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0 pointsdreeves8y ago0 comments

Our (Beeminder's) counterargument: https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity/

Excerpt:

Take my thoughts on this with a huge grain of salt, given my conflict of interest, but I really dislike commitment devices that destroy things — either information or other forms of value. StickK’s anti-charities seem the most egregious, actively harming the world. I’m certainly motivated to not allow the world to become a worse place, so it’s not that it would be ineffective as a commitment contract. Just that I’m also motivated to prevent things that don’t make the world worse in any way, like paying money to a third party (who’s not evil).

0 comments

gnicholas8y ago

> StickK’s anti-charities seem the most egregious, actively harming the world.

That assumes that (1) there are "good" charities and "bad" charities, and (2) that most of Stickk's users are good people who end up benefiting "bad" charities when they fail.

Point (1) seems hard to prove and point (2) is impossible to prove without detailed info about how Stickk is used.

It seems like you're in this market, so perhaps you have data like this. Do you? If not, how do you justify the above assertion?

dreevesOP8y ago

Good points, but I don't think we need assumptions that strong. For example, if democrats donate to the republican party as an anti-charity and republicans donate an equal total to the democratic party, then probably democrats and republicans would all agree that that's strictly worse than nobody donating at all.

But more to the point, I'm just viewing it from the individual user's perspective. From your point of view, you're actively harming the world by donating to an anti-charity. It doesn't matter that those other wrong-on-the-internet people think your donation is doing good. :)

gnicholas8y ago

It is useful to distinguish between the individual user's perspective and the global perspective.

You want to focus on the individual user, and that makes sense. But to him/her, they're using an anti-charity because they want to increase their odds of accomplishing their goal. So when thinking about whether it is "good for the world" or "bad for the world" that people do this, we have to factor in:

1: the x% probability that the user will fail, and money will be donated, and

2: the y% chance that the user would have failed without the anti-charity option, but succeeds instead because of it.

When you consider both of these aspects, it is not at all clear that the anti-charity option is bad for the world.

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0 pointsdreeves8y ago0 comments

Our (Beeminder's) counterargument: https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity/

Excerpt:

0 comments

gnicholas8y ago

> StickK’s anti-charities seem the most egregious, actively harming the world.

That assumes that (1) there are "good" charities and "bad" charities, and (2) that most of Stickk's users are good people who end up benefiting "bad" charities when they fail.

Point (1) seems hard to prove and point (2) is impossible to prove without detailed info about how Stickk is used.

It seems like you're in this market, so perhaps you have data like this. Do you? If not, how do you justify the above assertion?

dreevesOP8y ago

gnicholas8y ago

It is useful to distinguish between the individual user's perspective and the global perspective.

1: the x% probability that the user will fail, and money will be donated, and

2: the y% chance that the user would have failed without the anti-charity option, but succeeds instead because of it.

When you consider both of these aspects, it is not at all clear that the anti-charity option is bad for the world.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse