Ok I've been giving $25 a month to Effectivealtruism.com for about 5 years now, and my understanding was they predominantly buy mosquito nets and give cash directly. Should I swap to a different charity?

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

it's literally these guys. MacAskill, who is splashed on the front page, goes on in his book about how much more important it is to think about 10^54 future computer emulations than mere tawdry actual existing people suffering now.

So you will probably want to look inside the box and look precisely where your donations go, if the organisation you're sending your money to has a public list up.

[–] gnomicutterance@awful.systems 24 points 5 months ago

They do buy mosquito nets, although it's unclear that all malaria net charities do so in culturally-appropriate ways where they'll be used as intended. I believe they've stopped with the large grants to deworming charities, which is good, because the effectiveness of deworming programs is extremely controversial. Depending on where you direct your money at that parent website, it might go to EA Funds, who send a lot of money at global development but has also paid a ton of salaries for people researching LLMs and AI. Or it could go to EffectiveVentures, which might have spent your money buying a castle. For reasons.

If you support mosquito nets, you can give to the mosquito net charity directly, cut out the overhead. Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières does good global development work if you don't mind giving to a huge organization that by necessity has higher overhead. Avoid the Red Cross and you should be fine.

[–] sue_me_please@awful.systems 22 points 5 months ago

Lol that money went to buy 20,000 copies of HPMOR

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 19 points 5 months ago

I hope you had bamboozle insurance