And Harvard takes outrageous overhead rates out of donations (from EA charities) to my research. Surely they could let me use more of the money I raised, instead of taking a cut to add to their Scrooge McDuck pile.
Controversially, I feel this outlines one of the main issues with EA. The problems you outline that could be solved aren’t just tractable, they are incredibly legible. There is a clear link between problem, cost and solution.
However, far less measurable is the output of the marginal students who can attend Harvard / the marginal lecturer they can hire etc. - through illegible means could, either themselves or via the impact on other students, produce world altering innovation that achieves far more than using mosquito nets to save people who will remain in destitute poverty.
On the spreadsheet it looks nice as 1 life saved is an easy metric but in reality its achievement is negligible in the context of what was possible.
I have absolutely no problem with this donation.
To compare run a simple thought experiment. Go back to 1800 and have a few million to donate - do you feed slaves and give them nets or do you build the Carnegie libraries, send Darwin on that ship, offer scholarships to Oxford? The former would certainly save more lives in a legible fashion but I’d contend the latter would do far more for humanity long term, including in mortality, than could ever be measured.
I think part of the problem is that you can't reliably identify beforehand which research ships are going to have Darwin on them and which ships are Ponce de León looking for the fountain of youth.
I'm not against longshots or making low-probability, high-payout bets by any means. But I think that you have to contend with the fact that finding these 'good bets' is extremely difficult. How many students given an Oxford scholarship today, for instance, would end up as scientists making transformative contributions to human knowledge versus becoming investment bankers and white-collar lawyers? I Banking and law aren't bad things per se, but they aren't necessarily leading to "far more for humanity long term including in mortality, than could ever be measured" with any degree of certainty.
I think the solution is probably accepting this uncertainty and diversifying your philanthropic portfolio to incorporate some certainty and some longshot bets.
Altruists are all grifters seeking the unearned. Ken earned his money, and therefore can spend it on anything he likes. The only thing that's morally repugnant is this article demanding that he lives for the sake of others. If you have earned your money, you don't deserve it, if you haven't earned anything, you deserve everything in virtue of that fact -- that is the soul of the altruist.
Your "large amount of money is going into an even larger money pile -> it doesn't matter" is a rather dubious step. Presumably at some point, the extra money in the system is spent on something. Of course, if the marginal impact is significant, that implies the total impact is really large.
What does a large impact look like for such an institution? It looks like them funding research that years later contributes to making mRNA vaccines or whatever. The research is 1) diverse, covering many topics. 2) long tailed. 3) hard to predict.
It's really hard to tell which research is just soaking up money, and which has a 10% chance of yielding miracles in 20 years. If you want to make a case for low impact, you need to do more than this argument from incredulity.
I'm not sure than an argument from incredulity exists here, nor do I think that there is a large logical step involved at arriving at my conclusion. I'm saying that 1) opportunity costs are real 2) there are diminishing marginal returns to provision of funding.
Point 1), in my worldview, implies that the benefits of your choice should exceed the opportunity costs. If they don't, then you've made a poor choice.
Point 2) implies that $300MM to Harvard today with a $51 billion endowment is less impactful, at the margin, than $300MM to a Harvard with a $1 billion endowment. It's unclear to me that Harvard is going to be able to do research thanks to this donation that they wouldn't have done beforehand. After all, Harvard's target distribution from its endowment is 5%-5.5% per year (~$2 billion annually in recent years); Harvard could spend that additional $300MM out of their endowment simply by increasing its annual distribution by half a percent of the total, yet they choose not to do so.
“Furthermore, the students at Harvard, if they aren’t already a part of the elite, will be when they graduate.”
This is the most troubling aspect to me. It sure seems, now more than ever in my life, that the vast majority of Americans really don’t have much say in how our government and institutions are run. We seem to be on a ride driven by a small minority of people with vast resources at their disposal. Further concentrating this imbalance not only lacks utility, it has negative utility. Honestly, if Griffen had just piled this money in a big stack and burned it, the world would be a better place in 20 or 50 years.
The juxtaposition between this story and one in the Free Press is just stunning:
(People with power in the United States and in Europe know damn well that North Korea is terrible. We just don't have the power to change it for the better without an unacceptable risk of things becoming much, much worse. China may have more power over North Korea, but I do not know how much.)
I think that my primary hangup with agreeing with your sentiment is that I believe, very strongly, that *opportunity costs are real*. It's hard for me to escape from the thought that his "small gift" directed in a different manner could have reliably changed, or even saved, the lives of tens of thousands of people.
I know that his intention wasn't to maximize impact, but that doesn't mean that his choice lacks a counterfactual.
And Harvard takes outrageous overhead rates out of donations (from EA charities) to my research. Surely they could let me use more of the money I raised, instead of taking a cut to add to their Scrooge McDuck pile.
Controversially, I feel this outlines one of the main issues with EA. The problems you outline that could be solved aren’t just tractable, they are incredibly legible. There is a clear link between problem, cost and solution.
However, far less measurable is the output of the marginal students who can attend Harvard / the marginal lecturer they can hire etc. - through illegible means could, either themselves or via the impact on other students, produce world altering innovation that achieves far more than using mosquito nets to save people who will remain in destitute poverty.
On the spreadsheet it looks nice as 1 life saved is an easy metric but in reality its achievement is negligible in the context of what was possible.
I have absolutely no problem with this donation.
To compare run a simple thought experiment. Go back to 1800 and have a few million to donate - do you feed slaves and give them nets or do you build the Carnegie libraries, send Darwin on that ship, offer scholarships to Oxford? The former would certainly save more lives in a legible fashion but I’d contend the latter would do far more for humanity long term, including in mortality, than could ever be measured.
I think part of the problem is that you can't reliably identify beforehand which research ships are going to have Darwin on them and which ships are Ponce de León looking for the fountain of youth.
I'm not against longshots or making low-probability, high-payout bets by any means. But I think that you have to contend with the fact that finding these 'good bets' is extremely difficult. How many students given an Oxford scholarship today, for instance, would end up as scientists making transformative contributions to human knowledge versus becoming investment bankers and white-collar lawyers? I Banking and law aren't bad things per se, but they aren't necessarily leading to "far more for humanity long term including in mortality, than could ever be measured" with any degree of certainty.
I think the solution is probably accepting this uncertainty and diversifying your philanthropic portfolio to incorporate some certainty and some longshot bets.
Perhaps Harvard is the real villain here. Imagine the good they could be doing…
Wow.
Altruists are all grifters seeking the unearned. Ken earned his money, and therefore can spend it on anything he likes. The only thing that's morally repugnant is this article demanding that he lives for the sake of others. If you have earned your money, you don't deserve it, if you haven't earned anything, you deserve everything in virtue of that fact -- that is the soul of the altruist.
Just as Ken earned his money and it’s his to spend as he likes, I can have takes on how he spends it.
Dimitar Dimitrov? That’s like if I was called Philomena Philomenei. Actually I quite like that.
Someone's been reading too much Ayn Rand.
Your "large amount of money is going into an even larger money pile -> it doesn't matter" is a rather dubious step. Presumably at some point, the extra money in the system is spent on something. Of course, if the marginal impact is significant, that implies the total impact is really large.
What does a large impact look like for such an institution? It looks like them funding research that years later contributes to making mRNA vaccines or whatever. The research is 1) diverse, covering many topics. 2) long tailed. 3) hard to predict.
It's really hard to tell which research is just soaking up money, and which has a 10% chance of yielding miracles in 20 years. If you want to make a case for low impact, you need to do more than this argument from incredulity.
I'm not sure than an argument from incredulity exists here, nor do I think that there is a large logical step involved at arriving at my conclusion. I'm saying that 1) opportunity costs are real 2) there are diminishing marginal returns to provision of funding.
Point 1), in my worldview, implies that the benefits of your choice should exceed the opportunity costs. If they don't, then you've made a poor choice.
Point 2) implies that $300MM to Harvard today with a $51 billion endowment is less impactful, at the margin, than $300MM to a Harvard with a $1 billion endowment. It's unclear to me that Harvard is going to be able to do research thanks to this donation that they wouldn't have done beforehand. After all, Harvard's target distribution from its endowment is 5%-5.5% per year (~$2 billion annually in recent years); Harvard could spend that additional $300MM out of their endowment simply by increasing its annual distribution by half a percent of the total, yet they choose not to do so.
“Furthermore, the students at Harvard, if they aren’t already a part of the elite, will be when they graduate.”
This is the most troubling aspect to me. It sure seems, now more than ever in my life, that the vast majority of Americans really don’t have much say in how our government and institutions are run. We seem to be on a ride driven by a small minority of people with vast resources at their disposal. Further concentrating this imbalance not only lacks utility, it has negative utility. Honestly, if Griffen had just piled this money in a big stack and burned it, the world would be a better place in 20 or 50 years.
The juxtaposition between this story and one in the Free Press is just stunning:
https://www.thefp.com/p/from-slavery-in-north-korea-to-jeff
Paywalled. :(
(People with power in the United States and in Europe know damn well that North Korea is terrible. We just don't have the power to change it for the better without an unacceptable risk of things becoming much, much worse. China may have more power over North Korea, but I do not know how much.)
I just wanted to point out that he was educated at Harvard, he studied economics and started trading in his dorm room.
I could imagine many people giving back to the school that educated them and gave them such a wealthy life.
I don’t in anyway disagree with anything you have said, it’s true he could have had more impact and they don’t really need the money.
But in order to have more impact, you must start with the question, “how can I spend $300m to have the most impact?”.
I think he just gave a “small gift” as a thank you (small considering his wealth).
I think that my primary hangup with agreeing with your sentiment is that I believe, very strongly, that *opportunity costs are real*. It's hard for me to escape from the thought that his "small gift" directed in a different manner could have reliably changed, or even saved, the lives of tens of thousands of people.
I know that his intention wasn't to maximize impact, but that doesn't mean that his choice lacks a counterfactual.