Let's define a (negative) hedon as the amount of pain from one papercut on your finger, or from half an hour of moderate headache, all else equal.

How many expected hedons can you affect by giving one dollar to a charity of your choice (or a random charity that is recommended as "effective" by dedicated evaluation orgs)? What's the dollar price of one altruistic hedon?

I know this is a hard question with high uncertainties, but I'm interested in your current best estimates about the very rough ballpark (i.e. orders of magnitude).

Infinite, because even if I were just avoiding a papercut, my infinitely many copies across the multiverse would all be doing the same.

The expected hedons are also infinite because there's a nonzero probability of asymmetric insanely infinitely big payoffs.

Less loftily, I think quantifying hedons per dollar isn't terribly tractable, because the actual impact may be dominated by unknown unknowns. What matters most is setting up conditions such that our vastly more intelligent descendants will do less bad things with their power.

Of course, we can still compare interventions for relative impact, but the raw magnitude measured in hedons seems obscured by things we never saw coming.

(P.S.: If you sell hedons on a market for their dollar value, does that make you a Hedonic Trader?)

Brian Tomasik wrote:Infinite, because even if I were just avoiding a papercut, my infinitely many copies across the multiverse would all be doing the same.

The expected hedons are also infinite because there's a nonzero probability of asymmetric insanely infinitely big payoffs.

Yes, right, that whole infinitarian paralysis thing. I tend to block that out like I block Pascal's Mugging out. (There's still some small probability that the universe is finite, but I'm not sure what else this would imply. For practical choice, I need more down-to-earth thinking (and hope it's not totally irrational).

Less loftily, I think quantifying hedons per dollar isn't terribly tractable, because the actual impact may be dominated by unknown unknowns. What matters most is setting up conditions such that our vastly more intelligent descendants will do less bad things with their power.

Of course, we can still compare interventions for relative impact, but the raw magnitude measured in hedons seems obscured by things we never saw coming.

Thanks for this excellent link, I hadn't seen it yet. I will read it after posting this, so maybe it answers the next question already:

Could we perhaps put a lower bound on hedons per dollar, if we ignore unknown unkowns, or known unknowns which we can't quantify?

Basically an approach like focusing on well-known, well-measurable effects of the most solid charities, and then use this as a lower bound. Let's say I can spend x dollars on a luxury item that gives me 10 hedons, but a person very much like me could clearly buy 20 hedons with a more needed item. Surely some charities do things that have a tractable effect on certain dimensions of suffering? This could provide a minimum efficiency benchmark to compare with other spending.

(P.S.: If you sell hedons on a market for their dollar value, does that make you a Hedonic Trader?)

Haha. I actually think I am, in a sense. I started thinking about this by trading off hedons (in my own metric) against earning potential, which can be traded off against altruistic hedons, but I didn't know at what ratio. I also reflected how I would trade off my own hedons against some radom sentient's (roughly 1:3 in reflective equilibrium). How I will approach the labor market in the next years is in part determined by this question.

Katja Grace mentioned that people often underestimate how much altruistic good they can do with hard self-sacrifice. I was doubting this in my mind, and the best example I could come up with, for my personal situation, would be to earn a lot more by doing a lot more unpleasant work, and donate it all (life organ donations are illegal here in Germany unless you can prove you have a personal relationship with the recipient, due to misguided paternalism). Doug S. then mentioned buying life insurance, waiting 2 years, and then committing suicide. Unfortunately, this requires US laws (I don't think it works here in Germany) and you need to be able to kill yourself, and I have a psychological barrier against it (I tried 3 times and aborted it every time because of imminent death aversion).

Now I'm in a situation where work is basically voluntary for me. I have been officially diagnosed with severe depression and could live off welfare for the rest of my life without working one hour if I played my cards right. The social costs would be considerable. But in theory at least, there's nothing fundamentally preventing me from salvaging my high earning potential - I just lack the motivation.

Altruistic spending has always played a role in my considerations, but whenever I think about a charity, I ask myself, "Does this really do much good? Can't this be solved by voluntary trade somehow? Does advocacy really change minds?" and it has to be weighed against my very clear and tangible unpleasantness.

If I had a box that runs a superhappy mind for a subjective day of "positive agony" for a dollar, it would be a no-brainer. I would just earn as much as possible and put all my money in the box. (This was the motivation for my "artificial utility monster" post)

But alas, I have no such box.

From "How Much Is a Dollar Worth? The Case of Vegan Outreach": "For it is easy to carry a notion of the other uses to which one’s money might be put as a vague abstract idea that one should heed once in a while; it is a very different decision-making dynamic when one has some tangible estimations of how much relief of suffering is forgone by a specific frivolous expenditure. That will be the focus of this piece."

Unfortunately, I think the estimates in that piece are inflated (in concrete impact, though vast, vast underestimates when considering far-future impact). "Donating toward Efficient Online Veg Ads" is somewhat more realistic, though it too has raised complaints. I suggest this as one of the best "boxes" to think about. (Of course, it ignores wild-animal issues.)

Hedonic Treader wrote:I also reflected how I would trade off my own hedons against some radom sentient's (roughly 1:3 in reflective equilibrium).

Wow, that's quite a specific number.

Hedonic Treader wrote:Doug S. then mentioned buying life insurance, waiting 2 years, and then committing suicide. Unfortunately, this requires US laws (I don't think it works here in Germany) and you need to be able to kill yourself

Probably terrible for public relations! This sounds like a really bad idea.

Hedonic Treader wrote:(I tried 3 times and aborted it every time because of imminent death aversion).

Brian Tomasik wrote: I suggest this as one of the best "boxes" to think about. (Of course, it ignores wild-animal issues.)

Unfortunately, I don't think they can be ignored. (Which is not to say veg advocacy is not effective.)

Far more down to earth, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation how much I would have to suffer to increase the purchasing power of the bottom billion by a certain percentage, and how much this would plausibly reduce their suffering marginally at least. Ignoring the poor-meat-eater problem (e.g. because of WAS replacement), this should easily translate into a 1:3 ratio, which I defined as an ideal. I didn't even count saved costs and increased tax revenue for Germany, which spends more than 40% more or less directly on retirees and the unemployed (assuming this reduces their suffering and/or adds to social stability of democracy and/or people's happiness, and again assuming that WAS replacement at least compensates for the meat-eating...)

Basically I have no excuse. I either have to give up my hypothetical ideal or do it. The big wildcard being motivational stability. I could reward myself with more personal spending, but that would drag the altruistic efficiency down. If only we had commitment devices that actually work...

Hedonic Treader wrote:Doug S. then mentioned buying life insurance, waiting 2 years, and then committing suicide. Unfortunately, this requires US laws (I don't think it works here in Germany) and you need to be able to kill yourself

Probably terrible for public relations! This sounds like a really bad idea.[quote]
Yes, and not many people can do it before the laws change. On the other hand, maybe it would set a signal for freedom of contract (government should not force life insurers to pay for suicide), or to handle suicide differently (more as a costly choice influenced by psychological dysfunction and less as a purely deterministic consequence of dysfunction).

As for PR, it would certainly allocate public attention to effective giving. If you could combine it with organ donations somehow, you could actually set an example for heroic altruism. Will Smith did that in the movies.

Hedonic Treader wrote:Unfortunately, I don't think they can be ignored. (Which is not to say veg advocacy is not effective.)

I agree, but that illustrates why we can't just "ignore speculative stuff". There's no clear boundary between concrete and speculative, as the essay I linked earlier explains.

Hedonic Treader wrote:Basically I have no excuse. I either have to give up my hypothetical ideal or do it. The big wildcard being motivational stability. I could reward myself with more personal spending, but that would drag the altruistic efficiency down. If only we had commitment devices that actually work...

Maybe you're creating a false dilemma? You could do pro bono work for an EA organization. Would that be more enjoyable? Out of all the things in the world there are to do, surely there must be some that are both fun and altruistically valuable.* Perhaps you could move close to other altruists (e.g., those in Basel, Switzerland) to make it social.

* I'm ignoring the depression bit. When you're depressed, nothing is fun. But I guess I mean something that's at least as fun as what your selfishness inclines you to do.

Hedonic Treader wrote:As for PR, it would certainly allocate public attention to effective giving. If you could combine it with organ donations somehow, you could actually set an example for heroic altruism. Will Smith did that in the movies.

I think people would think:

• It's sick / disgraceful / wasteful to kill yourself.
• It's unfair to everyone else trying to buy insurance policies for real because now they have to pay more to finance you.
• You are crazy.

Brian Tomasik wrote:

Hedonic Treader wrote:As for PR, it would certainly allocate public attention to effective giving. If you could combine it with organ donations somehow, you could actually set an example for heroic altruism. Will Smith did that in the movies.

I think people would think:

• It's sick / disgraceful / wasteful to kill yourself.
• It's unfair to everyone else trying to buy insurance policies for real because now they have to pay more to finance you.
• You are crazy.

"Effective Altruism requires you to commit suicide?! No way I'm joining that!"

Not to mention that there'd be a lot less movement spreading because there'd be less people to spread the movement.

peterhurford wrote:"Effective Altruism requires you to commit suicide?! No way I'm joining that!"

Okay, but now you're implying the target group of EA is really stupid people. Surely potential EAs are smart enough to understand altruism comes in degrees and suicide is just an extreme?

Not to mention that there'd be a lot less movement spreading because there'd be less people to spread the movement.

Big question mark here about the marginal effectiveness of individual movement spreading, especially after you select for good vs. bad communicators.

Brian Tomasik' wrote:I agree, but that illustrates why we can't just "ignore speculative stuff". There's no clear boundary between concrete and speculative, as the essay I linked earlier explains.

That's right, though I think WAS replacement from land use is not as specualtive as, say, flow-through effects that go driving a car -> climate change -> resource pressure -> more international conflict -> less cooperation -> smaller probability of a value-integrative AI -> singleton with less humane values -> cosmic commons contain more suffering.

WAS replacement complicates the picture of vegetarianism, but it still doesn't contain as many probabilistic conjunctions as the latter narrative (not to mention the "what if it flips" part is questionable; utilitarianism doesn't play Kaldor-Hicks improvement with inhumane ideologies unless those offer credible commitment signals to cooperate with utilitarianism).

Out of all the things in the world there are to do, surely there must be some that are both fun and altruistically valuable.

Not effectively. This is my idiosyncratic personality, of course, so no generalization possible here.

I can spend time alone with a flow or some other entertainment wireheading, and it's an effective palliative. But no one benefits from that. Even if I do creative or communicative things that are slightly socially beneficial, they are not in the same ballpark as salvaging my engineering career and donating to effective charity. The worst negatives for me are social stressors, boredom and sleep cycle problems. The things that would really be high-value require dealing with that. I can't even spend more money to reduce or outweigh those negatives because the marginal utility of my own spending drops sharply above welfare-level, i.e. I don't know how to buy happiness/palliation except by not working. (It would be nice to count at least the tax revenue as a positive, but I'm just not that thrilled about how they spend it.)

That is not to say I won't find a compromise that is stable and above zero. I probably will. I just don't see an easy good one.

I think people would think:
It's sick / disgraceful / wasteful to kill yourself.

I'm not concerned about that because people already decry almost anything they don't like. Suicide, sex, computer games, not wearing a Burka, you name it. I actually think there's social value in not abiding by that unless people have good reasons.

Suicide may be wasteful, but it's a form of legitimate waste - waste you are entitled to create. Spending your money on a big car is certainly wasteful, yet people don't declare you should burn in hell forever for it, or locked up against your will.

If organ donations + euthanasia were legal, it would easily save more lives (or quality of life) than the donor loses, unless their organs are somehow already damaged. It would be totally rational, it's just that society doesn't want rationality of this sort, and I don't think it makes the world a better place to agree with society on this.

It's unfair to everyone else trying to buy insurance policies for real because now they have to pay more to finance you.

If people were smart, they would realize that this unfairness is solely the unfairness of government, which forces insurers to pay for suicide. If freedom of contract would be protected rather than undermined by government, it would not be unfair, as you could simply buy a cheaper policy that doesn't pay for suicide.

You are crazy.

Well, that just contradicts everything else, doesn't it? If suicide is crazy, then suicide cannot be unfair, or illegitimately wasteful, or the reflection of a community like EA - it would be the mental illness of individuals.

Of course, people may not have the brains && epistemic charity to consider these distinctions fairly. But if they don't, that's just another reason to put less stock in advocacy.

Btw, someone who did this didn't have to advertise it's a plan for EA. They could just happen to die and happen to have named a charity in their will, without much publicity.