Note: They use mPayy for payments so you have to do a short sign-up for it. The reason for the special payment processor is that PayPal and credit card processors charge excessive fees on such small payments but mPayy doesn’t. The one downside is that mPayy currently only supports US-based bank accounts.
MAIN POST EDITED TO INCLUDE US BANK ACCOUNT REQUIREMENT
If you're in the US, please donate to this! We at the Singularity Institute would truly appreciate it. If you have trouble paying because it requires a verification of bank account, sign up anyway and you may be able to verify it tomorrow and then donate during the weekend.
Thanks! We require your support to exist. No one else is seriously focused on this problem.
Seems to be over now. Ended up with 124 donations, apparently just over half of what that site usually gets.
"A group of Singularity Institute donors has stepped forward to match all donations given through Philanthroper today"
Does this make sense? How do we know they wouldn't have given that money anyway?
I'm one of the matchers, and I can promise you that I wouldn't have given that money anyways!
This is generally a good question though; for bigger matching fundraising drives I think that more often or not the money is precommitted.
Well, if the donations they have to match go beyond what they'd donate anyway, they would donate more than they otherwise would. Plus, the goal is to get YOU to donate more than you otherwise would.
I've rethought and I was half-wrong.
It was certainly rational from SIAI's point of view as Tiiba explained.
Also it was rational for SIAI supporters to give one of their dollars via Philanthroper as I'm pretty sure the expected extra money SIAI gets is x where $1 < x <= $2.
It might not be exactly $2 because we assume the matchers have not already decided exactly how much they will give over their lifetime. Future donations from them will be somewhat based on "have I given enough already?" which would be negatively impacted by past donations.
So for people to get their full $2, matchers need to promise to match the money and not feel warm and fuzzy about it.
Those of you that aren't in the US, but wanted to donate to this: you can still donate via PayPal using singinst.org/donate/ - so if you were going to donate something, don't let living out of the US stop you.
You can also choose to donate more than a dollar this way, if you want to.
I have no idea where I should post this, so I just leave this here: Where can I delete my less wrong account?
No, the 'delete account' function doesn't work, and I am not posting from the account I want to have deleted as I don't want the name to stay in the google cache for another couple of months.
What exactly is your original goal? Do you want to be unable to make further posts under a given handle? Do you want certain existing posts to disappear from the internet?
I don't want people searching for a variant of my full name to be able to see my account (which will be true some months after the account is deleted)
I don't know whether the failing delete-account-function is a true bug or a conscious inconveniency. It should be fixed in both cases.
(Sorry for the noise.)
It seems that deleting all your posts should work.
Edit: just saw this. If you delete, rather than edit, your posts, then the blank user page shows only that you registered on this site at some point, which I guess you'd have to consult your threat model to decide whether to care about.
Actually fixing the problem is clearly superior, though.
It looks like they're using the newly designed "Singularity Institute" logo. Did I miss a thread about that being decided?
I have no idea where I should post this, so I just leave this here: Where can I delete my less wrong account?
No, the 'delete account' function doesn't work, and I am not posting from the account I want to have deleted as I don't want the name to stay in the google cache for another couple of months.
What exactly is your original goal? Do you want to be unable to make further posts under a given handle? Do you want certain existing posts to disappear from the internet?
Singularity Institute is today's featured charity on Philanthroper.com
Philanthroper is a micro-giving site that profiles small charities hand-selected by their editors. Their site encourages donors to “give every day” by only requesting $1 contributions.
A group of Singularity Institute donors has stepped forward to match all donations given through Philanthroper today so I'd encourage each of you to give $1 now if you support Singularity Institute and have a US-based bank account (Philanthroper requirement). We'd like to have a healthy total raised by the end of the day. The fundraiser has already been featured on Gizmodo but please submit it to other news sites if you can.
I signed up and gave my $1.