Re:Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
by versteegen on Sunday November 13, 2022 @08:30AM
(#33582855)
No, because you are talking about compounding returns (which I was not), but improving people's lives today gives far greater long-term benefits than investing the money at reasonable return and donating more in the future, for well-known reasons.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
by tsimionescu on Sunday November 13, 2022 @12:43PM
(#33585303)
In your post above, you justified not giving 1B to charity because it could be bet until it raised to 150B. But there is no reason why, by the same logic, you couldn't justify playing that 150B to raise it to any number rather than giving it away to charity today.
Re:Sam Bankman-Fried and the geometry of conscience
by versteegen on Monday November 14, 2022 @07:20AM
(#33592985)
The point I was trying to make in my post* was that at some point you should stop gambling, because losing the bet would be catastrophic to humanity, but that point is maybe around $10-100B. (Depending on odds, obviously). It's because you pick the low hanging fruit of good causes, so every doubling of the amount gives marginally fewer gains. Eg. just look at how Bill & Melinda Gates have complained about how hard it is to give away billions per year.
*Aside: obviously it was tone-deaf for me to reply to that quoted sentence out of the context in this case of the money being stolen