What are the implications of Robin Hanson’s idea of being a charity angel for effective altruism(more details on charity angels here)? For the purposes of answering this question, don’t limit yourself to thinking about being a charity angel to only intellectuals, as Robin Hanson primed for discussion in his original post. Please think broadly about what being a charity angel could be for whatever effective altruistic endeavor you might have in mind, and whether it would be worthwhile.
I believe the most relevant previous thought is one concern raised by Holden Karnofsky on the original post.
The points above are assuming that “charity angel” activity is to be undertaken in a fairly small-scale, irregular way. Visible, regular rewards for good works may work well, especially if they were predictable enough to allow people to borrow the needed resources against the hope of these rewards. Therefore, if you saw an opportunity to promote this idea in a big way and turn it into something visible and regular, I’d be more supportive of that; I think it is a poor idea for scattered individuals trying to accomplish as much good as possible with 3-6 figure donations.
Effective altruism doesn’t have a great enough stake in any charity market for it to be able to make a signal that wouldn’t be drowned out by the noise the rest of any philanthropy charity makes. That is, effective altruism doesn’t seem to have enough capital of any sort to incentivize effectiveness in charity on a massive scale, that wouldn’t be drowned out by all the other grants, and prizes, out there. Nobody is going to care about the ‘effective altruism prize’ when attention is being drawn to all the other ones.
However, existing effective altruist organizations don’t necessarily believe that the biggest impact must be made by making the biggest media splash in a non-profit sector. Effective altruist organizations such as 80,000 Hours, the Global Priorities Project, the MIRI, and Leverage Research are trying to produce new research that could be applied, and leveraged, for greater magnitude later. If an organization needs a proposed solution to a problem they’re tackling, but cannot figure it out for themselves, and are unable to acquire the talent who could do it for them, perhaps they could offer a prize incentivizing someone to produce responses.
I know that 80,000 Hours, and the CFAR, each have hundreds of members, and the membership of each of those organizations is poised to grow in the future. Those might be good channels for advertising a charity prize, then, especially because they’ll be directly broadcasted to audiences that are already part of effective altruism.
What are the implications of Robin Hanson’s idea of being a charity angel for effective altruism(more details on charity angels here)? For the purposes of answering this question, don’t limit yourself to thinking about being a charity angel to only intellectuals, as Robin Hanson primed for discussion in his original post. Please think broadly about what being a charity angel could be for whatever effective altruistic endeavor you might have in mind, and whether it would be worthwhile.
I believe the most relevant previous thought is one concern raised by Holden Karnofsky on the original post.
Effective altruism doesn’t have a great enough stake in any charity market for it to be able to make a signal that wouldn’t be drowned out by the noise the rest of any philanthropy charity makes. That is, effective altruism doesn’t seem to have enough capital of any sort to incentivize effectiveness in charity on a massive scale, that wouldn’t be drowned out by all the other grants, and prizes, out there. Nobody is going to care about the ‘effective altruism prize’ when attention is being drawn to all the other ones.
However, existing effective altruist organizations don’t necessarily believe that the biggest impact must be made by making the biggest media splash in a non-profit sector. Effective altruist organizations such as 80,000 Hours, the Global Priorities Project, the MIRI, and Leverage Research are trying to produce new research that could be applied, and leveraged, for greater magnitude later. If an organization needs a proposed solution to a problem they’re tackling, but cannot figure it out for themselves, and are unable to acquire the talent who could do it for them, perhaps they could offer a prize incentivizing someone to produce responses.
I know that 80,000 Hours, and the CFAR, each have hundreds of members, and the membership of each of those organizations is poised to grow in the future. Those might be good channels for advertising a charity prize, then, especially because they’ll be directly broadcasted to audiences that are already part of effective altruism.
Any other thoughts on this?