The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world? • Hacker News Board

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#61

Post by rayiner » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:09 AM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #48

rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What indication is there that living longer would serve the greater good? People living longer = fewer births assuming stable population, and a greater percentage of life spent in older years. Even if you can make those older years healthy, you'll never be able to capture the uncomplicated wonder and joy of childhood and adolescence. You'd literally be trading a teenager's first crush for an 80-year old's third marri…

I'm just going to have to guess that you aren't very old. I'm only 47, but I have to tell you that at least for me life just keeps getting better every year. I wouldn't trade this year for another year of my teens. I wouldn't trade this year for 10 more years in my teens. Gradually losing health is unfortunate. I have to watch what I eat and be careful with my lifestyle due to chronic illness. My vision has degraded…

I'm 31, with a toddler. I can't compare anything I do with the joy she gets out of the most mundane things. The first time she tasted chocolate? Blows me going to Alinea out of the water.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#62

Post by Retra » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:15 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #45

vacri wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not work on Wall Street and donate 90% of her income instead? Hrm... I seem to recall large numbers of protestors recently whose general point was that working on Wall St was in itself, not a morally positive or neutral proposition. Is it morally defensible to screw people over to help different people? The other problems with positions like yours is that you get a lot of juice out of conflating a particular ac…

Still, the point is clear. This was a terrible waste of a Stanford education. Hundreds of thousands in public, private and family funds and now she's in a low-paying feel-good job that anybody could do.

That's not a waste of education. There's no such thing as a waste of education. Maybe her experiences at Stanford reinforced her desire to do this, or strengthened her ability to make sacrifices.

There's more to education than making money. For one, if she didn't have that education, you wouldn't be talking about her.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#63

Post by Retra » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:18 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #34

reasonattlm wrote: post #7

Clearly the SENS Research Foundation, as a 501c3 charity that gives you the 80/20 win for a good expectation value for your dollars to do the most good in speeding up progress towards ending age-related disease. If you want to do better than the SRF at assigning dollars to speeding up progress towards ending age-related disease, you're going to have to spend some years reading research and making connections. (I wish…

What indication is there that living longer would serve the greater good? People living longer = fewer births assuming stable population, and a greater percentage of life spent in older years. Even if you can make those older years healthy, you'll never be able to capture the uncomplicated wonder and joy of childhood and adolescence. You'd literally be trading a teenager's first crush for an 80-year old's third marri…

Uh, that's the whole point of caring about the greater good: to help people live longer. If you're having some sort of existential crisis wherein you honestly can't see any reason people should live, then take some time to reassess your priorities in depth.

Because you're questioning the only real moral principle humanity has.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#64

Post by rancar2 » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:22 AM UTC

snowai wrote: post #58

theycallhimtom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing no one posted it because there was a whole section in the original article on GiveWell.

Also http://www.agorafund.org Allows you to give to basket of charities selected based on principles from effective altruism.

Just an FYI that the "administration fee is 5%. Additional PayPal processing fees may apply." http://www.agorafund.org/terms-of-service/

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#65

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:40 AM UTC

Charity is about the donor as much as the recipient. Skip the pseudo-scientific horseshit and do something that matters to you.

Personally, I tutor a couple of kids in math every once in awhile, donate to a couple of religious organizations, a zoo, a local social services org, and a few museums. I find it fulfilling. One of my best friends is devoted to a particular state park -- he does trail cleanup something like 18 weekends a year.

Going down some philosophical rabbit hole where your life is essentially a dick measuring contest to figure out who is most selfless doesn't really do it for me.

Skip the measurement and do something real.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#66

Post by danielharan » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:55 AM UTC

reasonattlm wrote: post #40

kijin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very important. The chance of being able to eliminate nearly all age-related diseases in the foreseeable future is very small. The chance of any single donation making a difference there is also fairly small, whereas other donations go more directly toward saving lives. If I had to choose between contributing 0.1% of the cost of a project that has a 1% chance of saving 100,000 lives a day (effectively saving…

The trouble is you'll never know what the actually numbers were until after the fact - the best you can do is make some educated investments at an 80/20 point. So either you learn yourself or you rely on consensus and authority, etc. You give to a middleman charity that has people who spend the time or do the work based on a theory of what should be done. You're relying on their expertise, and the expertise of those…

I don't think you know the numbers even after the fact. Knowing what worked doesn't tell you what probabilities you should have assigned.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#67

Post by kwantam » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 3:56 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #65

Charity is about the donor as much as the recipient. Skip the pseudo-scientific horseshit and do something that matters to you. Personally, I tutor a couple of kids in math every once in awhile, donate to a couple of religious organizations, a zoo, a local social services org, and a few museums. I find it fulfilling. One of my best friends is devoted to a particular state park -- he does trail cleanup something like…

It seems reasonable that if a person wants to donate to charity, that person might also want to expend some mental energy to optimize the way in which she does so.

For example, if I know that I can afford to give only $5 to charity, it does not seem particularly like a "dick measuring contest" to hope that, with a little thought, I might be able to make that $5 go further. Imagine that I can either give the $5 to a charity with an 80% overhead, or I can give the $5 to a charity with a 20% overhead. All else equal (i.e., assuming the two charities do approximately the same good with their non-overhead dollars, by whatever metric I wish to apply, including some abstract sense of personal fulfillment), my $5 seems self-evidently better spent on the 20%-overhead than on the 80%-overhead charity.

Consider the zoo for which you're a donor; if you could spend a few minutes on some activity that would double the amount of money you could give to the zoo each year without otherwise costing you any money, would you not do it? In other words: do you actually care about the outcomes of your charitable work, or are you just doing it because there is some minimum level of action at which you feel good, irrespective of the outcome?

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#68

Post by danieltillett » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 4:03 AM UTC

The greatest good will be accomplished by developing synthetic labour (AI). This will generate so much profit that even a tiny taxation rate (0.001%) will allow everyone to live as billionaires do now and allow us to solve all other problems caused by (relative) poverty.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#69

Post by heimatau » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 4:06 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #65

Charity is about the donor as much as the recipient. Skip the pseudo-scientific horseshit and do something that matters to you. Personally, I tutor a couple of kids in math every once in awhile, donate to a couple of religious organizations, a zoo, a local social services org, and a few museums. I find it fulfilling. One of my best friends is devoted to a particular state park -- he does trail cleanup something like…

I agree with your overall frustration but metrics are important. How much does that 'something' matter to you? How often is it repeated? Is the problem, that matters to you, getting solved effectively or is the problem getting worse?

For example, if I want to feed the homeless and I volunteer to do that but the problem is metrically getting worse, there is a greater conflict at large. The house is burning and you're only throwing a handful of water at the problem.

Context and effectiveness are important.

Re: The Greatest Good: What is the best charitable cause in the world?

#70

Post by oska » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 4:09 AM UTC

Providing women access to contraception and pregnancy termination services is what I personally identify as one of the best charitable causes.

Helping women prevent the birth of unwanted children who will, on average, lead worse lives than wanted children but who will still put additional strain on the world's environment seems a very clear case of a worthy cause to me.

An example charity in this area is Marie Stopes International [1].

[1] http://www.mariestopes.org