Generally when I have donated to help people directly (most of my recent donations have not been of this form, to be clear, in recent years my donations have been focused on research or on helping animals) I am not really thinking about how big the problem is. I am thinking āwhat will the consequence of this donation be?ā If I am donating less than millions of dollars, Iām not likely to solve the whole issue, so the question of if the issue is big or small in a global sense just isnāt very important.
For type 1 diabetes, what can a donation of $5k do? Iām not sure, but the baseline for what I can do with $5k in the global health space is āprevent a child from dying of malariaā, so I would want to find something I thought was better than that before doing so.
That last bit is the key to the EA mindset to meāgiven a fixed donation budget, every time we choose to give to something, we are choosing not to give that money to everything else. So we ought to triage, and give to where we think the money or effort can do the most good.
For someone who knows of a really high leverage way to impact the affordability or availability of insulin (or for a researcher with a chance of discovering a cure or improved treatment), it might be that the best place for them to focus their efforts is on that. There are millions of type 1 diabetics, so any one person who could make a meaningful impact there could have enormous impact. But itās still good for them to ask the question and be aware of what other avenue to impact they might have, if their goal is to do the most good.
Type 1 diabetic and long time EA here.
Generally when I have donated to help people directly (most of my recent donations have not been of this form, to be clear, in recent years my donations have been focused on research or on helping animals) I am not really thinking about how big the problem is. I am thinking āwhat will the consequence of this donation be?ā If I am donating less than millions of dollars, Iām not likely to solve the whole issue, so the question of if the issue is big or small in a global sense just isnāt very important.
For type 1 diabetes, what can a donation of $5k do? Iām not sure, but the baseline for what I can do with $5k in the global health space is āprevent a child from dying of malariaā, so I would want to find something I thought was better than that before doing so.
That last bit is the key to the EA mindset to meāgiven a fixed donation budget, every time we choose to give to something, we are choosing not to give that money to everything else. So we ought to triage, and give to where we think the money or effort can do the most good.
For someone who knows of a really high leverage way to impact the affordability or availability of insulin (or for a researcher with a chance of discovering a cure or improved treatment), it might be that the best place for them to focus their efforts is on that. There are millions of type 1 diabetics, so any one person who could make a meaningful impact there could have enormous impact. But itās still good for them to ask the question and be aware of what other avenue to impact they might have, if their goal is to do the most good.
Great answer, thank you!