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.
I've spent some time thinking and investigating what the current state of affairs is, and here's my conclusions:
I've been reading through PineappleFund's comments. Many are responses to solicitations for specific charities with him endorsing them as possibilities. One of these was for SENS foundation. Matthew_Barnett suggested that this is evidence that he particularly cares about long-term future causes, but given the diversity of other causes he endorsed I think it is pretty weak evidence.
They haven't yet commented on any of the subthreads specifically discussing EA. However, these subthreads are high up on the Reddit sorting algorithm and have many comments endorsing EA. This is already a good position and is difficult to improve: They either like what they see or they don't. It may be better if the top-level comments explicitly described and linked to a specific charity since that is what they responded well to in other comments, but I am cautious about making such surface-level generalizations which might have more to do with the distribution of existing comments than PineappleFund's tendencies.
Keep in mind that soliciting upvotes for a comment is explicitly against Reddit rules. I understand if you think that the stakes of this situation are more important than these rules, but be sure you are consciously aware of the judgment you have made.
Oh dear! No, I didn't explicitly realize this beyond passing thoughts. In retrospect, I'm confused why this wasn't cached in my mind as being against reddiquette. I should eat my own dogfood regarding brigading. I edited it so it's not soliciting. Let me know here or privately if there are any further fixes I should make to the post (i.e. if I should just remove the links to the known EA comments).