I think this is a valuable contribution—thanks for writing it! Among other things, it demonstrates that conclusions about when to give are highly sensitive to how we model value drift.
In my own work on the timing of giving, I’ve been thinking about value drift as a simple increase to the discount rate: each year philanthropists (or their heirs) face some x% chance of running off with the money and spending it on worthless things. So if the discount rate would have been d% without any value drift risk, it just rises to (d+x)% given the value drift risk. If the learning that will take place over the next year (and other reasons to wait, e.g. a positive interest rate) outweigh this (d+x)% (plus the other reasons why resources will be less valuable next year), it’s better to wait. But here we see that, if values definitely change a little each year, it might be best to spend much more quickly than if (as I’ve been assuming) they probably don’t change at all but might change a lot, since in the former case, holding onto resources allows for a kind of slippery slope in which each year you change your judgments about whether or not to defer to the next year. So I’m really glad this was written and I look forward to thinking about it more.
One comment on the thesis itself: I think it’s a bit confusing at the beginning, where it says that decision-makers face a tradeoff between “what is objectively known about the world and what they personally believe is true.” The tradeoff they face is between acquiring information and maintaining fidelity to their current preferences, not to their current beliefs. The rest of the thesis is consistent with framing the problem as a information-vs.-preference-fidelity tradeoff, so I think this wording is just a holdover from a previous version of the thesis which framed things differently. But (Max) let me know if I’m missing something.
I think this is a valuable contribution—thanks for writing it! Among other things, it demonstrates that conclusions about when to give are highly sensitive to how we model value drift.
In my own work on the timing of giving, I’ve been thinking about value drift as a simple increase to the discount rate: each year philanthropists (or their heirs) face some x% chance of running off with the money and spending it on worthless things. So if the discount rate would have been d% without any value drift risk, it just rises to (d+x)% given the value drift risk. If the learning that will take place over the next year (and other reasons to wait, e.g. a positive interest rate) outweigh this (d+x)% (plus the other reasons why resources will be less valuable next year), it’s better to wait. But here we see that, if values definitely change a little each year, it might be best to spend much more quickly than if (as I’ve been assuming) they probably don’t change at all but might change a lot, since in the former case, holding onto resources allows for a kind of slippery slope in which each year you change your judgments about whether or not to defer to the next year. So I’m really glad this was written and I look forward to thinking about it more.
One comment on the thesis itself: I think it’s a bit confusing at the beginning, where it says that decision-makers face a tradeoff between “what is objectively known about the world and what they personally believe is true.” The tradeoff they face is between acquiring information and maintaining fidelity to their current preferences, not to their current beliefs. The rest of the thesis is consistent with framing the problem as a information-vs.-preference-fidelity tradeoff, so I think this wording is just a holdover from a previous version of the thesis which framed things differently. But (Max) let me know if I’m missing something.