I understand this is a lower bound, but these numbers seem embarrassingly low given how generous the match was, e.g. compared to the old Facebook giving Tuesday match results. I guess most people don't read this forum anymore and we should have instead shared this and other important topics on Twitter?
I'd recommend asking these questions to your favourite AI or to the facilitators, my understanding is that course facilitators don't use this forum for various reasons, and all of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are great at answering these questions. E.g. here's ChatGPT:
I think you’ve identified a real jump in context, rather than missed some prerequisite reading!
This was originally a post on LessWrong.com, an online community focused on reasoning and decision-making. It does two things: first, illustrates how cognitive biases can feel like reasonable thinking from the inside; second, argues that these concrete illustrations are a better way to teach people about biases than abstract definitions. That second part addresses the original community’s communication habits, which explains the references to “LessWrongians” and makes it feel like a tangent here.
The connection to effective altruism is that trying to help effectively requires assessing our own judgments critically. For example, “I’ve carefully researched this charity and everything supports donating to it” might reflect good research—or selectively seeking favourable evidence. The tables are meant to help us notice that possibility, much as the scout mindset encourages us to examine beliefs we’re attached to. They aren’t proof that any particular belief is biased.
So your interpretation seems right: the main takeaway for this chapter is awareness of cognitive biases. The discussion of communication explains why the author presented them this way. An introductory note distinguishing those two purposes would make its inclusion much clearer.
it seems like cash transfers that improve annual income by 10-30% in the USA have pretty much no effect on wellbeing. Weird. Not sure why yet.
I don't think it's that weird with the above values of η, considering that even in low income countries the effects of cash are significant but not immense, see this previous thread
we fail to appreciate why everyone is so mad at us.
I really don't think FTX is the main reason why everyone is so mad at you (read e.g. The Economist article mentioned, or search for "effective altruism" online), I think this should be taken as an opportunity to clarify other common misconceptions, instead of taking even more blame for being associated with some of the organizations that praised SBF for donating a lot of money to charity or advised him on how to donate it
I'm sad to see that it's now practically unusuable for many (EA) charities and donors.
I don't think this is true for that many. As far as I can see most EA charities and donors privately declined to participate in this pressure campaign against Manifund (and because of that you don't see them posting here), and the ~6 that did participate as far as I know are not funding constrained (edit: and/or have easier ways of receiving donations without the 5% fee), so wouldn't have had much use for Manifund in the first place.
For reference, Facebook's giving Tuesday match mentioned above lasted seconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GivingTuesday#History
I understand this is a lower bound, but these numbers seem embarrassingly low given how generous the match was, e.g. compared to the old Facebook giving Tuesday match results. I guess most people don't read this forum anymore and we should have instead shared this and other important topics on Twitter?
Old numbers for reference
Are you going through the CEA Intro Program by any chance? https://www.effectivealtruism.org/courses/introductory-program
I'd recommend asking these questions to your favourite AI or to the facilitators, my understanding is that course facilitators don't use this forum for various reasons, and all of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are great at answering these questions. E.g. here's ChatGPT:
Thanks so much for this post!
I know much less about this than you do, but some quick thoughts:
Is that really the convention? I thought the convention was to assume https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoelastic_utility with a η between 1.2 and 1.5?
I don't think it's that weird with the above values of η, considering that even in low income countries the effects of cash are significant but not immense, see this previous thread
I really don't think FTX is the main reason why everyone is so mad at you (read e.g. The Economist article mentioned, or search for "effective altruism" online), I think this should be taken as an opportunity to clarify other common misconceptions, instead of taking even more blame for being associated with some of the organizations that praised SBF for donating a lot of money to charity or advised him on how to donate it
You might be interested in Most* small probabilities aren't pascalian , I think a better example is looking both ways before crossing the street
Giving What We Can also did not receive anything close to $1.2 billion in donations in 2024 or $2 billion in 2025, that's the total money moved by the whole ~EA-ish effective giving ecosystem (mostly Coefficient Giving and GiveWell), you can read more here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T7CKswFYSgjePAwZh/updates-on-the-effective-giving-ecosystem-2026
The "$15 Billion per year" seems to be from Wired and based on Ransohoff's estimate of ~$150B in pledged amounts from Anthropic times ~10%
I don't think this is true for that many. As far as I can see most EA charities and donors privately declined to participate in this pressure campaign against Manifund (and because of that you don't see them posting here), and the ~6 that did participate as far as I know are not funding constrained (edit: and/or have easier ways of receiving donations without the 5% fee), so wouldn't have had much use for Manifund in the first place.
Yeah I think the substack post is wrong, copied the comment there