Donating to SBF’s appeal process may be the highest impact charity we have ever seen.
In randomized controlled trials from 2022, SBF had donated over 130 million dollars in less than a year, and a successful appeal would counterfactually create this benefit for 25 years. An expensive criminal trial in the US can cost as much as $15,000. Even if $15k increases the odds of winning the appeal by 0.1%, that is still an expected 217x amplification of every dollar donated.
The money amplified goes in to effective charities like GiveWell, so if we use GiveWell’s one life saved per $4,500 measure, donating to SBF’s appeal fund would save a life for every 20 dollars.
This is just a back of the napkin calculation, so my numbers might be off a little, but this seems to be the most effective charity by *many* orders of magnitude.
I didn’t realize people in biosecurity were worried about infohazards. In EA circles I hear biosecurity talked about much less than the other cause areas, and now I’m wondering how much of that is the cloak of secrecy and how much is the field simply being neglected?