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“Variously Effective Altruism” by Zvi
This post is a roundup of various things related to philanthropy, as you often find in the full monthly roundup.
Preventing Value Drift
Peter Thiel warned Elon Musk to ditch donating to The Giving Pledge because Bill Gates will give his wealth away ‘to left-wing nonprofits.’
As John Arnold points out, this seems highly confused. The Giving Pledge is a promise to give away your money, not a promise to let Bill Gates give away your money. The core concern, that your money ends up going to causes one does not believe in (and probably highly inefficiently at that) seems real, once you send money into a foundation ecosystem it by default gets captured by foundation style people.
As he points out, ‘let my children handle it’ is not a great answer, and would be especially poor for Musk given the likely disagreements over values, especially if you don’t actually give those children that much free and clear (and thus, are being relatively uncooperative, so why should they honor your preferences?). There are no easy answers.
Maximizing Good Makes People Look Bad
A new paper goes Full Hanson with the question Does Maximizing Good Make People Look Bad? [...]
---
Outline:
(00:16) Preventing Value Drift
(01:10) Maximizing Good Makes People Look Bad
(02:10) No We Have No Tuition
(03:15) Will MacAskill and the Dangers of PR Focus
(10:51) Tag, You're It
(13:16) Impact Philanthropy
---
First published:
November 10th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ifrZDxq69Guev9jzE/variously-effective-altruism
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
View all episodes
By zvi
5
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This post is a roundup of various things related to philanthropy, as you often find in the full monthly roundup.
Preventing Value Drift
Peter Thiel warned Elon Musk to ditch donating to The Giving Pledge because Bill Gates will give his wealth away ‘to left-wing nonprofits.’
As John Arnold points out, this seems highly confused. The Giving Pledge is a promise to give away your money, not a promise to let Bill Gates give away your money. The core concern, that your money ends up going to causes one does not believe in (and probably highly inefficiently at that) seems real, once you send money into a foundation ecosystem it by default gets captured by foundation style people.
As he points out, ‘let my children handle it’ is not a great answer, and would be especially poor for Musk given the likely disagreements over values, especially if you don’t actually give those children that much free and clear (and thus, are being relatively uncooperative, so why should they honor your preferences?). There are no easy answers.
Maximizing Good Makes People Look Bad
A new paper goes Full Hanson with the question Does Maximizing Good Make People Look Bad? [...]
---
Outline:
(00:16) Preventing Value Drift
(01:10) Maximizing Good Makes People Look Bad
(02:10) No We Have No Tuition
(03:15) Will MacAskill and the Dangers of PR Focus
(10:51) Tag, You're It
(13:16) Impact Philanthropy
---
First published:
November 10th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ifrZDxq69Guev9jzE/variously-effective-altruism
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.
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