I think it depends partially on how confident you are that Dustin Moskovitz will give away all his money, and how altruistic you are. Moskovitz seems great, I think he’s pledged to give away “more than half” his wealth in his lifetime (though I current find a good citation, it might be much higher). My sense is that some other extremely generous billionaires (Gates/Buffet) also made pledges, and it doesn’t currently seem like they’re on track. Or maybe they do give away all their money, but it’s just held by the foundation, not actually dolled out to causes. And then you have to think about how foundations drift over time, and if you think OpenPhil 2121 will have values you still agree with.
So maybe you can think of this roughly as: “I’m going to give Dustin Moskovitz more money, and trust that he’ll do the right thing with it eventually”. I’m not sure how persuasive that feels to people.
(Practically, a lot of this hinges on how good the next best alternatives actually are. If smart weirdos you know personally are only 1% as effective as AMF, it’s probably still not worth it even if the funding is more directly impactful. Alternatively, GiveDirectly is ~10% as good as GiveWell top charities, and even then I think it’s a somewhat hard sell that all my arguments here add up to a 10x reduction in efficacy. But it’s not obviously unreasonable either.)
That’s helpful thank you! I think the mode is more “I’m going to give OpenPhil more money”. It only becomes “I’m going to give Dustin more money” if it’s true that Dustin adjusts his donations to OpenPhil every year based on how much OpenPhil disburses, such that funging OpenPhil = funging Dustin
But in any case I’d say most EAs are probably optimistic that these organizations and individuals will continue to be altruistic and will continue to have values we agree with.
And in any any case, I strongly agree that we should be more entrepreneurial
Hey, thanks. That’s a good point.
I think it depends partially on how confident you are that Dustin Moskovitz will give away all his money, and how altruistic you are. Moskovitz seems great, I think he’s pledged to give away “more than half” his wealth in his lifetime (though I current find a good citation, it might be much higher). My sense is that some other extremely generous billionaires (Gates/Buffet) also made pledges, and it doesn’t currently seem like they’re on track. Or maybe they do give away all their money, but it’s just held by the foundation, not actually dolled out to causes. And then you have to think about how foundations drift over time, and if you think OpenPhil 2121 will have values you still agree with.
So maybe you can think of this roughly as: “I’m going to give Dustin Moskovitz more money, and trust that he’ll do the right thing with it eventually”. I’m not sure how persuasive that feels to people.
(Practically, a lot of this hinges on how good the next best alternatives actually are. If smart weirdos you know personally are only 1% as effective as AMF, it’s probably still not worth it even if the funding is more directly impactful. Alternatively, GiveDirectly is ~10% as good as GiveWell top charities, and even then I think it’s a somewhat hard sell that all my arguments here add up to a 10x reduction in efficacy. But it’s not obviously unreasonable either.)
That’s helpful thank you! I think the mode is more “I’m going to give OpenPhil more money”. It only becomes “I’m going to give Dustin more money” if it’s true that Dustin adjusts his donations to OpenPhil every year based on how much OpenPhil disburses, such that funging OpenPhil = funging Dustin
But in any case I’d say most EAs are probably optimistic that these organizations and individuals will continue to be altruistic and will continue to have values we agree with.
And in any any case, I strongly agree that we should be more entrepreneurial