity and compassion, making your life better and seeking to spread this knowledge to others. I value many, if not all of the Twelve Virtues (to the degree that I understand them), because I want to know reality as it really is.
I’ve been a long time lurker of Less Wrong, and I’m still intimidated about joining the community—there seems to be a lot of smart people here and I’m slightly worried I won’t measure up. But the only way to truly become stronger yourself is to fight stronger people, so I need to get out of my little pond and converse with the heavyweights.