Summary

In this episode, Aaron and Robi reunite to dissect the nuances of effective charitable giving. The central debate revolves around a common intuition: should a donor diversify their contributions across multiple organizations, or go “all in” on the single best option? Robi breaks down standard economic arguments against splitting donations for individual donors, while Aaron sorta kinda defends the “normie intuition” of diversification.

The conversation spirals into deep philosophical territory, exploring the “Moral Parliament” simulator by Rethink Priorities and various decision procedures for handling moral uncertainty—including the controversial “Moral Marketplace” and “Maximize Minimum” rules. They also debate the validity of Evidential Decision Theory as applied to voting and donating, discuss moral realism, and grapple with “Unique Entity Ethics” via a thought experiment involving pigeons, apples, and 3D-printed silicon brains.

Topics Discussed

* The Diversification Debate: Why economists and Effective Altruists generally advise against splitting donations for small donors versus the intuitive appeal of a diversified portfolio.

* The Moral Parliament: Using a parliamentary metaphor to resolve internal conflicts between different moral frameworks (e.g., Utilitarianism vs. Deontology).

* Decision Rules: An analysis of different voting methods for one’s internal moral parliament, including the “Moral Marketplace,” “Random Dictator,” and the “Maximize Minimum” rule.

* Pascal’s Mugging & “Shrimpology”: Robi’s counter-argument to the “Maximize Minimum” rule using an absurd hypothetical deity.

* Moral vs. Empirical Uncertainty: Distinguishing between not knowing which charity is effective (empirical) and not knowing which moral theory is true (moral), and how that changes donation strategies.

* Voting Theory & EDT: Comparing donation logic to voting logic, specifically regarding Causal Decision Theory vs. Evidential Decision Theory (EDT).

* Donation Timing: Why the ability to coordinate and see neglectedness over time makes donation markets different from simultaneous elections.

* Moral Realism: A debate on whether subjective suffering translates to objective moral facts.

* The Repugnant Conclusion: Briefly touching on population ethics and “Pigeon Hours.”

* Unique Entity Ethics: A thought experiment regarding computational functionalism: Does a silicon chip simulation of a brain double its moral value if you make the chip twice as thick?

Transcript

AI generated, likely imperfect

AARON

Cool. So we are reporting live from Washington DC and New York. You’re New York, right?

ROBI

Mm-hmm.

AARON

Yes. Uh, I have strep throat, so I’m not actually feeling 100%, but we’re still gonna make a banger podcast episode.

ROBI

Um, I might also, yeah.

AARON

Oh, that’s very exciting. So this is— hope you’re doing okay. It was— I hope you’re— if you, if you, like, it was surprisingly easy to get, to get, uh, tested and prescribed antibiotics. So that might be a thing to consider if you have, uh, you think you might have something. Um, mm-hmm. So we, like, a while ago— should we just jump in? I mean, you know, we can cut.

ROBI

Stuff or whatever, but— Yeah, um, you can explain, uh, so I talked to Max, uh, like 13 months ago.

AARON

It’s been a little while. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. And so this is, um, I just had takes. So actually, this is for, for the, uh, you guys talked for the as an incentive for the 2024, uh, holiday season EA Twitter/online giving fundraiser. Um, and I listened to the— it was a good— it was a surprisingly good conversation, uh, like totally podcast-worthy. Um, I actually don’t re— wait, did I ever put that on? I’m actually not sure if I ever put that on, um, the Pigeon Hour podcast feed, but I think I will with— I think I got you guys’ permission, but obviously I’ll check again. And then if so, then I, I will. Um, and I just had takes because some of your takes are good, some of your takes are bad. And so that’s what we have to—.

ROBI

Oh, um, I think your takes about my takes being bad are themselves bad takes. Uh, at least the first 4 in a weird doc that I went through. Um, yeah, I saw you published it somewhere on YouTube, I think. I don’t know if it also went on Pigeon Hour, but it’s up somewhere.

AARON

Yes, yes. So that we will— I will link that. Uh, people can watch it. There’s a chance I’ll even just like edit these together or something. I’m not really sure. Figure that out later. Um, yeah. Yes. So it’s, yeah, definitely on you. Um, so let me pull up the— no, I, I think at least two of— so I only glanced at what you said. Um, so two of the four points I just agree with. I just like concede because at least one of them. So I just like dumped a ramble into, into some LLM.

ROBI

Yeah.

AARON

Like, These aren’t necessarily like the faithful, um, uh, things of what I believe, but like the first one was just, um, so like I have this normie intuition, and I don’t have that many normie intuitions, so like it’s, it’s like a little suspicious that like maybe there’s a, a reason that we should actually diversify donations instead of just maximizing by giving to the one. Mm-hmm. Like just like, yeah, every dollar you just like give to the best place. And that like quite popular smaller donors say people giving less than like $100,000 or quite possibly much more than that, up to like, say, a million or more than that. Um, that just works out as, as donating to like a single organization or project.

ROBI

Yeah. Okay. Um, I, I think we should explain, uh, what was previously said on this. So there’s some argument over— okay. So like, um, normal people donate some amount of money to charity and they just give like, I don’t know, $50 here and there to every charity that like pitches them and sounds cute or sympathetic or whatever. Um, And then EAs want to, um, first of all, they, I don’t know, strive to give at least 10% or, I don’t know, at least some amount that’s significant to them and, uh, give it to charities that are highly effective, uh, and they try to optimize the impact of those dollars that they donate. Whatever amount you donate, they want to, like, do the most good with it. Um, so the, like, standard economist take on this is, um, So every charity has, uh, or every intervention has diminishing marginal returns, right, to the— or every cause area or every charity, um, possibly every intervention, um, or like at the level of an individual intervention, maybe it’s like flat and then goes to zero if you can’t do any more. Anyway, um, so cause areas or charities have diminishing marginal returns. If you like donate so much money to them, they’re no longer, um, they’ve like done the most high priority thing they can do with that money. And then they move on to other lower priority things. Um, so generally the more money a charity gets, the less, um, the less effective it is per dollar. This is all else equal, so this is not like— like, actually, if you know you’re going to get billions of dollars, you can like do some planning and then like use economies of scale. Uh, so it’s like not strictly decreasing in that way with like higher-order effects, but for like Time held constant, if you’re just like donating dollars now, there’s diminishing marginal returns. Okay, so, uh, it is— the economist’s take is like, it is almost always the case that the level of an individual donor who donates something like, let’s say, 10% of $100K, like, the, the world’s best charity is not going to become like no longer the world’s best charity after you donate $10,000. And most people donate like much less than that. So the, uh, like standard advice here is, um, if you are an individual donor, not a like, um, institutional donor or grantmaker or someone directing a ton of funds, um, you should just like take your best guess at the best charity and then donate to that. And then there are ways to optimize this for like bigger amounts. So you’ve probably heard of donor lotteries, which is like 100 or 1,000 people who want to save time all pool their money and then, then someone is picked at random and then they do research and maybe they split those donations 3 ways. Or like it all goes to something, or like— [Speaker:HOWIE] Yeah.

AARON

[Speaker:Kevin] Hmm.

ROBI

$10,000 times, uh, 100 or 1,000 is like a million or $10 million. At that level, it’s plausible that you should donate to multiple things. Um, so in that case, maybe it makes sense.

AARON

Um, so I don’t, I don’t— oh, sorry, go ahead.

ROBI

Uh, so that’s the standard argument. Um, and, um, I, I’m happy to, um, explain why this still holds, uh, to anyone who is like engaged at least this far. Um, most people haven’t even heard of it and they’re like, um, well, but what if I’m not sure about which of these two things, then I should like donate 50/50 to them.

AARON

Um, uh.

ROBI

I’ll let you go on, but I just want to say this is a really lucky time to record this podcast because Yesterday someone replied to me on the EA forum linking to some, um, uh, have you heard of, uh, Rethink Priorities, um, Moral of Parliament simulator?

AARON

[Speaker:Howie] Yes.

ROBI

[Speaker:Keiran] Okay, so it has some, um, pretty wacky and out-there decision rules, and, um, so I was— I was arguing with someone on the EA forum about this, like, um, saying Uh, it doesn’t make sense to, um, to, to split your donations, uh, at the level of an individual donor, um, even moral uncertain— and they said, but what about moral uncertainty? What if I’m not sure, like, if animals even matter? Um, uh, and I said, well, even then you should take your, like, probability estimate that animals matter and then get your, like, EV of a dollar to each and then give all of your dollars to whichever is better. Um, and they

Episode ID: 1000746524228

GUID: substack:post:185687554

Release Date: 25/01/2026, 02:24:07