@JimAusman

@danielytRg your donation of M$1000 ($4 USD) to the Against Malaria Foundation has been sent!

@MugaSofer

This is cool. The fact that manifold hasn't taken it down shows that manifold is one of the best sites on the planet.

Now I just have to decide whether to donate or to gamble.

@Mrdudeguy It's easy, you give 1000 today and then if you run out of mana in the future you can just buy more anyway.

Would anyone like to match my M1250 ($5) doation to NPR?

@Eliza @TheAllMemeingEye

@JeromeHPowell I'm tapped out for now.

@realDonaldTrump a taker??

@JeromeHPowell nobody wants to donate to npr 😭 🥀

@realDonaldTrump fine, you baited me

@Eliza

@Eliza just did mine @wasabipesto

@JeromeHPowell Are you sure you want to go at my rate? I can forward it to @MarySmith for you to get an extra couple bucks, assuming she agrees.

@wasabipesto Sure, that would be great!!! Thanks for reminding me!!! I hope that isn't too much work.

@MarySmith let me know if you agree to JHP's choice and I'll forward you the M$2,500

@wasabipesto thanks for running this!!

@JeromeHPowell yeah I'll do it

@MarySmith sent

@wasabipesto

@wasabipesto that's fine by me but it is very important that the donation is in addition to what Mary would have given anyway. That is the key component of this. Even Manifold's original charity program did not have this feature -- they were obligated to give away X amount of mana!

@Eliza This is well above what I would have ever given to NPR 😂

@JeromeHPowell if you don't mind me asking, why do you have such passion for national public radio in particular?

@TheAllMemeingEye umm....I’m pretty young and I would always listen to them on the radio on the way back from hockey games with my dad in the car. That’s what originally got me into politics...and eventually got me here on manifold... and I just like them as an org

@TheAllMemeingEye do you not like NPR or just wondering why i like them? :)

@JeromeHPowell just wondering ^-^

You know it's an EA website when the NPR donations are questioned but the shrimp donations aren't. ;)

@travis This is what I'm saying, now I'm not trying to get myself in the crosshairs of EA, but like, what is the need for shrimp charity over public media

@JeromeHPowell

/s

@JeromeHPowell I guess the summarised argument is:

• The consequences of our actions are the main thing determining what is right and wrong (consequentialism)

• Increasing joy and especially decreasing suffering are good consequences (hedonism)

• Causing a greater amount of good is better than a smaller amount, and the good of other beings matters as well as our own (utilitarianism)

• It makes sense to use evidence to determine what the most resource-efficient possible good causes to work towards are (effective altruism)

• The most efficient good causes will likely be solving problems that are very big (scale), very easy to make progress on (tractability), and very unnoticed by society so there's still loads of low hanging fruit (neglectedness)

• It is scientifically and philosophically plausible, even if not guaranteed, that most other nervous-system-possessing animals have some kind of mind and therefore matter

• Farmed and wild animals exist in such insanely vast numbers and routinely undergo such extreme nightmarish horrors that, even assuming they have simpler minds thus less strong experiences, it still ends up very plausible that their suffering is the biggest ongoing problem in the world (scale)

• Certain subsets of animal suffering are extremely cheap to prevent en masse (tractability), and have been completely ignored by society (neglectedness)

• The Shrimp Welfare Project is one of several organisations that Animal Charity Evaluators has jointly identified as being plausibly the most efficient organisation applying the most efficient solution to the most efficient good cause

• To be more specific, their work involves stuff like giving shrimp farmers electric stunning baths (so the shrimp are knocked unconscious rather than being awake during slaughter), and convincing shrimp farmers to not increase shrimp egg-laying via tearing out their eyestalks

• Their efficiency is about 1400 shrimp helped per year per dollar

• While not impossible, I would be surprised if national public radio was doing good on a scale that is comparable

@TheAllMemeingEye Very interesting, you may have convinced me. The one question/comment that I have, and I may have overlooked something you might have said or misunderstood, sorry in advance, is like, if you want to donate, why not donate to human causes, like the malaria efforts? I understand that we should help the shrimp, but maybe that's downstream of helping the tens of thousands (I assume every year that die from malaria). I'm not sure if this is bad to say, but I would say human life is worth exponentially more than a shrimp, so shouldn't we use our money to help the most valuable species first? I don't know, just my stream of consciousness thoughts.

BTW, nothing against shrimp or EA, I get both, I'm just trying to understand the thought processes a bit more :)

@JeromeHPowell While it was not his intent afaict, this post from scott https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-capitalism-beat-charity

had me reconsider whether one should ever give any money to any charity ever. I'm now generally anti-charity, which makes me perfect per @Eliza 's criteria to help people convert M to $

Does Capitalism Beat Charity?

"You can't write a check to capitalism directly"

@MarySmith didn't think you were a rat

@realDonaldTrump (ionalist)

@realDonaldTrump check dms quick

@MarySmith hmm, what is the reason it made you anti charity? The post seems to argue quite effectively in favour of charity

@JeromeHPowell helping humans is also good! There's a reason I split my donation 4 ways between helping present humans, helping present animals, helping future beings, and advancing the movement