34 ms·
The least impactful way to spend $300M?
- dehrmann 3y agoBuy Twitter?
- rman666 3y agoBuy SHIB!
- 27fingies 3y agoat least then the money would get distributed to non-billionaires…
- gladiatr72 3y agoBlow?
- pacaro 3y agoH. & B. should always be considered as the null hypothesis to the question "what should I do with all these moneys?"
- Waterluvian 3y agoIt’s his money and he can do whatever he wants. But I can also form whatever opinions I want: That man is chasing after something that he will never find.
- fullshark 3y agoA lower tax bill? People sucking up to him every time he goes to Harvard? The ability to get anyone he wants admitted?
- 93po 3y ago> A lower tax bill? No one ever comes out ahead by donating to charity, this is a common held misconception.
- lojban42 3y agoAt this point, you have an opinion on him. He does not have an opinion on you.
- greatwave1 3y agoThis seems dramatic given the context haha, I would think NOT donating $300m would be a bigger sign of what you're describing
- bigwheeler 3y agoThis was the plot of Brewster’s Millions https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088850/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088850/
- spacedcowboy 3y agoI thought buying a really rare stamp, then mailing it thus destroying its value, was pretty cool :)
- hakfoo 3y agoThat might not work as he expected. Some items are "condition rarities" -- it's worth a fortune in never used condition, but nothing special when worn. Other items are rare as long as they can be reliably attributed. You could run a 1804 US dollar over with a locomotive and it would still be worth six or seven figures as long as the date could be identified. I'd expect plenty of the "rare" stamps would hold a significant slice of value even used. Now, the fact you gave up possession of the expensive item is another issue. Returning to main HN stamping grounds: that's what makes some of these "new collectible" schemes sort of weird (i. e. professionally graded/certified video games)-- they're not necessarily trading on inherently rare items, just creating a "condition scarcity" economy that previously didn't really exist. It's not "the only one of its kind", it's "the only one the grading service gave 9.452345/10".
- mikeryan 3y agoTotally pedantic here but he didn’t have to destroy the stamps value - he just had to transfer that value without “giving it away”.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI think my favorite was when Cards Against Humanity raised money for no other purpose than to dig a hole in the ground. The FAQ included the question, "why don't you give the money to charity?". Answer: "Why don't you give the money to charity?" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/28/cards-against-humanity-hole https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/28/cards-aga...
- Galanwe 3y agoI don't think one donates money to Harvard just for the sake of a plaque. I guess there is some sort of indirect benefit to be had after such a donation, like an entry pass for a child, an entry pass for a PhD, or something of that vein?
- dmix 3y agoDefinitely, the plaque is what's "sold" but it's not (just) what you're purchasing slash donating for. The article touches on that.
- slyall 3y agoHe has 3 children. Aged 15, 13 and 11. If I was one of the kids, I would have taken $100m directly.
- nmjohn 3y agoHe is worth like $40B - that $100m would be nothing compared to what they'll likely inherit
- riazrizvi 3y agoI can’t imagine $300mm is the standard price for whatever favorable treatment he’s buying for his kids. I imagine there is a steep billionaire premium. Similar to how a Western tourist is overcharged non-local rates.
- vecter 3y agoThey'll never have want of money their entire life. But a prestigious education... well that's something that's worth more than a lot of money to those who have almost limitless wealth.
- paulpauper 3y agoHis net worth is tens of billion. they will be getting plenty , no worries. Once you have so much money an Ivy League education is not important. you can buy your way into anything.
- mhluongo 3y agoPay taxes.
- kristopolous 3y agoCould this be some tax and investment dance? Perhaps the money will be used by Harvard to buy a security he holds or has options on washing his hands clean of SEC oversight. Then he executes on the predictable market move, makes the money back and writes down the donation for taxes. Meanwhile, Harvard is still holding whatever long term position they opened so they too are happy. Their cover story is some rather cheap commemorative plaque they put on a wall "thanking" him. I'm not saying this IS what happened but the facts are a hedge fund guy "donating" lots of money to a tax deductible nonprofit that has a giant investment portfolio with rather lax regulatory oversight. Also if I was working for Harvard, I'd absolutely think of offering services like this to court donations.
- magnusss 3y agoI think neither a 40-billionaire nor Harvard would risk legal trouble by pulling off such an easily auditable maneuver.
- kristopolous 3y agoMaybe it sounds conspiratorial but if such schemes were available, I believe Harvard is too well connected to be subject to such scrutiny by those with the power to do such an audit. The idea that people tossing around hundreds of millions of dollars are on the up and up otherwise they would have consequences doesn't seem to have much historical evidence supporting this dynamic The Paradise papers leak outlined a lot of these schemes
- toast0 3y agoEven without all that, donating highly apprechiated assets is super useful for taxes because you not only get to deduct the value from your ordinary income, you also don't have to pay capital gains on the disposition of the asset. I don't know where Mr. Griffin pays taxes, but if you have the right conditions, donating apprechiated assets is very inexpensive. For example, if you're in california with oodles of income, your ordinary income will be at a marginal rate of 37 federal and 12.3 state, and your capital gains will be a total of 23.8 federal (includes niit) and again 12.3 state. So donating $1 of highly apprechiated assets avoids 26.1 cents of tax, and allows a deduction for 49.3 cents; it has the same effect on wealth as donating 14.6 cents. So it may have only cost $44M to donate $300M. Of course, most people don't have $300M of ordinary income to deduct against, and aren't at the highest of the high brackets (and Mr. Griffin has residences in no income tax states, so he may not pay state income tax on capital gains anyway)
- rwalle 3y ago[flagged]
- orangepurple 3y agoInvest it in a beverage company whose customer base is conservative, frat boys, and the working class then aggressively rebrand it with everything they oppose front and center. Proceed to lose six billion dollars of capitalization in six days.
- cool_dude85 3y agoLet me know how the 30 dollar sixers of right wing ale treat ya, my working class friend.
- hinkley 3y agoBuy a popular communication platform and then ruin it by making it a mockery of both free speech and censorship at the same time.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoI remember when the NFL did the same thing. Turns out that all addicts can quit short-term, but almost none can quit long-term.
- cool_dude85 3y agoThis article very briefly encapsulates everything wrong with Effective Altruism: a boneheaded assumption that this money is being donated for its societal impact, an unwillingness to try to actually understand what's going on, instead choosing to engage with the Harvard endowment on its own terms by taking the university "mission statement" seriously, and a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet purporting to identify better ways to donate based on character sheet style min-maxing.
- ethanbond 3y agoI doubt anyone in EA is actually misled by what’s going on here. They’re trying to out it as not a charitable donation at all so no one who hasn’t thought about it is misled. This is a good thing to do.
- cool_dude85 3y agoThen why take it seriously at all. You're looking to perform a forensic analysis to determine whether the wallet inspector's credentials are a forgery. The whole thing is a scam.
- ethanbond 3y agoBecause not everyone knows that donations to Harvard are ~scams.
- pie_flavor 3y agoIf I point out that something you did is bad because of a particular outcome, that doesn't mean I thought your goal was to avoid that outcome. In fact it means exactly the opposite; if your goal was not to avoid that outcome, but it should have been, then my criticism is even more applicable.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoExactly. Anyone who knows Griffin knows he is essentially one of the core villains of the finance world already (which in of itself is a rather impressive feat, you really have to be villainous to be considered one of the worst people in finance). Trying to assume this isn’t just some villainous vanity play in the first place was the article’s mistake.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoI'm going to say that the US spending $5 trillion on wars in the past 20 years was a lot worse way to spend money than giving it to Harvard.
- Overtonwindow 3y agoAn appropriations for the corporation for public broadcasting
- crazygringo 3y agoI definitely don't think the big schools like Harvard/Yale/etc. need any more money, but I will play devil's advocate here. > "he donated $300 million in such as a way as to do as close as possible to zero good with it." Oh there are a lot worse ways to spend it with the best of intentions. The Turkana frozen-fish plant is a classic example, a charitable project where back in around 1975 around $150 million (in today's money) was spent on a frozen fish factory next to a lake... a lake that regularly disappears... and in a location without reliable electricity [1] [2]. It was utterly useless. There's a shocking amount of charitable money that just winds up having utterly no impact whatsoever. On the other hand, giving $300 million to Harvard is probably going to have a good chance of some long-term impact. It is ultimately funding education for smart people who are well-positioned to use that education productively, and for research and arts that are meant to benefit humanity. It's not just throwing it away. I absolutely agree there are many institutions with a much greater need for the money, but "zero good" is extreme exaggeration. People have done much, much, MUCH worse with donating money. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/04/05/how-not-to-aid-african-nomads/df2edbff-7294-46dd-abf1-fc3dc13b36ff/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/04/05/h... [2] https://www.ibtimes.com/kenyas-turkana-learns-failed-fish-project-194573 https://www.ibtimes.com/kenyas-turkana-learns-failed-fish-pr...
- tempestn 3y agoI'd go one further. There are plenty of actively harmful donations one could make. As one example, most people would probably feel that way about roughly half of political donations.
- VanTheBrand 3y agoPolitical contributions are not donations and are not tax deductible.
- tempestn 3y agoThe OP didn't ask what was the least impactful tax deductible way to spend.
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- moneycantbuy 3y agothe war in afghanistan cost taxpayers $300,000,000 per day every day for 20 years, for a total of ~$2,000,000,000,000
- tomjakubowski 3y agoFor less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day (per taxpayer)...
- rqtwteye 3y agoDoesn’t sound too bad, right?
- scythe 3y agoI make my coffee at home because the shops are too expensive
- renewiltord 3y agoToday I skipped my coffee so we can get Bin Laden.
- 55555 3y agoThat is so obscene. So basically every American paid a dollar per day, I guess. (I know, ~most don't pay income taxes, but yeah.)
- imtringued 3y agoMeanwhile Americans complain about $2 per year per Indian citizen spent on the Indian space program as if $2 could somehow meaningfully solve "poverty" in India.
- hackernewds 3y agoso basically the middle and upper middle class paid a lunch per day to fund the war into private coffers
- abaageh 3y ago
- kfrzcode 3y agoGive everyone in America $1. That'll impact basically nothing.
- SXX 3y agoBut you'll forever stay in a history as a guy who did it.
- scrollaway 3y agoA donation like this would be extremely impactful because it would: 1. Get a lot of people talking and 2. Probably cause a bureaucratic headache for a LOT of people and waste insane amounts of time nation wide.
- kfrzcode 3y agoHmm I didn't consider second-order impact, but still think it's gotta be one of the least impactful ways, strictly speaking. "Spending," is a loose term but if burning a sum of cash that large... maybe that's impactful to the climate
- codevark 3y ago[dead]
- sslayer 3y agoShe don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie, cocaine...
- iancmceachern 3y agoMedical devices and medical innovation in general. There are so many medical devices and therapies that are technically possible, exist in some form or another, but do not meet the 10x returns that typical VC and big medtech players demand on their products. There are so many opportunities to really help people that are suffering that may not be super profitable, but aren't money loosers either.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoYou’re answering the question of how least useful to donate it?
- iancmceachern 3y agoI'm answering the most impactful. I thought that was a much more helpful question to ask and answer.
- balderdash 3y agoIt seems like the only morally acceptable outcome for the author is that rich people give away all their money in a way that comports with their view of what a “good” use of these donations would be. Don’t disagree that the marginal utility for the world populace might be pretty limited, but it seems like it has utility for the donor
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoHe should have given that money to an advocacy organization instead. (But only if it’s one that this blogger happens to agree with.)
- mugivarra69 3y agoonly fans
- quickthrower2 3y agoSide topic. Is it better for society to give 300mil to an ivy league. Or start a new university?
- jimbokun 3y agoStart a new university.
- rqtwteye 3y agoHow about giving it to a poor university that needs the money?
- balderdash 3y agoI’m always curious why more new universities/schools aren’t started by the super rich, seems like there were lots of them started 100-200 years ago, and but that trend has tailed off, and there is certainly the demand…
- lordnacho 3y agoSame as why they don't make new sports teams. Much less risk in sticking your name on an existing institution that's already running. Modern universities are also a heck of a lot more complex than 150 years ago. Same as modern sports teams, there was a period where those are also just founded by a company as a side arm.
- cozzyd 3y agoEvery dollar KG gives to Harvard is a dollar he can't spend to fund nutjobs for public office. (Plus, the way he wasted $50M in the Illinois primary is probably the least effective way to have spent money)
- noncoml 3y agoIs there a logical fallacy somewhere in there? If everybody thought the same then no one would donate to them and they wouldn’t be the richest school. Isn’t it similar to saying “what’s the point of voting, in my state my party always wins anyway”.
- 27153 3y agoNo, because everyone doesn’t think that way.
- PragmaticPulp 3y agoI like the idea of Effective Altruism (EA), but it’s ironic to use EA to call out ineffective charitable spending in the wake of all the Effective Altruism ridiculousness of recent years. EA was a key part of SBF’s cover story to make his frauds appear to be coming from a philanthropic angle. An EA figurehead recently spent multiple millions, some of which was FTX donations, on a castle/chateau to “host events”, which they rationalized as a good use of funds for weird reasons that even the EA community isn’t buying ( https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pbe8x4AQDqftQoaT5/espr-should-return-the-ftx-funded-chateau https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pbe8x4AQDqftQoaT5/... ). When you look into the history of EA movements, a lot of the spending becomes weirdly self-serving and requires a lot of mental gymnastics to justify. One shining example that comes to mind is the $30K grant they allocated to printing Harry Potter rationalist fan fiction and distributing it (Yes, this really happened: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-recommendations https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/... ). Hardcore EA proponents will get staunchly defensive about all of this weird spending, but then they’ll single out $300mm donations like this for not going to malaria nets. It’s getting old.
- jimsimmons 3y agoThe lamest thing about EA is easily its name. Imagine if Disney came out with “Effective Avengers” tomorrow
- johnfn 3y ago> Hardcore EA proponents will get staunchly defensive about all of this weird spending, but then they’ll single out $300mm donations like this for not going to malaria nets. It’s getting old. Maybe because one is 300mm and one is 30k? It's a difference of four orders of magnitude. It's like saying "EA proponents will get weirdly upset about burning down a house, but then the very next day they'll go and light a candle." (Also, HPMoR does a great job at getting more people into EA - it isn't quite as superfluous as your comment makes it seem.)
- PragmaticPulp 3y agoThe Harry Potter fan fiction thing was something they got together and voted for. It’s not something they’d criticize because they chose it themselves. I brought it forward as an example of the difference between their criticisms of other people’s donations and their own actual choices for grants. The multi million dollar castle purchase is more recent and more ridiculous. It used ill-gotten FTX funds in the process, too.
- irjustin 3y agoI take issue with this article under the Effective Altruism concept. 100% agree with the title, that the it is very not impactive. But it isn't actively harmful, which there's a LOT of other ways to spend $300m and actually be harmful. So the article takes issue with buying status overall - agreed. But, saying that Griffin should have donated the money to "better things". Even the article writer points out that Griffin is a egomaniac and a "villian". I disagree with the core issue and argue this is a fantastic outcome all things considered. Like if Martin Shkreli donated to Harvard to get building as well I'd be super happy because he didn't actively invest in extracting money from people in disadvantaged medical situations.
- fasterik 3y agoLet's say charity X can save one life per $10,000 spent on average. Then $300M can save 30,000 lives. If you choose to burn that money instead of donating it to charity X, 30,000 people who could have survived are now dead. That doesn't seem like a fantastic outcome to me.
- irjustin 3y ago> If you choose to burn that money instead of donating it to charity X, 30,000 people who could have survived are now dead. That doesn't seem like a fantastic outcome to me. This statement forgets that the person who donated doesn't care. They actively like to hurt companies who don't deserve it and profit from it (unlike Hindenburg Research).
- fasterik 3y agoI could say about someone who kills a million people "well, they don't care. At least they didn't kill two million people." That doesn't seem like the right way to evaluate ethical claims. If we're talking about what would have been the right thing to do, it would have been to kill 0 people, regardless of what personality traits they have.
- irjustin 3y ago
- plaguepilled 3y ago[flagged]
- elzbardico 3y agoThere are the times where, deeply inside of me, I think that maybe Mao Zedong was right.
- Metacelsus 3y agoAnd meanwhile Harvard still needs to take a 70% overhead rate on my grants, so they can add more cash to their Scrooge McDuck pile.
- vivegi 3y agoUsing that same logic, no one should aim to join (or continue to stay with) Apple or MSFT or Google or $LARGECORP as they are already very large corps with lots of talented people. They should take their talent elsewhere. /s
- kjghkjghkjgh 3y agoDidn't Effective Altruism recently purchase a $15,000,000 mansion to host their get togethers?
- seanp2k2 3y agoWhy not do $44bn and buy Twitter?
- dc-programmer 3y agoIt’s hard to beat billionaire donations to longtermism causes for the title of the least impactful
- Brendinooo 3y agoI dunno, the author could be right, but these kinds of posts always rub me the wrong way. I just don't like the idea that someone is out there telling you that you're doing charity wrong. It could be coming from a good place but comes off with an air of moral superiority. If this guy finds out that I buy some pepperoni rolls for my kid's ballet fundraiser, is he gonna guilt trip me with malaria nets too?
- BatFastard 3y agoIts better than spending 44 Billion on Twitter!
- j0hnyl 3y agoWho cares what some rich guy's vanity spend is. You might argue it's not impactful, but it certainly doesn't hurt anyone.
- bboygravity 3y agoAlso a criminal who will likely end up in jail at some point. His companies aren't exactly uncontroversial. There's a reason people call this guy (Ken Griffin) Madoff 2.0
- lordnacho 3y agoWhy on earth would he end up in jail? No don't just tell us to Google it, obviously it won't turn up anything. What allegations are you referring to?
- boeingUH60 3y agoThe person you're responding to is likely a member of the meme stock doomsday cult that keeps blaming Ken Griffin for their AMC/GameStop losses.
- nmca 3y agoOpportunity costs are real. Opportunity costs are real. Opportunity costs ARE REAL. OPPORTUNITY COSTS ARE REAL. ¡¡¡ OPPORTUNITY COSTS ARE REAL !!!
- j0hnyl 3y agoOk, but the opportunity costs pertain solely to the spender, and even if not they are priced into the market. why do you feel entitled to the fortune that someone else decides to use for a vanity project.
- 27153 3y agoHow do the costs not apply to the tens of thousands of lives that could have been saved?
- jliptzin 3y agoHis “donation” is essentially just a couple updates to some database tables. He doesn’t need the money, Harvard doesn’t need the money, neither will buy or not buy something as a result of the transaction, it’s just numbers moved from Griffin’s row to Harvard’s row. What else would you expect from two entities exchanging money when both have far more than they’ll ever need?
- Gatsky 3y agoThere is that story about KLF actually setting fire to a million pounds [1]. Why don’t the ultra rich give away more money? Why do they spend it on super yachts, houses with 50 bathrooms, and horridly expensive luxury trinkets? Even more to the point, why do they just hang on to vast sums of money they don’t need in bank accounts or other investments? My conclusion is that there isn’t a reason, in the same way that there wasn’t really a reason KLF burned a million quid. Counterfactualising the lives of the rich and powerful is a profound waste of time. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_...
- jessekv 3y agoYou could argue that burning plain quid efficiently distributes the value back to the other holders of quid (deflation). Burning a million quid in some thing like housing, on the other hand, selfishly removes wealth from society and the economy.
- jessekv 3y agoIt makes me wonder- what would happen if we had wealth taxes on cash, but the money went to... no one?
- imtringued 3y agoIf we assume the central banks lower their reserve ratios (you know, like they already did), no deflation would happen. If the reserve ratio stays the same, then deflation would eventually happen. However, even if there is deflation, people will still be willing to lend out cash as reducing their cash holding means they reduce the amount of tax they have to pay. You would most likely always see full employment according to "Say's Law". This is a much better idea than having a zero lower bound and an endlessly growing welfare state. I mean, imagine if you didn't have to pay for municipal garbage collection. You would produce more trash than is optimal as someone else is eating the cost. A guaranteed legal minimum wage that is excessively high (think $50 per hour) also encourages more workers to apply for jobs than is optimal. The zero lower bound not only contains a price control, it also contains an implicit subsidy that guarantees that the government has to subsidize the difference between the interest rate on the capital market, which may in theory be negative and the guaranteed interest rate on cash. It may not sound like a subsidy since no money is being paid, except if you don't pay the subsidy you get something like the great depression. The economy grinds to a halt. The subsidy has to be paid indirectly, the government has to guarantee to keep borrowing enough money until the interest rate is above 0%. I.e. the government has to take on more debt than is optimal and then it somehow has to recycle it back into the private economy. It will have to micromanage more and more parts of the economy simply because of some illogical decision to say "the private capital market ends at the zero lower bound". This is why I am in favor of negative interest rates above some threshold like $250k.
- yalogin 3y agoIf the elite universities are getting this much in funding and have an almost infinite amount of reserves, why don’t they just make the school free to attend? It makes so much sense, creates enormous good will and increases competition thereby getting even better students. They can charge for boarding and food may be and waive the tuition if needed
- paxys 3y agoUniversities like Harvard are free to attend (if you can't afford it).
- atdrummond 3y agoI don’t think the comparison is other donations but rather other vanity purchases like sports teams. At this level, these donations are less about the actual concrete impact but moreso the press and prestige of the funding event itself. Trying to fit these gifts into the philanthropy mindsets of maximum impact, long termism, EA, etc is missing the point.
- petesergeant 3y agoI feel like paying for a new college at Oxford or Cambridge is a better use of money. They'll rename a graduate school at the drop of a hat, but John I de Balliol and Walter de Merton aren't too far off having had their name live on for almost 1,000 years now
- lordnacho 3y agoNew College Oxford seems like it's been ready to get a donation for most of a millennium.
- exabrial 3y agoLeast impactful? Give it to the government
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- frankfrankfrank 3y agoI’m just going to ignore the petulant complaining, but does it not dawn on anyone that is not really a donation, as much as it’s an investment? I’ll just leave it at that.
- m3kw9 3y agoWho cares, have he kept that money there would be no article saying that 300mil sitting in his portfolio isn’t doing anything good to society. At least it’s a school, 5% months any the number to look at, it’s 300million of resources.
- adammarples 3y agoThere are lots of articles taking aim at billionaires hoarding capital, if you look
- Julesman 3y agoImagine what the 300 most creative people here could do with 1 million dollars to invest in a business concept?
- joebob42 3y agoSure, but how do you know who that is? And if you give it to 300 random people it probably gets very little done. I'd certainly do nothing of value with it, and I like to think I'm both a decent dev and a decent communicator, so it's not beyond imagination I could convince someone I was worth it if they were just looking for people to dump $1,000,000 on.
- kleton 3y agoBut how many generations of admission for his descendants does that buy? If you are trying to analyze this through some effective altruism lens, you are not going to explain it. Leave EA to SBF.
- shapefrog 3y agoI see your $300M "least impactful" Harvard donation and raise you $4.1 billion Presidential candidates raised and spent in the 24 months of the 2019-2020 election cycle.
- bblpeter 3y ago[flagged]
- thiht 3y agoIs this trickle-down economics at work?
- brokenkebaby 3y agoThinking in percents is not always the way to make a correct assumption. $300 mln is still $300 mln even if it's 0.6% of whatever budget, and claiming that it won't make a difference is not particularly logical. The man's motivation is pure vanity, but the act of donation is not useless (though Harvard management can make it so, but that's a different story).
- SilverBirch 3y agoThis is such a good demonstration of the problem with effective alturism. Does anyone in their right mind think that Ken Griffin made a calculation of what was going to provide the most efficient use of his capital when he made this decision? Nope! And this is a problem that EA has always suffered from - they view a complex social and emotional problem as a logic puzzle, and are often blind to their own idiosynchrasies. How much time does EA waste whining on about AI safety? Way too much! But from their actuarial perspective it's almost a divide by zero bug - "What's the chances of an AI? Some small number, what could it's impact be? Oh, infinite. Ok, guess we should dedicate every penny we have to that then...". EA doesn't meet charity on it's own terms.
- BLanen 3y agoEffective Altruism not understand that this gift was never actually about being "effective", and if it does understand that then what's the point of bringing it up AGAIN as if it's an original idea("Geez, lets not waste money, I'm so smart").
- snapplebobapple 3y agoThis article misses the point. Charity is a personal thing and the only person it has to be impactful for is the person doing the charity and this was definitely impactful for ken. His ego gets a huge stroking every time his building gets mentioned in anything and he gets to flex on all the students at Harvard who walk by and use his building every day. That it isn't maximizing social welfare is pretty irrelevant.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoThe point is donating to worthless causes is morally repugnant and deserves to be derided. Sure he can do whatever he wants, and we can try to peer pressure him into making better decisions next time.