I would also ask the winners to kindly not offer to donate the money to charity, but to actually take the prize money and spend it on something that they selfishly-want, such as ice-cream or movie tickets or some other luxury item. Establishing a norm of giving away prizes creates very bad incentives and will tend to decrease the degree to which prizes actually motivate people in the future
Altruistic selfishness. I approve!
I'm flattered :-). Thanks again for taking the initiative to put the contest together. I agree with the suggestion that prizes for this sort of thing not be given away (and will not give my share away).
I submitted my article to jsalvatier for suggestions and he made some. I'll edit my article in response to some of these shortly.
Does anybody have suggestions for websites/newspapers/magazines where we might submit these articles to publicize the points made therein more broadly?
I would estimate a probability <3% that the author is Alicorn; we talk on AIM often enough that I think I would have noticed the familiarity of her style if she had written it.
Having read the article before reading this comment, I developed the distinct impression that I was reading another of Yvain's posts partway through. I would estimate 45% confidence that the author is Yvain, and 50% confidence that the author is someone else whose writing style I am not familiar with, so not Alicorn or Eliezer.
[I would also ask the winners to kindly not offer to donate the money to charity, but to actually take the prize money and spend it on something that they selfishly-want, such as ice-cream or movie tickets or some other luxury item. Establishing a norm of giving away prizes creates very bad incentives and will tend to decrease the degree to which prizes actually motivate people in the future]
I like that not only must the the spending be selfish, it must serve your short-term interests, not just your long-term interests. Hyperbolic discounting ftw!
Establishing a norm of giving away prizes creates very bad incentives and will tend to decrease the degree to which prizes actually motivate people in the future
On the other hand, it decreases the degree to which prizes are spent on ice-cream or movie tickets rather than charity. Evaluating a course of action means weighing the upsides against the downsides, not just listing a downside.
Part of the Efficient Charity Article competition. Several people have written articles on efficient charity. The entries were:
The original criteria for the competition are listed here, but bascially the idea is to introduce the idea to a relatively smart newcomer without using jargon.
Various people gave opinions about which articles were best. For me, two articles in particular stood out as being excellent for a newomer. Those articles were:
Throwawayaccount_1
and
Multifoliaterose's
articles.
I therefore declare them joint winners, and implore our kind sponsor Jsalvatier to split the prize between them evenly. Throwawayaccount_1 should also unmask his/her identity.
[I would also ask the winners to kindly not offer to donate the money to charity, but to actually take the prize money and spend it on something that they selfishly-want, such as ice-cream or movie tickets or some other luxury item. Establishing a norm of giving away prizes creates very bad incentives and will tend to decrease the degree to which prizes actually motivate people in the future]