Thanks for posting this—as the other comments also suggest, I don’t think you’re alone in feeling a tension between your conviction of longtermism and lack of enthusiasm for marginal longtermist donation opportunities.
I want to distinguish between two different ways at approaching this. The first is simply maximising expected value, the second is trying to act as if you’re representing some kind of parliament of different moral theories/worldviews. I think these are pretty different. [1]
For example, suppose you were 80% sure of longtermism, but had a 20% credence in animal welfare being the most important issue of our time, and you were deciding whether to donate to the LTFF or the animal welfare fund. The expected value maximiser would likely think one had a higher expected value, and so would donate all their funds to that one. However, the moral parliamentarian might compromise by donating 80% of their funds to the LTFF and 20% to the animal welfare fund.
From this comment you left:
I’m not convinced small scale longtermist donations are presently more impactful than neartermist ones, nor am I convinced of the reverse. Given this uncertainty, I am tempted to opt for neartermist donations to achieve better optics.
I take it that you’re in the game of maximising expected value, but you’re just not sure that the longtermist charities are actually higher impact than the best available neartermist ones (even if they’re being judged by you, someone with a high credence in longtermism). That makes sense to me!
But I’m not sure I agree. I think there’d be something suspicious about the idea that neartermism/longtermism align on which charities are best (given they are optimising for very different things, it’d be surprising if they turned out with the same recommendation). But more importantly, I think I might just be relatively more excited about the kinds of grants the LTFF are making than you are, and also more excited about the idea that my donations could essentially ‘funge’ open philanthropy (meaning I get the same impact as their last dollar).
I also think that if you place significant value on the optics of your donations, you can always just donate to multiple different causes, allowing you to honestly say something like “I donate to X, Y and Z—all charities that I really care about and think are doing tremendous work” which, at least in my best guess, gets you most of the signalling value.
At least, I think the high-level intuition behind each of these mental models are different. But my understanding from a podcast with Hilary Greaves is that when you get down to trying to formalise the ideas, it gets much murkier. I found these slides of her talk on this subject, in case you’re interested!
Thanks for posting this—as the other comments also suggest, I don’t think you’re alone in feeling a tension between your conviction of longtermism and lack of enthusiasm for marginal longtermist donation opportunities.
I want to distinguish between two different ways at approaching this. The first is simply maximising expected value, the second is trying to act as if you’re representing some kind of parliament of different moral theories/worldviews. I think these are pretty different. [1]
For example, suppose you were 80% sure of longtermism, but had a 20% credence in animal welfare being the most important issue of our time, and you were deciding whether to donate to the LTFF or the animal welfare fund. The expected value maximiser would likely think one had a higher expected value, and so would donate all their funds to that one. However, the moral parliamentarian might compromise by donating 80% of their funds to the LTFF and 20% to the animal welfare fund.
From this comment you left:
I take it that you’re in the game of maximising expected value, but you’re just not sure that the longtermist charities are actually higher impact than the best available neartermist ones (even if they’re being judged by you, someone with a high credence in longtermism). That makes sense to me!
But I’m not sure I agree. I think there’d be something suspicious about the idea that neartermism/longtermism align on which charities are best (given they are optimising for very different things, it’d be surprising if they turned out with the same recommendation). But more importantly, I think I might just be relatively more excited about the kinds of grants the LTFF are making than you are, and also more excited about the idea that my donations could essentially ‘funge’ open philanthropy (meaning I get the same impact as their last dollar).
I also think that if you place significant value on the optics of your donations, you can always just donate to multiple different causes, allowing you to honestly say something like “I donate to X, Y and Z—all charities that I really care about and think are doing tremendous work” which, at least in my best guess, gets you most of the signalling value.
Time to wrapup the lengthy comment! I’d suggest reading Ben Todd’s post on this topic, and potentially also the Red-Team against it. I also wrote “The value of small donations from a longtermist perspective” which you may find interesting.
Thanks again for the post, I appreciate the discussion it’s generating. You’ve put your finger on something important.
At least, I think the high-level intuition behind each of these mental models are different. But my understanding from a podcast with Hilary Greaves is that when you get down to trying to formalise the ideas, it gets much murkier. I found these slides of her talk on this subject, in case you’re interested!