I realize this may sound ridiculous, but, serious question: Is it good or bad for a marginal person to take the GWWC pledge, if you take into account the effects on the human population, wild animal welfare, and x-risk? I’m interested in your conclusions on this since you’ve mentioned it in several other posts.
My best guess is that it is good for GWWC to increase the number of pledgers. Basically, because I think some of the donations are roughly as likely to be harmful as beneficial, and others are beneficial. I do not seem to see any donations as robustly harmful.
However, since only 13.3 % of the donations go to the area of creating a better future, assuming donations going to improving human and animal welfare have a 50 % chance of being beneficial/​harmful, 2 out of 5 (as (1 − 13.3 %)/​2 = 43.4 %) pledgers have net harmful donations. I have very little confidence in this claim.
I realize this may sound ridiculous, but, serious question: Is it good or bad for a marginal person to take the GWWC pledge, if you take into account the effects on the human population, wild animal welfare, and x-risk? I’m interested in your conclusions on this since you’ve mentioned it in several other posts.
Hi Robi,
My best guess is that it is good for GWWC to increase the number of pledgers. Basically, because I think some of the donations are roughly as likely to be harmful as beneficial, and others are beneficial. I do not seem to see any donations as robustly harmful.
However, since only 13.3 % of the donations go to the area of creating a better future, assuming donations going to improving human and animal welfare have a 50 % chance of being beneficial/​harmful, 2 out of 5 (as (1 − 13.3 %)/​2 = 43.4 %) pledgers have net harmful donations. I have very little confidence in this claim.