dan.pandori

Karma: 632

dan.pandori 4 May 2026 19:47 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Imma🔸’s comment on: dan.pandori’s Quick takes
Oh totally. I’m lucky to be in the Bay Area where EA is a thing at all.

dan.pandori 4 May 2026 19:46 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tristan Katz’s comment on: dan.pandori’s Quick takes
The explanation is IMO less about frugality and more about getting lucky with my career choice. I spend about 45k a year, which is kinda frugal for my peers but globally I’m a spendthrift. I spend about 1.8k a month on rent, a few hundred on food, and take a vacation once or twice a year. My main hobbies are cheap (video games, board games, birding, pickleball).

It is often much easier to make more money than it is to save more. I would personally focus more on that side of the equation.

My wife & I don’t want kids. If we did, I probably would want to save more (just for college). But even if we did, we were very lucky to have software engineering jobs over the last 10 years. We’d basically be fine.

dan.pandori 4 May 2026 15:14 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: dan.pandori’s Quick takes
Very fair, I’m definitely speaking from the perspective of a rich Westerner working with other rich Westerners.

dan.pandori 3 May 2026 16:41 UTC
26 points
7 ∶ 1
on: dan.pandori’s Quick takes
Earning to give is lonely and requires repeated decisions. This is bad.

If you’re earning to give, you are lucky if you have one EtG team-mate. The people you talk to every day do not have moral intuitions similar to yours, and your actions seem weird to them.

If you do direct work, the psychological default every day is to wake up and do work. You are surrounded by people who think the work is important, and whose moral values at least rhyme with your own.

If you earn to give, most days you do not give (you’re probably paid bi-weekly, and transaction costs discourage even donating that frequently).

These differences apply continual pressure for EtG folks to become less hard-core than we intended to be. I wish I had more counter-pressure.

[None of these observations are novel]

dan.pandori 1 May 2026 15:47 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: NickAllardice’s comment on: How to actually give money away
Thanks Nick, this comment was helpful.

The note that appreciated-stock donations are capped at 30% of my taxable is particularly relevant this year.

And good point that the charity has to deal w/ liquidation, so illiquid stock is less useful for orgs with near term needs.

100% agreed it is so tempting to donate next year (or the year after etc).

dan.pandori 1 May 2026 0:43 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: dan.pandori’s comment on: How to actually give money away
Sorry, I should have asked Claude in the first place. To repeat what it said:
1. Some charities accept private or pre-IPO stock.
2. Donor Advised Funds can accept pre-IPO shares.
I’ll reach out to the equity folks at Waymo to confirm this is allowed, and reach out to relevant charities that they can accept this kind of stock.

dan.pandori 1 May 2026 0:28 UTC
13 points
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on: How to actually give money away
You say there are well-worn pathways to donating before an exit & without a liquidity event. I’m assuming this means before an IPO.

What are these pathways?

I’m in this boat. More than half of my net worth is in Waymo stock, and we’re pre IPO. I’d love to be able to donate some if a pathway exists.

dan.pandori 28 Apr 2026 0:13 UTC
3 points
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on: I scraped all public “Effective Altruists” Goodreads reading lists
I just saw this list now, and I have now lost any belief that I am an independent thinker or unique among EAs.

Well, with the exception that Twilight wasn’t all that bad.

dan.pandori 27 Apr 2026 23:42 UTC
46 points
1 ∶ 0
on: dan.pandori’s Quick takes
I’m pledging[1] to stop[2] saving[3] additional[4] money[5] & donate instead.

Fine print:

[1] This pledge is only good until 2030 unless renewed, and becomes invalid if I start working at a nonprofit.

[2] I’m still allowed to max out my 401k, partially since I have a 50% match there.

[3] Spending money is fine. I only spend 5% my gross, so that isn’t the problem.

[4] I’m allowed to keep up with inflation, should the stock market not already do so.

[5] I’m allowed to keep saving illiquid equity, although I am encouraged to liquidate to the extent feasible to align with the spirit of the pledge.

dan.pandori 25 Apr 2026 20:53 UTC
12 points
7 ∶ 0
in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: Noah Birnbaum’s Quick takes
The drama was bad for my mood & alignment w/ EA. I am glad it is comparatively hidden.

dan.pandori 17 Apr 2026 16:31 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Charles Berry’s comment on: The Case Against Offsetting Your Diet
I think you’re assuming that those converts stay veg*n, which seems moderately unlikely. I don’t doubt that you are accurately reflecting your experience, but I do think you haven’t seen the long-term effects.

This article claims around 82% of veg*ns eventually lapse, which means a 5X conversion rate is actually only enough to keep the movement steady. https://faunalytics.org/a-summary-of-faunalytics-study-of-current-and-former-vegetarians-and-vegans/

Given that Gallup polls have consistently shown 4-6% of US folks were vegetarian over the last 30 years, I think that approximate maintenance is more plausible than strong exponential growth.

Funny diversion, if you really think that a vegan will make 5 converts over their lifetime (who will do the same etc), then we are only 3 generations away from complete veganism (1% → 5% → 25% → 100%). So the value of a marginal vegan matters less for their multiplier effect, since we’ll be fully saturated in 3 generations anyways. The direct impact still matters, of course.

dan.pandori 15 Apr 2026 20:14 UTC
29 points
12 ∶ 0
on: The Case Against Offsetting Your Diet
“Conservatively, each vegan might plausibly create/preserve 5-10 other vegans over the course of a lifetime”

The word ‘might’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If veganism actually had this kind of multiplier, we would expect the number of vegans to grow by 5X each generation. Vegetarianism hasn’t experienced this kind of generational growth. I think claiming veganism will have this growth rate is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.

[I say this as a lacto-veg who doesn’t personally do offsetting, but tbh that is more from a moral purity vs harm minimization standpoint]

dan.pandori 15 Apr 2026 19:51 UTC
13 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ian Turner’s comment on: The Anthropic IPO Is Coming. We Aren’t Ready for It.
That site says that this post of Eliezer’s from 2006 is 72% AI: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YshRbqZHYFoEMqFAu/why-truth

I do not trust the site, and would recommend criticism of the post focus on specific flaws, rather than whether or not it was AI assisted.

dan.pandori 24 Feb 2026 19:18 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Donation policy as tax policy
Fully agreed that praise is an incredibly weak tool. Its all the weaker if its viewed as done with ulterior motives, like here.

RE: governments’ relationship with high tax payers. I think this is highly variable. My hometown in Iowa had a very positive relationship with the largest taxpayers/businesses/business owners. I think the Midwest has an understanding that there are many options for business owners, and so actively try to woo them.

In contrast, a large tech hub like San Francisco is much less replaceable, and so can afford to squeeze businesses much harder.

Donation policy as tax policy

dan.pandori24 Feb 2026 2:45 UTC

5 points

2 comments3 min readEA link

dan.pandori 17 Feb 2026 23:48 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Where are all the Animal Activists?
Great post. I started reading and expected to find the explanation totally divorced from why I (a lacto-veg EA) am uninvolved in animal activism. But the high level explanation ‘it is unpleasant & often unrewarding moment-to-moment’ really resonated with me.

Making a community is really hard. Godspeed & good luck :)

dan.pandori 19 Dec 2025 0:31 UTC
8 points
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on: Where did you donate this year?
In percentages of pretax salary:
* 15% GiveWell
* 3% AI Safety orgs
* 1% Lightcone

dan.pandori 18 Nov 2025 1:56 UTC
12 points
3 ∶ 0
on: To a first approximation, all farmed animals are bugs
Great post. Short & to the point with links to specific claims for those who want to understand more.

dan.pandori 11 Nov 2025 23:08 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Brad West🔸’s comment on: The War Philanthropists Don’t Know They Can Win
Your link is to a press release by Google Cloud. It’s not a financial statement and it doesn’t include expenses. Where can I “read the books” for Humanitix?

I agree that verifying “cage-free” eggs is probably harder, but it still doesn’t seem easy.

dan.pandori 11 Nov 2025 21:29 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Brad West🔸’s comment on: The War Philanthropists Don’t Know They Can Win
Verifiability remains very difficult even with PFG, where the ‘verifiability’ is that companies donate all of their profits.

Companies that make money on marginal sales have a large amount of discretion on what they classify as net profit. For example, as the CEO & founder you could increase your own salary. This decreases the net profit, as salaries are part of operating expenses. It doesn’t change gross profit (under most definitions), but by the time you’re discussing gross vs net profit consumers have already stopped listening. It isn’t just binary based on ownership or truthfulness of donating all profits.

Companies also have discretion about what charities to donate to, and it is hard to evaluate how effective a given charity is.

I’m also genuinely confused about whether Humanitix is profitable. This site [1] suggests that in 2021 it had ~3M in revenue, of which ~1.6M was from grants (so 1.4M left for its core services). Its total expenses were listed at 2.1 million, with a little less than 300K in grants, so 1.8M in expenses ignoring grants. 1.4M − 1.8M is a 400K yearly deficit. Businesses are totally allowed to lose money, but I think it weakens the case of Humanitix as a success story. Their more recent yearly reports have all figures redacted [2,3], and so I can’t really verify anything about what they donated vs how much they received. I’d be curious if folks could find some unredacted statements that I missed.

[1] https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/0db4989a-3aaf-e811-a961-000d3ad24182/documents/341f993f-e644-eb11-bb23-000d3ad1f9f4
[2] https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/0db4989a-3aaf-e811-a961-000d3ad24182/documents/
[3] https://acncpubfilesprodstorage.blob.core.windows.net/public/0db4989a-3aaf-e811-a961-000d3ad24182-e4b9f279-5504-4905-952f-ef0ba115c816-Financial%20Report-b67689aa-6b37-f011-8c4c-00224894978f-Humanitix_Limited_2024_Financial_Redacted.pdf

dan.pandori

Dona­tion policy as tax policy

Donation policy as tax policy