[rdl]

Given that "how people donate money" (or spend money, or invest money seems to conflict with what they claim are their stated preferences, I wonder which is more representative. I'd bet on the revealed preferences by actions.

Basically no one would say (or is allowed to say in polite company) that they care more about having art available locally than the lives of a thousand people in some third-world country that they'll never meet. Yet, it seems pretty obvious that donations to local art save fewer lives than the anti-malarial mosquito nets, and should be obvious to the people donating.

[hprhpr]

Agreed about nobody saying they prefer local art over thousands of lives, but I don't think that means their revealed preferences are more representative of what they really want, I think it just shows how irrational they are. Most people don't sit down and think about what they want most and construct a plan to achieve that, so it shouldn't be surprising that they end up doing such drastically sub-optimal things as donating a lot of money to a museum when someone asks them to. It seems like a good thing to do, so they do it. They don't consider whether it's what they actually most prefer.

[astrofinch]

There's an article on Less Wrong about that too ;)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_str...

[rdl]

I also thought a lot of the art donations (at the high end) were weird tax dodges, or done for the ancillary benefits of donating (getting your name on a building or bench, access to high end parties, cute art girls, etc.)