My father related to me a TV news story long ago about an Italian man who won the lottery. As the news was about to interview him, a man pushed him aside and announced "He's a good Communist Party member, and is going to give it to the Party!" The recipient in turn shoved him aside and said "No I'm not, I'm not a Communist anymore!"
I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
251–260 of 262 posts
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the documented ways that people tend to change when they suddenly have much more money than the people around them Please share said documents. (Genuinely)
The study that comes immediately to mind is Paul K Piff's Monopoly experiment. In it, one participant of each game was given twice as much starting money, twice as much Go money, and twice as many dice as the others. Consistently the "affluent" player would become more aggressive and less polite as the game went on. Other experiments conducted by Piff indicate a lack of empathy associated with increasing wealth. High…
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Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#253This would never fly in Canada, where lottery winners must present themselves in person for wins, with publicity and all. Full names are given to the press, complete with home town and smiling face. Some winners have tried to skirt or directly challenge those regulations, to no avail. A winner cannot disappear behind an LLC or other apparatus. Frankly I'd be greatly worried about collecting a huge win from a Canadian…
Could you just change your name & address before you claim your prize?
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
In his book, "The Life You Can Save" (free to download as an audiobook or ebook from thelifeyoucansave.org) he does talk at length about the question of "how much is enough? how much is too much? what obligation do you have to your family and community vs helping distant strangers?" In Chapter 10 of that book, "A Realistic Standard" he brings it all home. He has no problem recognizing that the philosophically perfect…
> Do you still feel he is a hypocrite? Unequivocally yes, because the bar he set was (apparently) saying that living in comfort beyond hunger and pain (or whatever the comment I responded to said) is "wrong". Random numbers don't change the fact that he's still living quite comfortably, which by his own standard is wrong. If he admitted to changing his views, or acknowledged his hypocrisy, then I'd think highly of hi…
The comment you replied to originally has this quote:
"if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior."
You claim what Singer said was:
"living in comfort beyond hunger and pain is wrong"
You did "doing nothing is wrong" turn into living better than abject poverty is wrong?
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one is extraordinarily wealthy and never uses any of their resources to help others, that is rather fucked up in my opinion. And I will even take a pretty broad view of “helping others”. But one should have put some real thought into it and sincerely believe in whatever approach they are taking. Of course, you need to take of your own basic human needs as well. Which is sometimes easier said than done, even with i…
Why? What is the consequences of having a resource and not spending it?
It's just my opinion of how people should strive to live. I also would wager that the person sharing the resource will get great joy out of seeing others benefit from the sharing. A little bit of thoughtful sharing goes a long way, for both the giver and the receiver.
Why do I feel this way? That's a complicated question that I don't fully have the answer to. It probably has something to do with how humans are a social animal that has evolved to depend on each other for survival.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#256This would never fly in Canada, where lottery winners must present themselves in person for wins, with publicity and all. Full names are given to the press, complete with home town and smiling face. Some winners have tried to skirt or directly challenge those regulations, to no avail. A winner cannot disappear behind an LLC or other apparatus. Frankly I'd be greatly worried about collecting a huge win from a Canadian…
That would suck.
In China when you win the lottery, while they don't reveal your name, you still need to collect the prize/cheque in person and pose for publicity shots. This has lead to the amusing situation of most winners turning up in various masks or even full sports event mascot style costumes to collect the winnings.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#257Other than not donating any of it, he made the right call. The fact that the winner still has the money after 10 years is evidence he took the correct course.
I have worked in the nonprofit industry for 10 years. People with money have no moral obligation to give me money. The way the organizations I work with spend the money is about what you would expect for a business with no real economic incentive to be efficient or solve the advertised problem. Lots of politics, lots of waste, lots of egos. I will never steward your life savings to improve the world as well as you wo…
> I will never steward your life savings to improve the world as well as you would have stewarded it yourself
You're too humble. Did you say you have a job working with people who have giant egos and politicking? If I ever won it big, my idea of philanthropy is to give random people on the street $100 for no reason, except I have agoraphobia and can't leave the house. Is that really the best use of $50mm if I won the lottery? I don't have the attention span to do better than that, plus the effective altruism people I've met in person are all douchebags.
Do you really think you'd not do a better job than just anybody that reads your comment? especially having seen some of the waste up front
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
As other commenter mentioned, EA is a useful framework for thinking about giving (what is my dollar really buying and is that a step change in something like foundational research). But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. Find small groups of people doing speculative stuff and fund them for exploratory research.
> But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. I have to partially disagree with this, because EA organizations do select causes with a decent amount of "room" for more funding. It hardly matters that they're getting billions, your money will still easily contribute 100× or plausibly 1000× to society-wide benefit compared to just spending it on yourself. Of course some people migh…
This is a common misconception. The only reason e.g. Against Malaria has a 'funding gap' is because the EA funds don't want to fill it out of fear of 'crowding out' individual donors which is a sketchy proposition.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
As other commenter mentioned, EA is a useful framework for thinking about giving (what is my dollar really buying and is that a step change in something like foundational research). But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. Find small groups of people doing speculative stuff and fund them for exploratory research.
> But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. I have to partially disagree with this, because EA organizations do select causes with a decent amount of "room" for more funding. It hardly matters that they're getting billions, your money will still easily contribute 100× or plausibly 1000× to society-wide benefit compared to just spending it on yourself. Of course some people migh…
You can also review OpenPhil's grant database and see that they don't really fund moon shots. They fund shovel ready, track record approved low-variance plays mostly.
Re: I won over $55M in the lottery, but didn’t tell my friends or family
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But don't give to the mainstream EA causes, they already are sitting on billions. I have to partially disagree with this, because EA organizations do select causes with a decent amount of "room" for more funding. It hardly matters that they're getting billions, your money will still easily contribute 100× or plausibly 1000× to society-wide benefit compared to just spending it on yourself. Of course some people migh…
This is a common misconception. The only reason e.g. Against Malaria has a 'funding gap' is because the EA funds don't want to fill it out of fear of 'crowding out' individual donors which is a sketchy proposition.
This may have been true for some time in the past, but it seems that new funding opportunities/causes have cropped up which are competitive with AMF, so that the EA funds are once again constrained by the overall amount of funding.