This is an extremely rich guy who isn’t donating any of his money.
FWIW, I totally don’t consider “donating” a necessary component of taking effective altruistic action. Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations, and most of the good in the world seems achieved by for-profit companies.
I don’t have a particularly strong take on Bryan Johnson, but using “donations” as a proxy seems pretty bad to me.
Hmm, I think having the mindset behind effective altruistic action basically requires you to feel the force of donating. It’s often correct to not donate because of some combination of expecting {better information/deconfusion, better donation opportunities, excellent non-donation spending opportunities, high returns, etc.} in the future. But if you haven’t really considered large donations or don’t get that donating can be great, I fail to imagine how you could be taking effective altruistic action. (For extremely rich people.) (Related indicator of non-EA-ness: not strongly considering causes outside the one you’re most passionate about.)
“Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations”
This is a big discussion but I would be interested to see you justify this. I would say many of the biggest GHD achievements and much important work is driven by not for profit organizations like charities and government (global vaccine alliance, university research institutions etc) but obviously it’s a complicated discussion.
Obviously a market economy drives much of it, but I consider this more the water we swim in rather than the capitalist system doing the good itself.
I would be interested to hear the for profit businesses which you think are counterfactually doing the most good on the margins
I take a very longtermist and technology-development focused view on things, so the GHD achievements weigh a lot less in my calculus.
The vast majority of world-changing technology was developed or distributed through for-profit companies. My sense is nonprofits are also more likely to cause harm than for-profits (for reasons that would require its own essay to go into, but are related to their lack of feedback loops).
On a separate claim, I find it really hard to discount the rough period since ~1800 where a huge amount of new technological development took place in academic or other non-profit contexts (including militaries). When you add pre-production research to that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a single world-changing technology since the enlightenment that doesn’t owe a lot of its existence to non-profit research. Am I misunderstanding your claim?
Academia pre the mid-20th-century was a for-profit enterprise. It did not receive substantial government grants and indeed was often very tightly intertwined with the development of industry (much more so than today).
Indeed, the degree to which modern academia is operating on a grant basis and has adopted more of the trappings of the nonprofit space is one of the primary factors in my model of its modern dysfunctions.
Separately, I think the contribution of militaries to industrial and scientific development is overrated, though that also would require a whole essay to go into.
I disagree-voted because the latter sounds like a very extraordinary claim. I know you don’t have the time to go into an essay on this, but do you mind sketching the rough logic?
“Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations, and most of the good in the world seems achieved by for-profit companies.”
I disagree but even I did agree, per dollar of investment, I think the best charities far outpeform the best for-profit companies in terms of social impact, and we can do a reasonable job of identifying the best charities, such that donating a lot of money to these charities should be seen as a necessary component of being EA-aligned if you’re rich.
FWIW, I totally don’t consider “donating” a necessary component of taking effective altruistic action. Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations, and most of the good in the world seems achieved by for-profit companies.
I don’t have a particularly strong take on Bryan Johnson, but using “donations” as a proxy seems pretty bad to me.
Hmm, I think having the mindset behind effective altruistic action basically requires you to feel the force of donating. It’s often correct to not donate because of some combination of expecting {better information/deconfusion, better donation opportunities, excellent non-donation spending opportunities, high returns, etc.} in the future. But if you haven’t really considered large donations or don’t get that donating can be great, I fail to imagine how you could be taking effective altruistic action. (For extremely rich people.) (Related indicator of non-EA-ness: not strongly considering causes outside the one you’re most passionate about.)
(I don’t have context on Bryan Johnson.)
“Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations”
This is a big discussion but I would be interested to see you justify this. I would say many of the biggest GHD achievements and much important work is driven by not for profit organizations like charities and government (global vaccine alliance, university research institutions etc) but obviously it’s a complicated discussion.
Obviously a market economy drives much of it, but I consider this more the water we swim in rather than the capitalist system doing the good itself.
I would be interested to hear the for profit businesses which you think are counterfactually doing the most good on the margins
I take a very longtermist and technology-development focused view on things, so the GHD achievements weigh a lot less in my calculus.
The vast majority of world-changing technology was developed or distributed through for-profit companies. My sense is nonprofits are also more likely to cause harm than for-profits (for reasons that would require its own essay to go into, but are related to their lack of feedback loops).
On a separate claim, I find it really hard to discount the rough period since ~1800 where a huge amount of new technological development took place in academic or other non-profit contexts (including militaries). When you add pre-production research to that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a single world-changing technology since the enlightenment that doesn’t owe a lot of its existence to non-profit research. Am I misunderstanding your claim?
Academia pre the mid-20th-century was a for-profit enterprise. It did not receive substantial government grants and indeed was often very tightly intertwined with the development of industry (much more so than today).
Indeed, the degree to which modern academia is operating on a grant basis and has adopted more of the trappings of the nonprofit space is one of the primary factors in my model of its modern dysfunctions.
Separately, I think the contribution of militaries to industrial and scientific development is overrated, though that also would require a whole essay to go into.
I disagree-voted because the latter sounds like a very extraordinary claim. I know you don’t have the time to go into an essay on this, but do you mind sketching the rough logic?
“Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations, and most of the good in the world seems achieved by for-profit companies.”
I disagree but even I did agree, per dollar of investment, I think the best charities far outpeform the best for-profit companies in terms of social impact, and we can do a reasonable job of identifying the best charities, such that donating a lot of money to these charities should be seen as a necessary component of being EA-aligned if you’re rich.