Thanks Paul and Carl for getting this off the ground!
I unfortunately haven’t been able to arrange to contribute tax-deductibly in time (I am outside of the US), but for anyone considering running future lotteries:
I think this is a great idea, and intend to contribute my annual donations—currently in the high 4-figures—through donation lotteries such as this if they are available in the future.
Relevant to #1b. Overestimating impact:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/76k/the_optimizers_curse_and_how_to_beat_it/
This series of talks on the Effective Altruism movement at EA Global 2016:
The Effective Altruism Ecosystem
Does anyone else think that a column structure along the lines of:
Name | Contact | Your Country | Charities that are tax-deductible in your country | Charities you want to donate to | Countries where these charities are tax-deductible
would be more comprehensible?
I had to do more than a quick glance to understand the current structure, which worries me a little bit, but it might just be me.
Michelle Hutchinson mentioned that Nick Beckstead plans to email her donation advice. Is it possible for others to receive this advice?
I think the message of SlateStarCodex’s “Tuesday Shouldn’t Change The Narrative” is particularly relevant to EAs—any large updates to one’s beliefs about the world should have come before the election.
Has there been consideration of electoral reform with mind to proportionality as a worthwhile EA cause?
This has also been discussed at Effective Altruism and Cryonics at Lesswrong
I feel like Joey’s comment here is broadly applicable enough to warrant bringing it top level:
“I think part of the reason [meta-charity is] not publicized as much as say donating directly to GW charities is for marketing/PR reasons. e.g. Many people who are new to EA might be confused or turned off by the idea of a 100% overhead charity.”
In addition to Charity Science, Giving What We Can also has this meta charity logic ingrained: https://givingwhatwecan.org/impact
I certainly agree with the general point that one must consider the experiential value of the life saved. However, I’m skeptical of presuming a log-relationship for consumption and happiness, both for the reason you identified (definition problems at low-incomes), and issues around self-reporting as a measure of happiness, the Easterlin Paradox, and tentative data supporting that much of the happiness from consumption may about feeling richer than other people.
Does this assumption depend on how pessimistic/optimistic one is about our chances of achieving alignment in different take-off scenarios, i.e. what our position on a curve something like this is expected to be for a given takeoff scenario?