Is anything publicly disclosed about the benefactor?
Looking at past lotteries, it seems that much or most of the block size did not fill . . . meaning that the winner may be allocating mostly money that would have counterfactually been allocated by the benefactor, not by people making smaller donations.
Thus, it seems that in deciding whether to enter, I should heavily weight a comparison of how effectively I think I could allocate (with extra research and resources) versus how effectively I think the benefactor could allocate.
I don’t know anything about the benefactor beyond that they are in a position to stake up to 2.6 MM—which makes me think a good bit of time/resources would have gone into their decision about where to counterfactually donate the benefactor’s share of each block. In contrast, the logic looks a lot more compelling if I’m predominately allocating monies from smaller donors who wouldn’t have counterfactually spent much time / resources on allocation.
Previously the benefactor has been Carl Shulman (and I’d guess he is again, but this is pure speculation). From 2019-2020 donor lottery page:
Carl Shulman will provide backstop funding for the lotteries from his discretionary funds held at the Centre for Effective Altruism.
The funds mentioned are likely these $5m from March 2018:
The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $5 million to the Centre for Effective Altruism USA (CEA) to create and seed a new discretionary fund that will be administered by Carl Shulman
If you win you can always decide to ask GWWC to defer to the benefactor for the allocation (if they would be interested in doing so), or to the people or funds that you think would best allocate the winnings.
The benefactor chose to participate in the lottery, if they thought it would be worse for the world they wouldn’t have, so allocating resources to something other than the lottery because you think their allocation is better than yours is counterintuitive to me.
In expectation, you are not “taking money” from the benefactor by playing, since the expected value is the same as donating directly. In expected value, the benefactor gets the same money that they put in. To say it in a different way: the amount of money that was allocated by participants instead of the benefactor is the same as the amount of money that was allocated by the benefactor instead of the participants, so who is a better allocator seems independent from whether the lottery is a good idea.
(I don’t know who the benefactor is, I assume it’s a large fund or an individual large donor for whom $2.6M is not a large amount of money)
Is anything publicly disclosed about the benefactor?
Looking at past lotteries, it seems that much or most of the block size did not fill . . . meaning that the winner may be allocating mostly money that would have counterfactually been allocated by the benefactor, not by people making smaller donations.
Thus, it seems that in deciding whether to enter, I should heavily weight a comparison of how effectively I think I could allocate (with extra research and resources) versus how effectively I think the benefactor could allocate.
I don’t know anything about the benefactor beyond that they are in a position to stake up to 2.6 MM—which makes me think a good bit of time/resources would have gone into their decision about where to counterfactually donate the benefactor’s share of each block. In contrast, the logic looks a lot more compelling if I’m predominately allocating monies from smaller donors who wouldn’t have counterfactually spent much time / resources on allocation.
Previously the benefactor has been Carl Shulman (and I’d guess he is again, but this is pure speculation). From 2019-2020 donor lottery page:
The funds mentioned are likely these $5m from March 2018:
I disagree:
If you win you can always decide to ask GWWC to defer to the benefactor for the allocation (if they would be interested in doing so), or to the people or funds that you think would best allocate the winnings.
The benefactor chose to participate in the lottery, if they thought it would be worse for the world they wouldn’t have, so allocating resources to something other than the lottery because you think their allocation is better than yours is counterintuitive to me.
In expectation, you are not “taking money” from the benefactor by playing, since the expected value is the same as donating directly. In expected value, the benefactor gets the same money that they put in.
To say it in a different way: the amount of money that was allocated by participants instead of the benefactor is the same as the amount of money that was allocated by the benefactor instead of the participants, so who is a better allocator seems independent from whether the lottery is a good idea.
(I don’t know who the benefactor is, I assume it’s a large fund or an individual large donor for whom $2.6M is not a large amount of money)