
AaronSW may have left everything to Givewell, an efficient meta-charity - Eliezer
* http://www.reddit.com/user/AaronSw#c4e7n4h<p>* http://www.givewell.org/<p>In this age of famous tech names donating millions or billions to charity, it may surprise you to realize that many of us consider these donations to be missed opportunities in terms of how much good could have been accomplished for the same amount of money, given more quantitative ways of evaluating the good done by a charity.  Givewell is the leader in this form of evaluation and makes an extremely credible claim to be able to identify charities that use well-analyzed methods to achieve literally <i>orders of magnitude</i> more good per dollar than the usual suspects.  There is no efficient market in utilons, but Givewell is trying to create one.<p>By giving to Givewell itself, Aaron Swartz's final legacy may be expected to accomplish far more good in the world than less carefully chosen gifts involving hundreds of millions of dollars.<p>I am not myself employed by or otherwise involved with Givewell, and my opinions and phrasing of the above have not been seen or approved by Givewell.
======
bmm6o
I haven't followed Givewell recently, but they were involved in a fiasco over
at metafilter where they were sockpuppeting to promote themselves and bad-
mouth competitors. Unethical behavior of the founders aside, the devil is in
the details and you should do your homework before falling in love with their
elevator pitch.

[http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/GiveWell-or-Give-em-
Hel...](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/GiveWell-or-Give-em-Hell) is the
main thread, but search metatalk for several follow-up threads.

~~~
astrofinch
Yep, they discuss that on their mistakes/shortcomings page:
[http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings#overaggressiveand...](http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings#overaggressiveandinappropriatemarketing)

Looks like it ended in late 2007.

------
sethish
Aaron has had a very expensive federal court battle. It may be that he still
had leftover money from the sale of reddit, but Lessig's blog on the subject
suggested financial troubles. Lets remain silent on this topic at the moment,
unless this turns out not to be the case.

------
Grognor
I should have expected no less from someone with such clarity of thought and
breadth of study.

Relevant link, a post of his: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/stepback>

~~~
lukeprog
Or really, that entire series of posts, called 'Raw Nerve':
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve>

------
denzil_correa
I am quite sad today - I really am. :-(

~~~
marcua
It's OK to feel sad. If you start feeling worse, reach out to someone. Happy
to talk if you need---email in profile.

~~~
norabean
Same thoughts myself. I am still in Vegas for CES, and I can't even imagine
partying- instead I just feel I need to write more articles and I want to
donate to EFF and the likes this year more. We need to support those who make
us have access to "real information". Such a tragic day for not just
information advocacy spaces, but new media...

This post pretty much sums up my thoughts of how I feel I should deal with
what happened. [http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-
bull...](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully)
Justice is thwarted and heroes are painted as evil... the brilliant work hard
to give us information and the government makes their life hell.

------
ASupporter
So sad for friends of AS

