Executive summary: The author reflects on their donation process, discussing the trade-offs of deferring to expert opinions, the ethics of criticizing organizations, challenges in determining donation amounts, and considerations around cooperation and diversification in effective giving.
Key points:
Deference trade-offs: The author consciously deferred less to expert consensus to encourage independent reasoning, even while acknowledging that big funders may have private information influencing their decisions.
Criticism norms: The author struggled with balancing honesty and kindness when criticizing organizations, ultimately prioritizing transparency over excessive politeness while avoiding personal attacks.
Donation sizing challenges: The author faced uncertainties in determining how much of their donor-advised fund (DAF) to donate, considering factors like AI timelines, personal savings, and potential future earnings but ultimately made a decision based on intuition.
Diversification as a trade: The idea of redistributing donations to individuals who chose direct work over high-paying jobs was explored but abandoned due to difficulty in defining fair criteria.
Cooperation with SFF: The author sought to align their giving with the Survival and Flourishing Fund’s (SFF) allocation process but, after being declined participation, concluded they could adjust their donations without concern for conflicting with SFF.
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Executive summary: The author reflects on their donation process, discussing the trade-offs of deferring to expert opinions, the ethics of criticizing organizations, challenges in determining donation amounts, and considerations around cooperation and diversification in effective giving.
Key points:
Deference trade-offs: The author consciously deferred less to expert consensus to encourage independent reasoning, even while acknowledging that big funders may have private information influencing their decisions.
Criticism norms: The author struggled with balancing honesty and kindness when criticizing organizations, ultimately prioritizing transparency over excessive politeness while avoiding personal attacks.
Donation sizing challenges: The author faced uncertainties in determining how much of their donor-advised fund (DAF) to donate, considering factors like AI timelines, personal savings, and potential future earnings but ultimately made a decision based on intuition.
Diversification as a trade: The idea of redistributing donations to individuals who chose direct work over high-paying jobs was explored but abandoned due to difficulty in defining fair criteria.
Cooperation with SFF: The author sought to align their giving with the Survival and Flourishing Fund’s (SFF) allocation process but, after being declined participation, concluded they could adjust their donations without concern for conflicting with SFF.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.