I’m still pretty confused about why you think donating 10% has to be time-confusing. People who outsource their donation decisions to, say, Givewell might only spend a few hours a year (or a few minutes, depending on how literally we interpret “outsourcing) deciding where to donate.
I think that donor lotteries are a considerably stronger argument than GiveWell for the claim “donating 10% doesn’t have to be time-consuming.”
Your argument (with GiveWell in place of a lottery) requires that either (a) you think that GiveWell charities are clearly the best use of funds, or (b) by “doesn’t have to be time-consuming” you mean “if you don’t necessarily want to do the most good.” I don’t think you should be confused about why someone would disagree with (a), nor about why someone would think that (b) is a silly usage.
If there were low-friction donor lotteries, I suspect that most small GiveWell donors would be better-served by gambling up to perhaps $1M and then thinking about it at considerably greater length. I expect a significant fraction of them would end up funding something other than GiveWell top charities.
(I was originally supportive but kind of lukewarm about donor lotteries, but I think I’ve now come around to Carl’s level of enthusiasm.)
Look out in the world and you’ll see lots of people excited about things that don’t work or don’t do what they say they’ll do. Anyone can say they’re evidence-backed etc. On outside view, if you only spend a few minutes on your donations each year, how much of the optimization pressure influencing your donations should you expect was marketing skill on the part of the recipient or their patron, vs selecting for actual impact?
I’m still pretty confused about why you think donating 10% has to be time-confusing. People who outsource their donation decisions to, say, Givewell might only spend a few hours a year (or a few minutes, depending on how literally we interpret “outsourcing) deciding where to donate.
I think that donor lotteries are a considerably stronger argument than GiveWell for the claim “donating 10% doesn’t have to be time-consuming.”
Your argument (with GiveWell in place of a lottery) requires that either (a) you think that GiveWell charities are clearly the best use of funds, or (b) by “doesn’t have to be time-consuming” you mean “if you don’t necessarily want to do the most good.” I don’t think you should be confused about why someone would disagree with (a), nor about why someone would think that (b) is a silly usage.
If there were low-friction donor lotteries, I suspect that most small GiveWell donors would be better-served by gambling up to perhaps $1M and then thinking about it at considerably greater length. I expect a significant fraction of them would end up funding something other than GiveWell top charities.
(I was originally supportive but kind of lukewarm about donor lotteries, but I think I’ve now come around to Carl’s level of enthusiasm.)
One reason would be if you think the people should spend the money on saving themselves time.
Look out in the world and you’ll see lots of people excited about things that don’t work or don’t do what they say they’ll do. Anyone can say they’re evidence-backed etc. On outside view, if you only spend a few minutes on your donations each year, how much of the optimization pressure influencing your donations should you expect was marketing skill on the part of the recipient or their patron, vs selecting for actual impact?