Personally, I started "tithing" when my first business was a success

> I get to know the group pretty well first. I think this is a very, very, very important step. What's more, it's a step that I don't think can be outsourced to someone else, which is why I'm skeptical about claims by, among others, the Effective Altruism movement, to be able to do this kind of thing on your behalf.

>Especially once people start down the path of thinking the needs of today aren't as important as the needs of a hypothetical future population. It's not that that bothers me so much as the fact that many effective altruists do it so badly . We need to be concerned with the future. That is the only reason to maintain roads and bridges, to prevent pollution, or to conserve resources like water in aquifers and helium. But effective altruists are as likely to talk about colonizing Mars as they are to talk about global warming.

> Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing that's been around for a very long time. Which you think is what, exactly? I'm under the impression that thing is warmed-over utilitarianism. > The fundamental idea is sound. I do not believe utilitarianism is sound, because its logic can be easily used to justify some obviously horrible things. However the framework appeals very strongly to "rationalist" type people.

> I never give to any group that asks me for money. I get how this would keep you personally from being annoyed, but it seems to incentivize in worse outcomes. "Let's collect all the money we can, we never know if we'll get more. Let's grow that reserve" vs. "In a bad month we can get our usual donors/JohnFen to give us his annual donation a little early".

I never give to any group that asks me for money. Far be it from me to second-guess anybody's giving (motes and beams and all that) but this rules out many of the most effective aid organizations, all of which are absolutely off-the-charts obnoxious about fundraising --- because it works.

> Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing that's been around for a very long time. The fundamental idea is sound. It's largely a reinvention of a philosophical program called logical positivism, which the philosophers gave up on because it didn't work, so it's not sound. They just brought it back because it's the most STEMy kind of philosophy and they think anything with enough math must be right. (Example of them not reading the literature is their invented term "steelman", which academia already had and called "reconstructing arguments".)

On the subject of charities being annoying with you, there's a simple answer: Start a donor-advised fund (DAF) with your financial institution. Most have one, and some large charities (e.g. Silicon Valley Charitable Foundation) have their own. You fund it with cash or appreciated stock. For the latter, you can take a tax deduction that year for the entire market value. You can't get the money back (that's why it was deductible). You can "advise" that they make a grant to some 501(c)(3) charity, and from my experience they always do, after due diligence. Here's why they're not annoying : you can give anonymously if you want. They can't bother you because they don't know who you are. The one I have allows you to name a "successor trustee" who takes over as advisor if I'm gone.

The problem with the "sacrifice the present for the long term thinking" over ridiculous time scales beyond 100 years is the concept of diminishing returns. Anything around 3% or more endless annual growth must invent faster than light travel within less than a millenium and then exclusively use it to colonize multiple galaxies. What this tells you is that we are going to drown in capital within the next two thousand years and probably launch a few space missions toward neighboring solar systems but all of those things are closer to 0% annual growth than 3%.