tripu @tripu@qoto.org
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
A #dog #bakery in #Madrid today.
I have said with pride that I can't be offended, that I'm immune to that.
I'm still not offended by the existence of “dog bakeries” — but it gets close to that.
I don't blame specifically the shop owners (who detected a market need) or the clients (who are vulnerable to whims, curiosity and overindulgence, like anyone who cares for another creature). I blame us all, collectively, for creating a society and a moral code that enables this and doesn't give a second thought to the logic (or lack thereof) behind this.
Our priorities are so skewed. Our allocation of resources, empathy and attention is zero-sum. We neglect unthinkable quantities of suffering afflicting billions of sentient beings every day but pay for a spoiled caniche to eat a cute cupcake.
Yesterday I donated 10% of my gross earnings of last year (job 1 + job 2 + stock dividends) to #AyudaEfectiva (that's the #EffectiveAltruism -aligned #charity in my home country of 🇪🇸 #Spain).
As always, I'm very happy to do that. I feel it's “the least I can do”.
> _“At the same time as events such as those currently occurring in #Turkey and #Syria, other ‘silent’ catastrophes are taking place worldwide. […] They have always been there. […] One of these silent #catastrophes is the young children dying daily from preventable diseases. **More than 1,300 children die every day from #malaria alone**, which can be prevented by providing simple interventions like mosquito nets. **These deaths are like an #earthquake occurring every day**. And because this suffering goes largely unnoticed by the world, donations in fields like this are low — even though the life of a child can be saved here with just a few thousand dollars, and many more children can be saved from pain and suffering.”_
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/blog/turkey-syria-earthquake-donation-advice
It's easy to see that #SBF was wrong _in hindsight_.
But imagine he had managed to keep the ball rolling a few years/decades, producing billions for good causes in the meantime and promoting #EffectiveAltruism at the higher level. And that #FTX vanished little by little without much attention — yet another #crypto promise failing.
The main “victims” would have been a bunch of wealthy celebrities and investors (and yes, also tens of thousands of small customers; mostly relatively rich human beings living in wealthy countries). I can see how the positive impact could outweigh all those losses.
I'm not saying he did the right thing. (For one, we don't know yet what he did, exactly. Of course, if rumours of funds being siphoned out of #FTX turn out to be true, and SBF and his circle are behind that, the guy is a monster.) I'm just saying we all face analogous (if also much lower-stake) trade-offs routinely, and we make decisions estimating odds and computing expected value (perhaps unconsciously) all the time.
The #SBF (#FTX) conundrum might be solvable by throwing these propositions into the mix:
1. He's “earning to give”
1. He's an utilitarian
1. He thinks that “the end justifies the means”
1. He's explicitly risk-neutral
He simply computed the probability of getting away with financial engineering and deception times the potential increase in well-being (by tossing billions at #EffectiveAltruism causes), and that seemed to him higher than the odds of being caught times {investors and customers' funds lost plus the huge reputational damage that would inflict to the #EA cause}.
So he pressed the red button and bet the world. And he lost.
It's not trivial to find the flaw in his reasoning, though.
I'm thinking of donating to a few services, products and organisations that I use and respect, and that I think are doing a lot of good. (That on top of my yearly 10% #EffectiveAltruism donation and the tiny contributions that I do every month through #BraveBrowser.)
I'm making a little list of beneficiaries. My idea is to throw ~1m₿ to each project, or the equivalent in fiat.
I'll share the list soon. There are some obvious entries (eg, Wikimedia Foundation, F-Droid, Mastodon), but if you want to suggest something specific, I'm all ears!
> _“**The core of effective altruism** is the [Drowning Child scenario](https://newint.org/features/1997/04/05/peter-singer-drowning-child-new-internationalist). The world is full of death and suffering. Your money (or time, or whatever resource you prefer to spend) could fix more of it than you think — one controversial analysis estimates $5,000 to save a life. You would go crazy if you tried to devote 100% of your time and money to helping others. But if you decide to just help when you feel like it or a situation comes up, you’ll probably forget. Is there some more systematic way to commit yourself to some amount between 0% and 100% of your effort (traditionally 10%)? And once you’ve done that, how do you make those resources go as far as possible? This is #EffectiveAltruism, the rest is just commentary.”_
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/effective-altruism-as-a-tower-of
Last week I donated 10% of my gross income of 2021 to [_Ayuda Efectiva_](https://ayudaefectiva.org/) as part of my commitment to the [“Giving What We Can” Pledge](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/).
❤️
#EffectiveAltruism #AltruismoEficaz #GWWC #philanthropy #AyudaEfectiva
This is more or less how I spend the #money I earn #finance #economics #EffectiveAltruism #EA #philanthropy
📣 #AltruismoEficaz 🇪🇸 #Español:
[_Riesgos Catastróficos Globales_](https://riesgoscatastroficosglobales.com/) y [_Altruismo Eficaz Hispanohablantes_](https://www.altruismoeficaz.org/) tienen abierto un generoso **concurso de ensayos sobre #xrisks** ✍️
https://riesgoscatastroficosglobales.com/articulos/concurso-de-ensayos
#80000hours is sending a physical #book for free to anyone who subscribes to their newsletter 
#SciHub being sued by #Elsevier again, this time in 🇮🇳 #India. Some #EffectiveAltruism members are mounting a defence.
Contribute with legal expertise, money, or diffusion. Also, if you're a professor, you can sign in support of SciHub.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FSYCFvosHCbf6Dgfw/sci-hub-sued-in-india
This is more or less how I spend the #money I earn
> _“I discovered when I started making #money that I didn't really need it. When you have such an excess of money you don't need, the most sensible, most human and completely obvious thing is to give to people in need.”_
— [Avicii](https://www.timberglingfoundation.org/about-tim)
Technologist, Spaniard, male, 42
Joined May 2020
