I once did a birthday fundraiser that allowed people to choose between three targets: MIRI, GiveDirectly, and Mercy for Animals. I mostly wanted MIRI to get the money, but was concerned about the weirdness angle. So I said that people were free to indicate which of the three they wanted to donate to, and that any donations which didn’t explicitly name a target would go to MIRI.
The final donation breakdown was
MIRI: $420,34 GiveDirectly: $52,33 Mercy for Animals: $27,33
A bunch of the donors included relatively “mundane” friends of mine, rather than committed MIRI sympathizers and supporters. Given that, I’m inclined to interpret these results as suggesting that most people, if they were inclined to give to my fundraiser at all, didn’t really care about the weirdness of the default recipient enough to even bother specifying an alternate recipient.
I once did a birthday fundraiser that allowed people to choose between three targets: MIRI, GiveDirectly, and Mercy for Animals. I mostly wanted MIRI to get the money, but was concerned about the weirdness angle. So I said that people were free to indicate which of the three they wanted to donate to, and that any donations which didn’t explicitly name a target would go to MIRI.
The final donation breakdown was
MIRI: $420,34
GiveDirectly: $52,33
Mercy for Animals: $27,33
A bunch of the donors included relatively “mundane” friends of mine, rather than committed MIRI sympathizers and supporters. Given that, I’m inclined to interpret these results as suggesting that most people, if they were inclined to give to my fundraiser at all, didn’t really care about the weirdness of the default recipient enough to even bother specifying an alternate recipient.