[ExI] effective charity, was: RE: bees again

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2016-03-20 19:47, spike wrote:
>
>
> >…or even just to give a bit each month for world hunger, etc…
>
> Anders Sandberg is a man I hope will chime in on that comment.  He is 
> active in the Effective Altruism movement, which I find intriguing.  
> You don’t even need to be rich to contribute to that.  From what I can 
> tell from reading their lit, a lot of it is smart tech-oriented people 
> coming up with mathematical functions to figure out how to make each 
> dollar given to world hunger do the most good.
>
> ...
>
> Charity has to be done with a brain as well as with a heart.
>

Exactly. Effective altruism is very much based on a consequentialist 
approach: it is better if the results of your donation are better.

In some domains we can measure the performance (quality adjusted life 
years per dollar) and compare, in other domains we merely have 
dominance/comparision arguments to get priorities roughly right. FHI is 
working on thinking about the really uncertain domains where we do not 
even know how to compare things, like existential risk.

http://www.givewell.org/
https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/

-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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