All of TomAtlanta's Comments + Replies
I read the link to "Is effective altruism growing? An update on the stock of funding vs. people"
I don't understand this:
- How much funding is committed to effective altruism (going forward)? Around $46 billion.
Do you mean $46 billion to all effective altruism groups, or the researchers, or what? As it is used in this forum, does EA refer to a particular group that uses this forum, or effective altruism in general?
It is a little more vague than that. It means (at least as I interpret it) something like 'there currently exists $46bn which Ben Todd thinks is quite committed to eventually being spent to improve the world using an EA framework of trying to do the most good'
Most of those assets currently belong to Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Bankman-Fried
I hope my comment comes across as curious rather than judgemental.
Is this the most effective use of our money? Flying a long distance to go to an in person conference? What if you stayed home and gave the money you would spend on the conference to an effective charity?
Just asking as I get into the whole EA mindset. I spend a lot of money on luxuries that could be better spent on charity. I don't look down on anyone who chooses to spend money to go to this conference. Curious about your thoughts on this.
It's a good question. For some people who have already considered their plans pretty carefully and who don't expect much benefit from meeting others in the community, it might not be worthwhile. Or just people for whom the travel / time costs would be unusually high (personally, I'm in that category this year).
I expect it to be most valuable for people who are considering some kind of change of plan in how they might have impact. Hearing about projects in the community and getting input from other people on your plans could be really valuable, allowing you...
One consideration is that EA has attracted a lot of money in recent years, and that investing in EA human capital (e.g. through improved networks, transfer of key knowledge, etc) could be very valuable. (See also this older post on talent constraints vs funding constraints.)
No replies to my question. Maybe because the two groups are so similar. I may just split my donations between the two groups and forget about the small amount of money lost to the extra expense of processing two donations rather than one. Or I might just pick one at random.
When I donate to Life You Save, the money is divided equally and goes to their 22 highest rated charities. Is this inefficient?
Givewell has something similar. You can donate monthly to Givewell and have them forward the money to several different charities from their list. Is this inefficient?
- "Often the overhead on processing a small donation can be fairly high, so it could be worth donating to fewer organisations so that your donations to those you give to are larger."
I am donating $50 automatically each month to each of the 5 organizations. Would it make much of a difference if I just picked one and donated $250/month to it? How much of a difference? How much is the overhead on processing automatic monthly donations?
I believe the typical nonprofit credit card rate (for Visa and Mastercard) is 2.2%+0.30 USD. So for 5 x $50 donations, it's costing around $1.4*5 = $7 to process your credit card payments across all organizations. For my organization, entering a donation in whatever systems we enter it in probably takes around 5 minutes. I'd guess that with taxes, etc., the average EA nonprofit ops person costs around $40 / hour, so that's another $3.33 per donation = $16.67 across all donations. So of your $250, around $23.67 is going to overhead costs.
If you gave it in o...
Thanks for the info. I had never heard of Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Bankman-Fried. I just read about them on wikipedia. Now it makes more sense.