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The Game Theory of Anonymous Donations
- wffurr 8y agoThere's another factor not mentioned in the article. Maybe it's not an issue for the rich. Avoiding getting put on mailing lists that are then shared with other charities that then drown you in passive aggressive guilt inducing junk mail or unsolicited phone calls.
- danielndukwu 8y agoAh, very true. I’m sure it happens but they likely have a secretary or other means to shield themselves from the worst if it.
- gshubert17 8y agoThis. The past few years, I've been making most of my donations through Colorado Gives Foundation, and I give anonymously. The various organizations get my money but not my address or phone. I can ignore all the unsolicited mail. If someone calls, I tell them I make all my donations in December, and I'll keep them in mind then, but not now.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- blowski 8y agoWhat if people are giving out of a genuine desire to do good?
- bonniemuffin 8y agoDo you believe in true altruism? If so, how do you think it arose in the human population? Evolution and natural selection suggests that even if you think your desires are purely altruistic, at some deeper level there's always a selfish reason behind them, because otherwise the allegedly-altruistic trait wouldn't have been able to evolve and thrive.
- aisofteng 8y agoNo, it doesn’t. A trait that is not deleterious to reproduction will not be naturally selected against.
- konschubert 8y ago> Do you believe in true altruism? If so, how do you think it arose in the human population? I was going to constuct an argument of how altruism propels societies forward, even benefiting the "weakened" altruistic individuals among it. But the more important point is that evolution not always finding a global maximum. Some traits that are beneficial, such as empathy, might have weird side effects that nature didn't yet bother to eliminate.
- erentz 8y agoAltruism helps the group and others. And helping the group and others means they help you when you need it. It also helps the species as a whole. So it seems an altruism trait would be conserved for that reason. But that doesn’t make the trait selfish. The trait may have expected nothing in return when it developed, it just so happened it worked out that way. When a person feels the feelings of wanting to do good for another, that feeling itself is not selfish.
- stealthmodeclan 8y agoAnd helping the group Which group? My group, my people? Isn't that what divides the society?
- Retric 8y agoGroups which consider you a member. This may include say a dog that considers me part of it's group but not a wold looking to eat me. Large groups are so recent in evolutionary terms as to be irrelevant. Nations and companies etc may be exploiting traits benifitial in much smaller group sizes. Remember cost benifit is non linear, which is why trade for example happens. I might spend more resources than I receive while benefiting more than it costs me. PS: The article is talking about different degrees of publicity, not nessisarily true anonymity.
- psyc 8y agoExactly this. It seems the article and most nerds assume the conclusion that giving must be for reputation enhancement.
- zzzcpan 8y agoWell, desires can only exist if there are rewards. You are implying people can desire things without rewards, but that would be against human nature.
- walterbell 8y agoThere can be private rewards that are not socially visible, e.g. - donating to the favorite charity of a deceased friend - donating to a charity whose goals are aligned with your belief system
- DoreenMichele 8y agoIf you want a particular thing to happen, you can support that thing without getting public credit and be happy that the thing is happening. If you make the world a better place, you get to live in a better place. It can be a form of enlightened self interest.
- dorfsmay 8y agoWhy do you vote? To me giving to charity is like voting, but with some weight behind it. Voting is trying to influence the chances that shit happens, while giving money is putting fuel in the machine that makes shit happen.
- phkahler 8y agoMating has no reward to you other than how it makes you feel. The real benefit is to your genes which get to reproduce. Altruism may improve your environment as well as that of your offspring. Such behavior could be genetically selected for even in species without a big enough brain to have "motives" with known rewards. Cooperation happens in all sorts of creatures.
- 8y ago
- alrex021 8y agoGood question. From a game theoretic perspective, agents (players) are assumed to be self-interested in a non-cooperative setting if I recall. Maybe someone can comment on this a bit further.
- cornholio 8y agoA bee sacrificing her life to fend off an attacker has an absolutely genuine desire to do good by it's hive. Even a rational organism like a human could act on moral and behavioral biases that emerged under selfish gene evolutionary pressure. An example could be our strong tendency to protect children, young ones especially, a bias we share with most other vertebrates. Protecting the children is a sacred cow in almost any human society, even to the expense of adults. From an utilitarian and philosophical point of view, that's entirely debatable since children represent a lower investment of resources compared to a productive adult and are much easier to replace. It's hard to prove that very young children are barely even conscious. When we understand children as the depositories of their parents genes, the strong moral imperative to save children even at the expense of the parent's own life becomes easier to understand. There's no contradiction between viewing protecting children as the right and moral thing to do, and observing that said morality is indelibly linked to our evolution.
- throwawaymath 8y agoThis is a great question for philosopher sniping. But it's not so great for actually drawing conclusions about the world. A "genuine desire to do good" doesn't really mean anything.
- dwaltrip 8y agoThis is a rather trite response. I've personally made multiple donations here and there because I thought the organizations are poised to have a positive long term impact on humanity. I don't freely share that information. I'm pretty confident that I'm not a crazy outlier, and that this behavior is mundane and common.
- throwawaymath 8y agoNone of that really has anything to do with my point about the phrase "a genuine desire to do good" being vacuous. If you think my observation is too trite to be useful, juxtapose it against the dozen commenters attempting to reconstruct altruism from evolutionary first principles. Meaningless questions don't merit serious debate just because they're grammatically coherent. We could come up with any number of questions like this which will yield at least n + 1 opinions for every n people we ask.
- draw_down 8y agoIs it really so hard to understand why someone would donate anonymously? I always do it that way. The point is for the money to go somewhere it can be helpful. The point is not recognition. The point is not for some good to come back to me. Everything is unjustly distributed in our world, mortifyingly so. And if you have more than you need it’s your responsibility to help fix that.
- milleramp 8y agoThis is probably not the last idea from curb your enthusiasm to eventually be supported in research.
- Antifragile1 8y agoNot everyone is a virtue signaling libtard faggot. That's why some of us donate anonymously.
- partycoder 8y agoSome donations are tax deductible. Many donors will just use money they would initially use for taxes. That's probably why retired billionaires become philanthropists.
- voidmain 8y agoThat isn't how tax deductions work. Even very tax efficient giving will not save you $1.00 of taxes when you give $1.00!
- partycoder 8y agoBut if someone donates you money, and your foundation donates that money, you can offset that.
- pesmhey 8y agoIn their game theory recreations, there are receivers and senders, but did they account for bystanders/third parties? Danson’s donation is only anonymous to people who might walk into the area, but to anyone that truly matters - to Danson, at least - the donation is not anonymous. Perhaps there is a third dimension here that is being missed?
- bausshf 8y agoThis is just a theory... A game theory.