I didnât find this paragraph to be off or particularly misleading fwiw.
It is roughly true (minus what they would have donated otherwise) when thinking in terms of counterfactual impact, and assuming you are an average pledger and would be inspiring other average pledgers (no expected difference in income or attrition, or effectiveness of charities donated to).
I think the caveats are sufficiently obvious that the reader could be expected to understand them on their own. For instance if you convince someone to donate $1000 it seems obvious that they should get most of the credit, but it still might be true that you were counterfactual in their decision.
Agree. Rejecting the argument because it double counts feels a bit like the âshouldnât you be attributing some/âmost of the impact to the people that did the direct workâ objection to estimates of how many lives your money can save.
I think everyone knows itâs a counterfactual claim contingent on you actually being a major influence on that person and not karmic accounting that assigns yourself all the credit
That said, itâs still a dubious approximation to say it âdoublesâ your impact as it really depends on relative donation sizes of the people you persuade. That means it can be much more than double if you earn less than the people that listen to you, of course!
I didnât find this paragraph to be off or particularly misleading fwiw.
It is roughly true (minus what they would have donated otherwise) when thinking in terms of counterfactual impact, and assuming you are an average pledger and would be inspiring other average pledgers (no expected difference in income or attrition, or effectiveness of charities donated to).
I think the caveats are sufficiently obvious that the reader could be expected to understand them on their own. For instance if you convince someone to donate $1000 it seems obvious that they should get most of the credit, but it still might be true that you were counterfactual in their decision.
Agree. Rejecting the argument because it double counts feels a bit like the âshouldnât you be attributing some/âmost of the impact to the people that did the direct workâ objection to estimates of how many lives your money can save.
I think everyone knows itâs a counterfactual claim contingent on you actually being a major influence on that person and not karmic accounting that assigns yourself all the credit
That said, itâs still a dubious approximation to say it âdoublesâ your impact as it really depends on relative donation sizes of the people you persuade. That means it can be much more than double if you earn less than the people that listen to you, of course!