I think others have suggested this, but have you thought about putting your 10K GBP into a donor lottery or otherwise saving up to getting a larger donation size? I’d like to see research address that question (e.g., is a 100K donation >10x better than a 10K donation?).
I’ll note that the team should still allocate its time to answering the object level question, so that if they win the lottery they know where they’ll give the money.
It’s hard to recommend this over playing the lottery upfront, so that you actually know whether your research will be directly used or not.
If you think it’s important that the research is done even if the money is not used, would you recommend just doing the research project even with merely a hypothetical £10k that isn’t actually donated at the end?
(1) A 10% chance of donating $100K should be roughly as motivating to a risk-neutral EA as a 100% chance of donating $10K (not taking into account arguments that the risk-neutral utility of money may be nonlinear).
(2) Research around whether to donate $100K or $10K (or how to donate $100K conditional on winning the lottery) would be useful.
“A 10% chance of donating $100K should be roughly as motivating to a risk-neutral EA as a 100% chance of donating $10K (not taking into account arguments that the risk-neutral utility of money may be nonlinear).”—that’s not how human psychology works.
I think others have suggested this, but have you thought about putting your 10K GBP into a donor lottery or otherwise saving up to getting a larger donation size? I’d like to see research address that question (e.g., is a 100K donation >10x better than a 10K donation?).
I’ll note that the team should still allocate its time to answering the object level question, so that if they win the lottery they know where they’ll give the money.
I definitely agree. But it might be good to see research around whether a donor lottery is worthwhile and how to donate $100K.
It’s hard to recommend this over playing the lottery upfront, so that you actually know whether your research will be directly used or not.
If you think it’s important that the research is done even if the money is not used, would you recommend just doing the research project even with merely a hypothetical £10k that isn’t actually donated at the end?
That would defeat the purpose of the project. I think that the purpose is to spur research and the money is there for extra encouragement.
I don’t think that’s true for two reasons:
(1) A 10% chance of donating $100K should be roughly as motivating to a risk-neutral EA as a 100% chance of donating $10K (not taking into account arguments that the risk-neutral utility of money may be nonlinear).
(2) Research around whether to donate $100K or $10K (or how to donate $100K conditional on winning the lottery) would be useful.
“A 10% chance of donating $100K should be roughly as motivating to a risk-neutral EA as a 100% chance of donating $10K (not taking into account arguments that the risk-neutral utility of money may be nonlinear).”—that’s not how human psychology works.
How easy is it for an EA to overcome that?
Also, if there’s a motivation—impact trade-off, how can we navigate that?