From Michael Anissimov on the Singularity Institute blog:
Thanks to generous contributions by our donors, we are only $11,840 away from fulfilling our $100,000 goal for the 2010 Singularity Research Challenge. For every dollar you contribute to SIAI, another dollar is contributed by our matching donors, who have pledged to match all contributions made before February 28th up to $100,000. That means that this Sunday is your final chance to donate for maximum impact.
Funds from the challenge campaign will be used to support all SIAI activities: our core staff, the Singularity Summit, the Visiting Fellows program, and more. Donors can earmark their funds for specific grant proposals, many of which are targeted towards academic paper-writing, or just contribute to our general fund
After shutting up and multiplying, I agree those arguments are valid. This presentation by Anna Salamon is also instructive.
I'm uncertain as to whether funding for SIAI or anti-aging research provides the best marginal utility. Both would have a gigantic positive impact if successful; SIAI's would be larger but in my estimation anti-aging has a better chance of success. The matching donations tip the balance to SIAI today, so $900 more is on the way.
I do believe the political argument with number of donors may apply to SENS and MF, so I'm making smaller ... (read more)
A friend points out one possible way this reasoning doesn't work: charities can gain political power by quoting a larger number of individual donors. This would argue for giving $10 to several charities and the rest of the money to the best one.
3Eliezer Yudkowsky
I usually try not to push people on this particular point unless I think they're already very high-level; my default assumption is that people are very akrasic and fragile when it comes to charity.
However, I'm raising my estimate of Landsburg's level based on this - I guess one mostly hears about the disputable points he got wrong, not the indisputable points he got right, of which this is one (and a rarely appreciated one at that).
From Michael Anissimov on the Singularity Institute blog:
Thanks to generous contributions by our donors, we are only $11,840 away from fulfilling our $100,000 goal for the 2010 Singularity Research Challenge. For every dollar you contribute to SIAI, another dollar is contributed by our matching donors, who have pledged to match all contributions made before February 28th up to $100,000. That means that this Sunday is your final chance to donate for maximum impact.
Funds from the challenge campaign will be used to support all SIAI activities: our core staff, the Singularity Summit, the Visiting Fellows program, and more. Donors can earmark their funds for specific grant proposals, many of which are targeted towards academic paper-writing, or just contribute to our general fund
[Continue reading at the Singularity Institute blog.]