Executive summary: The post argues that while pure expected value reasoning suggests focusing on a single best option, human motivation and moral uncertainty make it more practical and effective to diversify charitable giving and actions across speculative but potentially high-impact causes.
Key points:
People often want to maximize both the expected good and ensure they do some good, but these aims conflict when speculative high-EV activities cause risk yielding no benefit.
Though expected utility maximization is rational in theory, the author finds it psychologically difficult to act on when there’s a high chance of “wasting” effort or donations.
A pragmatic solution is to diversify, analogous to financial portfolios: spread donations across multiple speculative causes (e.g., shrimp welfare, longtermism, chicken welfare, wild animal suffering, even Pascal’s wager) to increase confidence that some will have a significant impact.
Diversification helps overcome motivational barriers, making it easier to act on “weird” philosophical arguments without committing all resources to them.
Moral uncertainty further supports diversification, both by avoiding actions that could be extremely wrong from some ethical perspectives (e.g., eating meat, opposing religions, and abortion work) and by hedging across plausible moral frameworks.
Even if ideal rational agents would concentrate on a single best charity, accounting for human fallibility and motivational limits, spreading resources may in practice lead to more effective giving.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The post argues that while pure expected value reasoning suggests focusing on a single best option, human motivation and moral uncertainty make it more practical and effective to diversify charitable giving and actions across speculative but potentially high-impact causes.
Key points:
People often want to maximize both the expected good and ensure they do some good, but these aims conflict when speculative high-EV activities cause risk yielding no benefit.
Though expected utility maximization is rational in theory, the author finds it psychologically difficult to act on when there’s a high chance of “wasting” effort or donations.
A pragmatic solution is to diversify, analogous to financial portfolios: spread donations across multiple speculative causes (e.g., shrimp welfare, longtermism, chicken welfare, wild animal suffering, even Pascal’s wager) to increase confidence that some will have a significant impact.
Diversification helps overcome motivational barriers, making it easier to act on “weird” philosophical arguments without committing all resources to them.
Moral uncertainty further supports diversification, both by avoiding actions that could be extremely wrong from some ethical perspectives (e.g., eating meat, opposing religions, and abortion work) and by hedging across plausible moral frameworks.
Even if ideal rational agents would concentrate on a single best charity, accounting for human fallibility and motivational limits, spreading resources may in practice lead to more effective giving.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.