I'm not sure Make a Wish is a good example given the existence of this study. Quoting Dylan Matthews from Future Perfect on it (emphasis added):

The average wish costs $10,130 to fulfill. Given that Malaria Consortium can save the life of a child under 5 for roughly $2,000 (getting a precise figure is, of course, tough, but it’s around that), you could probably save four or five children’s lives in sub-Saharan Africa for the cost of providing a nice experience for a single child in the US. For the cost of the heartwarming Batkid stunt — $105,000 — you could save the lives of some 50-odd kids.

So that’s why I’ve been hard on Make-A-Wish in the past, and why effective altruists like Peter Singer have criticized the group as well.

But now I’m reconsidering. A new study in the journal Pediatric Research, comparing 496 patients at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who got their wishes granted to 496 “control” patients with similar ages, gender, and diseases, found that the patients who got their wishes granted went to the emergency room less, and were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital (outside of planned readmissions).

In a number of cases, this reduction in hospital admissions and emergency room visits resulted in a cost savings in excess of $10,130, the cost of the average wish. In other words, Make-A-Wish helped, and helped in a cost-effective way.

your other comment

This links to A Sketch of Good Communication, not whichever comment you were intending to link :)

You know, this makes me think I know just how academia was taken over by cancel culture. 

It's a very strong statement that academia has been taken over by cancel culture. I definitely agree that there are some very concerning elements (one of the ones I find most concerning are the University of California diversity statements), but academia as a whole is quite big and you may be jumping the gun quite a bit. 

I guess I can't resist one last comment - please feel free to not reply any further. 

This seems clearly true to me, but I don't see how it explains the things that I'm puzzled by. 

To put it in rough Bayesian terms - I think your priors on what other people are saying and why are firing too strongly. This is making it hard to understand other people who are coming from a different place, and throwing up the elementary reasoning errors and anomalies you see. I wonder if you've previously encountered EAs or similar types of people saying the kinds of things jsteinhardt is saying here and meaning them sincerely, not performatively. I think some people, especially more online people, haven't. 

Welcome Sive!

Thanks for explaining. I don't wish to engage further here [feel free to reply though of course], but FWIW I don't agree that there are any reasoning errors in Jacob's post or any anomalies to explain. I think you are strongly focused on a part of the conversation that is of particular importance to you (something along the lines of whether people who are not motivated or skilled at expressing sympathy will be welcome here), while Jacob is mostly focused on other aspects. 

what appears to me to be a series of anomalies that is otherwise hard to explain

What do you believe needs explaining? 

This might be a minor point, but personally I think it's better to avoid making generalizations of how an entire community must be feeling. Some members of the Asian community are unaware of recent events, while others may not be particularly affected by them. Perhaps something more along the lines of "I understand many people in the Asian community are feeling hurt right now" would be generally better. 

I'm curious how xccf's comment elsewhere on this thread fits in with your position as expressed here. 

Ben Hoffman's GiveWell and the problem of Partial Funding was also posted here on the forum, with replies from OpenPhil and GiveWell staff.