Then, if the expected cost-effectiveness of the best opportunities varies substantially over time, there will be just one point in time at which your philanthropy will have the most impact, and you should try to max out your philanthropy at that time period, donating all your philanthropy at that time if you can.
Tho I note that the only way one would ever take such opportunities, if offered, is by developing a view of what sorts of opportunities are good that is sufficiently motivating to actually take action at least once every few decades.
For example, when the most attractive opportunity so far appears in year 19 of investing and assessing opportunities, will our patient philanthropist direct all their money towards it, and then start saving again? Will they reason that they don’t have sufficient evidence to overcome their prior that year 19 is not more attractive than the years to come? Will they say “well, I’m following the Secretary Problem solution, and 19 is less than 70/e, so I’m still in info-gathering mode”?
They won’t, of course, know which path had higher value in their particular world until they die, but it seems to me like most of the information content of a strategy that waits to pull the trigger is in when it decides to pull the trigger, and this feels like the least explicit part of your argument.
Compare to investing, where some people are fans of timing the market, and some people are fans of dollar-cost-averaging. If you think the attractiveness of giving opportunities is going to be unpredictably volatile, then doing direct work or philanthropy every year is the optimal approach. If instead you think the attractiveness of giving opportunities is predictably volatile, or predictably stable, then doing patient philanthropy makes more sense.
What seems odd to me is simultaneously holding the outside view sense that we have insufficient evidence to think that we’re correctly assessing a promising opportunity now, and having the sense that we should expect that we will correctly assess the promising opportunities in the future when they do happen.
Tho I note that the only way one would ever take such opportunities, if offered, is by developing a view of what sorts of opportunities are good that is sufficiently motivating to actually take action at least once every few decades.
For example, when the most attractive opportunity so far appears in year 19 of investing and assessing opportunities, will our patient philanthropist direct all their money towards it, and then start saving again? Will they reason that they don’t have sufficient evidence to overcome their prior that year 19 is not more attractive than the years to come? Will they say “well, I’m following the Secretary Problem solution, and 19 is less than 70/e, so I’m still in info-gathering mode”?
They won’t, of course, know which path had higher value in their particular world until they die, but it seems to me like most of the information content of a strategy that waits to pull the trigger is in when it decides to pull the trigger, and this feels like the least explicit part of your argument.
Compare to investing, where some people are fans of timing the market, and some people are fans of dollar-cost-averaging. If you think the attractiveness of giving opportunities is going to be unpredictably volatile, then doing direct work or philanthropy every year is the optimal approach. If instead you think the attractiveness of giving opportunities is predictably volatile, or predictably stable, then doing patient philanthropy makes more sense.
What seems odd to me is simultaneously holding the outside view sense that we have insufficient evidence to think that we’re correctly assessing a promising opportunity now, and having the sense that we should expect that we will correctly assess the promising opportunities in the future when they do happen.