Want up to $80 million to go to effective charity?
An anonymous crypto-millionaire is donating that much in Bitcoin. They are taking suggestions HERE on Reddit, and they are taking applications from nonprofits at PineappleFund.org (application here). You can also private message them on Reddit or email them at contact@pineapplefund.org!
What can we do to help them donate to more effective nonprofits? Here are some ideas:
1) Comment! You can make a new, top-level comment or reply to the previous ones. Here are some thoughts on good commenting practice:
- Take a look at the previous EA comments, to both support with comments of your own and inspiration. Here are two highly-upvoted ones mentioning effective altruism. (1, 2)
- Don’t be an asshole. I know it’s annoying to see worse charities getting attention but don’t bring it up, just ignore it. Be kind. Be positive! :) Don’t be spammy. Add thoughtfulness and variety to your comments and messages. We don’t want to just look like a brigade of mindless drones. Remember the Unilateralist’s Curse. Don’t give us a bad image. Think like a virtue ethicist here. If in doubt, don’t do anything.
- Think about content. Here are some links you can send: https://www.givewell.org/
https://whatiseffectivealtruism.com/
Singer’s TED Talk
What is effective altruism?
The Greatest Good (positive Atlantic article)
Effective Altruism (The Washington Post, short but links to stuff)
Effective Altruism: Where Charity and Rationality Meet
Use any others that you can think of! - Here's a great resource for EA Concepts to explain.
2) If you represent a nonprofit: apply for funding here! The earlier the better!
- Similarly: If you’re Peter Singer or Holden Karnofsky or Will MacAskill, etc., like, maybe make a comment on the post and/or contact the person? Aubrey de Grey did it. :)
3) Wacky ideas:
- Consider giving Reddit Gold to signal-boost comments you like?
- Buy and email them a copy of books like Doing Good Better (comment if you’ve done that so there’s no duplication of effort). (EDIT: Carl Shulman did this!)
- Pineapple-themed memes (do reddit comments support images?).
- If you’re a journalist or blogger, consider writing an article praising this person and reference effective altruism under the same breath?
- Make this the most gilded post of all time so it gets more attention?
4) Comment with any suggestions here and I'll add them.
Just a thought: if you think that earning-to-give is a good strategy, then this is one of the best things you can do as an effective altruist. Just to put things in perspective here, if you donated $50,000 to an effective charity for 20 years, then you would be doing just about as much good as merely leaving a good comment in that thread. I hope that helps to internalize just what's at stake here.
Just make sure that the Pineapple fund doesn't generate some animosity towards EA. If it takes 100 good reasons to change someone's mind, it only takes 1 really bad one to turn them away. The person doing the giveaway said that they are interested in the SENS foundation. This is pretty good evidence that they care about the long-term future. We might be able to do the most good if we focus our efforts on that cause area specifically.