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So basically they included a bunch of voluntary stuff to plump up the statistic?

by tsotha 12y ago

gadders 12y ago
Yeah. It's a charity. Nobody funds charities that aren't scaring people with statistics.
- waterhouse 12y ago
  I'm not sure how many layers of sarcasm are in that last statement. ;-) But really, that would be a great thing to know for sure: Whether certain kinds of dishonesty are useful in charitable campaigns. If we had studies proving it was counterproductive overall, then we could confidently and on principle criticize and discourage that behavior. If they proved the opposite, ... I would sigh, let others do that for my causes, and not work too hard to discourage them. Has anyone made serious attempts to study this sort of thing? I know there have been some A/B tests on charity pitches that other people've cited. For this... ideally you'd like to compare the long-run success of a charity, but that'd probably be too hard. Studying specific fundraising drives with specific end dates seems more doable and might turn up something useful. It probably would contaminate the results if you had the same charity putting out an honest and a dishonest message that would both reach the same audience, 'cause I think a failure mode of dishonest messages is someone loudly disproving it and denouncing the organization, which would probably hurt both messages. So you might want a lot of charities... or a nationwide charity doing local campaigns in several different states, and assign them randomly to the honest or dishonest message. And then there's plausibility, and other kinds of effectiveness... you may have to try a lot of messages, or make an honest/dishonest pair with a very small change (e.g. just the number). Probably difficult... but I'd be interested to see someone do it.
  - gadders 12y ago
    I'd rather they just told the truth. Lying for a good cause is still lying. Also, it would make it hard to choose between competing charities for finite amounds of funding. Would you fund the most serious issue, or the biggest liar?
    - waterhouse 12y ago
      > I'd rather they just told the truth. Lying for a good cause is still lying. I'm with you on that. As for the rest: Do you mean, if you as a donator have seen through the lie, which should you donate to? Oh, I see, you're saying that liars might successfully get people to donate to them when otherwise they would have given the money to a more important cause. Yes, that's a problem. It's just that, well, people tend to think their cause is the most important in the world, and that siphoning money away from other causes for dishonest reasons is not a problem. [Well, for many causes you probably couldn't fool yourself into thinking that, but it seems distressingly common.] Charities who do this may be considered "selfish". It seems the irony doesn't always bother them. If we could tell those people "You idiots, you are hurting your cause by lying and I can prove it", then that would give them a selfish reason to stop, which seems it might work. Get them to stop, or if they don't, get the reasonable-minded others in their organization to kick them out or leave. It would be nice if they stopped for the right reasons, but if they did it for this reason, that'd still be an improvement.
DanBC 12y ago
I don't know. I'm just saying that trafficked, like rape, has differen statistics in different countries and you need to know what definitions people to make comparisons accurate. I don't think "plump up the statistics" is fair if they're using the same definition as other national governmens.

So basically they included a bunch of voluntary stuff to plump up the statistic?

by tsotha 12y ago

So basically they included a bunch of voluntary stuff to plump up the statistic?

gadders 12y ago

Yeah. It's a charity. Nobody funds charities that aren't scaring people with statistics.

waterhouse 12y ago
I'm not sure how many layers of sarcasm are in that last statement. ;-) But really, that would be a great thing to know for sure: Whether certain kinds of dishonesty are useful in charitable campaigns. If we had studies proving it was counterproductive overall, then we could confidently and on principle criticize and discourage that behavior. If they proved the opposite, ... I would sigh, let others do that for my causes, and not work too hard to discourage them. Has anyone made serious attempts to study this sort of thing? I know there have been some A/B tests on charity pitches that other people've cited. For this... ideally you'd like to compare the long-run success of a charity, but that'd probably be too hard. Studying specific fundraising drives with specific end dates seems more doable and might turn up something useful. It probably would contaminate the results if you had the same charity putting out an honest and a dishonest message that would both reach the same audience, 'cause I think a failure mode of dishonest messages is someone loudly disproving it and denouncing the organization, which would probably hurt both messages. So you might want a lot of charities... or a nationwide charity doing local campaigns in several different states, and assign them randomly to the honest or dishonest message. And then there's plausibility, and other kinds of effectiveness... you may have to try a lot of messages, or make an honest/dishonest pair with a very small change (e.g. just the number). Probably difficult... but I'd be interested to see someone do it.
- gadders 12y ago
  I'd rather they just told the truth. Lying for a good cause is still lying. Also, it would make it hard to choose between competing charities for finite amounds of funding. Would you fund the most serious issue, or the biggest liar?
  - waterhouse 12y ago
    > I'd rather they just told the truth. Lying for a good cause is still lying. I'm with you on that. As for the rest: Do you mean, if you as a donator have seen through the lie, which should you donate to? Oh, I see, you're saying that liars might successfully get people to donate to them when otherwise they would have given the money to a more important cause. Yes, that's a problem. It's just that, well, people tend to think their cause is the most important in the world, and that siphoning money away from other causes for dishonest reasons is not a problem. [Well, for many causes you probably couldn't fool yourself into thinking that, but it seems distressingly common.] Charities who do this may be considered "selfish". It seems the irony doesn't always bother them. If we could tell those people "You idiots, you are hurting your cause by lying and I can prove it", then that would give them a selfish reason to stop, which seems it might work. Get them to stop, or if they don't, get the reasonable-minded others in their organization to kick them out or leave. It would be nice if they stopped for the right reasons, but if they did it for this reason, that'd still be an improvement.

DanBC 12y ago

I don't know. I'm just saying that trafficked, like rape, has differen statistics in different countries and you need to know what definitions people to make comparisons accurate. I don't think "plump up the statistics" is fair if they're using the same definition as other national governmens.