Yep that all seems believable to me. I also noted the age thing as possible explanation (c):
Giving Pledge signatories are older, and have had more time to accumulate charges.
I wouldnât be that surprised to learn that giving pledge signatories have a lower rate of misconduct than some reference class, so I donât want to make a strong claim here; Iâm mostly just noting that âaltruistic people donât commit crimesâ doesnât seem like a likely hypothesis.
I agree with your meta point (even though I half expected to read the opposite, in which case, Iâd have had a point to make about the list being curated)
One thing I will say is that the list probably isnât at all representative of âaltruistic peopleâ or âpeople who join EA groupsâ. Not only is it a set of extremely wealthy people, but thereâs no actual obligation of anyone on the list to follow through with their pledge or do anything genuinely altruistic at all. Iâm sure many are sincere about it, probably including the likes of Branson with actual convictions to their names, but for others it may just be relatively straightforward form of reputation laundering without the expense of actually giving the money away!
Fair point about the company age, and yeah I agree that this list is not representative of âpeople who join EA groupsâ (for many reasons), but my intuition is that these people actually are relatively altruistic by commonsense morality standards. Anil Agarwal stuck out to me as arguably the most egregious person on this list, and he pledged 75% of his wealth to charity. Milken is maybe number two, and heâs given > $1B. And of course SBF is probably high in the list of egregiousness, and seemingly was sincere in giving lots of money to charity. (Though note that SBF wasnât in my data set because the giving pledge kicked him out.)
I would be interested in someone filtering this list by âpeople who have actually given >$Xâ and seeing if that changes the results though.
Yep that all seems believable to me. I also noted the age thing as possible explanation (c):
I wouldnât be that surprised to learn that giving pledge signatories have a lower rate of misconduct than some reference class, so I donât want to make a strong claim here; Iâm mostly just noting that âaltruistic people donât commit crimesâ doesnât seem like a likely hypothesis.
>Iâm mostly just noting that âaltruistic people donât commit crimesâ doesnât seem like a likely hypothesis.
I think your data is evidence in favor of a far more interesting conclusion.
The companies are even younger than the founders!
I agree with your meta point (even though I half expected to read the opposite, in which case, Iâd have had a point to make about the list being curated)
One thing I will say is that the list probably isnât at all representative of âaltruistic peopleâ or âpeople who join EA groupsâ. Not only is it a set of extremely wealthy people, but thereâs no actual obligation of anyone on the list to follow through with their pledge or do anything genuinely altruistic at all. Iâm sure many are sincere about it, probably including the likes of Branson with actual convictions to their names, but for others it may just be relatively straightforward form of reputation laundering without the expense of actually giving the money away!
Fair point about the company age, and yeah I agree that this list is not representative of âpeople who join EA groupsâ (for many reasons), but my intuition is that these people actually are relatively altruistic by commonsense morality standards. Anil Agarwal stuck out to me as arguably the most egregious person on this list, and he pledged 75% of his wealth to charity. Milken is maybe number two, and heâs given > $1B. And of course SBF is probably high in the list of egregiousness, and seemingly was sincere in giving lots of money to charity. (Though note that SBF wasnât in my data set because the giving pledge kicked him out.)
I would be interested in someone filtering this list by âpeople who have actually given >$Xâ and seeing if that changes the results though.