I don’t think Scott would endorse this post today. His attitude now is that most people should commit to donate at least 10%, and then feel okay about doing whatever they like with the rest of their income.
This post does not advocate fanatical altruism. It’s to show how we don’t think in terms of opportunity costs by default, and to show that something is going wrong with our reasoning if our attitudes depend on how salient those opportunity costs are.
I assume you intend this in the direction of “opportunity costs aren’t sufficiently salient, so we don’t take them into account as much as we should”. Which seems true. But I also think part of the difference is that super-duper salient opportunity costs make normal spending feel pathologically unacceptable, particularly to altruistically-minded folks.
I agree with above that Scott seems to favor framings of limited altruism, after which you can spend your money on whatever frivolous things you feel like.
I don’t think Scott would endorse this post today. His attitude now is that most people should commit to donate at least 10%, and then feel okay about doing whatever they like with the rest of their income.
This post does not advocate fanatical altruism. It’s to show how we don’t think in terms of opportunity costs by default, and to show that something is going wrong with our reasoning if our attitudes depend on how salient those opportunity costs are.
I assume you intend this in the direction of “opportunity costs aren’t sufficiently salient, so we don’t take them into account as much as we should”. Which seems true. But I also think part of the difference is that super-duper salient opportunity costs make normal spending feel pathologically unacceptable, particularly to altruistically-minded folks.
I agree with above that Scott seems to favor framings of limited altruism, after which you can spend your money on whatever frivolous things you feel like.