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This article very briefly encapsulates everything wrong with Effective Altruism: a boneheaded assumption that this money is being donated for its societal impac
by cool_dude85 4y ago
This 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoBecause not everyone knows that donations to Harvard are ~scams.
- pie_flavor 4y 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 4y 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.
- jimbokun 4y agoThe article very plainly spells out how this is just done villainous vanity play…no?
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago> a boneheaded assumption that this money is being donated for its societal impact Pretty hard disagree. The subtitle of this article is "Buying status is as close to bad as a good act can be." The author seems pretty clear-headed about what the purpose of this gift is. The also seem to say "sure, EA isn't the end all/be all of donation guidance", but it is an easy way to highlight that Griffin's act of altruism is a vanity play.