[xwdv]

I would love to build charity ware to help offset some of the ethically questionable things I do, but I was wondering how did you choose a cause to donate toward? Did you know someone personally who perished from malaria? There’s so many things that can be donated to I don’t know how to pick one or evaluate where donations would even be most effective.

[yboris]

I focus on cost-effectiveness of charities. Thankfully I can rely on the 10+ years of full-time research by a great team at GiveWell. The charity I chose is Against Malaria Foundation which is the top-rated charity by GiveWell:

https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

ps - I also, for 10 years now, give at least 10% of my income (aside from this project) to cost-effective charities as per my pledge through Giving What We Can https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ -- this is one of many initiatives that fall under the umbrella of EA (Effective Altruism) https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

[bigiain]

Mike Monteiro (a self describe asshole: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/ruined-by-design/ ) thinks and talks and writes a lot about this.

A particularly cutting piece I like to remember is:

"But here’s the thing. You can’t help Uber build Greyball during the day, or help Palantir design databases to round up immigrants as your main gig, and then buy ethics offsets by doing a non-profit side hustle. We need you to work ethically during that day job much more than we need you working with that non-profit." -- https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-cant-be-a-side-hustle-b...

He's outspoken and hard lined and uncomfortable to listen to. But he's probably right as well.

[xwdv]

If that’s the case then I simply won’t do anything at all and focus on my day job.

But I don’t think that’s the case, because I think doing something is still better than nothing, and for some people ethics offsets can help soothe their weary souls.

[tsmigiel]

I use givewell.org to find charities. From their home page:

"We search for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar."

They appear to be pretty transparent about how they choose charities to recommend. I don't want to misrepresent them, so please check out their site if you want more details.

[prionassembly]

Donating money is an act of self-expression. Do learn about effective altruism, cost-effectiveness, impact, etc. but know that it will ultimately reflect your values. Donate to African wildlife if you're fascinated by lions and zebras.

I donate to Wikipedia and the archive.org. I practice rational ignorance: I estimate that the costs of learning more about effective charity are far above the costs of doing it wrong. Maybe Wikipedia uses the money to create more and more small-fry side-projects (Wiki-maps, wiki-this, wiki-that). Maybe it funds Wikifeet, which is thoroughly weird. I don't care -- Wikipedia is one of the greatest accomplishments of H. sapiens sapiens.

(Malaria is still a big problem, and it's so cheaply improved upon -- if that touches your heart, go for it!)

[thewakalix]

Effective altruism isn't opposed to your values. It's about achieving your values as much as possible, given resource constraints. If your values are different from most EAs, then you'll have a different criterion for "effectiveness".

[prionassembly]

Effective altruism is a value. A practicing Catholic may find the most effective interventions to be against their religion. A less strict Christian may feel that effectiveness overrules religious directives. In any case, you're operating under your values.

[kubanczyk]

Altruism is simply a concern for others. In broad sense it can mean that you care whether others get more value (according to either receivers' opinion or your opinion about values).

"Effective" just means you don't want to waste money or time on values not important (according to either receivers' opinion or your opinion).

The fact that Givewell chooses certain values (the rational ones) and Christianity slightly different values is orthogonal to the concept of altruism.

Even if I believed in Flying Spaghetti Monster I could care whether others have a steady supply of macaroni. This makes me an altruist in my book. And I could act effectively about it. But I wouldn't complain about Givewell in that case.

And that's why I don't like conflating rationalism with effective altruism. It's just another case of emotional loading of a phrase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

[thewakalix]

"Rationality" is similar to "effectiveness", in that it's value-neutral. The existing movement named "rationalism", of course, is made of people who have particular values.

[shkkmo]

Efforts work best when they are focused on helping with a problem that you have direct experience with.

I think the long term large impact of pushing back against these ethically questionable things, even at the expense of your long term career earnings potential, would have a better result for society.

If you can't push back on that stuff internally, consider publicizing the behaviors and starting a conversation around them.

Don't just dump money into a charity to assauge your conscience.

[yboris]

Efforts work best when they are focused on cost-effective interventions, not things you have direct experience with.

Just about 100% of the US population have no experience with malaria. Yet it costs about $2 to provide a insecticide-treated net that protects on average 2 people for 2-3 years from malaria (while they sleep -- a common time for malaria transmission). There is arguably nothing you can do with $2 of resources in the US that can do as much good as this.

So, please focus on cost-effective charities with a proven track record, that use evidence-based methods to help individuals, and do it in a transparent way (so you know what's happening when you donate). To make it easier, start with GiveWell - an independent charity evaluator: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

[shkkmo]

I would point out that only funding projects that can easily measure and quantify results will rule out a lot of important projects. If you are going to donate, then you should do it responsibly. Using an independent non-profit to evaluate your potential recipients is a way to do that, and getting direct experience with the non-profit is another.

You seem to have missed my point: Doing evil things for money and then donating some of that money to charity is generally worse than not doing the evil things in the first place.

[prionassembly]

Then, it's possible that nets are being distributed by evil people who make their victims kneel for hours before getting help. (This is extreme, but it could involve things diametrically opposed to your values; maybe Islam is being spread in traditional animistic societies[0], destroying traditional culture; maybe they're micro-chipping these people.) Cost-effectiveness is a good metric, but if you know nothing about what's involved in curing malaria...

---

[0] Semi-relatedly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Save_the_Children_Fund_Fil...

[yboris]

Exactly the reason everyone should do research before giving to charity. Since unlike products you buy, which you can test out and even return, charitable donations provide you with no feedback, you must research charities.

The great news is GiveWell has been doing this for over a decade (full time!) and has excellent recommendations.

https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities