Maybe it's impossible to find the "maximally efficient, effective ways", so you should do the interesting ones (i.e., not everyone is doing) that enrich you and make you happy, and have a measurable positive effect on others, like this guy does.
With him being well-off, would it be more "maximally efficient" for him to do something else with his money? Maybe, but he wouldn't be making people happy with his black Lambo or the "real" Batmobile he is building. We don't know what would happen if he did something else, but we do know people like what he's doing.
Not having perfect information is not an excuse to ignore the information you have.
I don't know exactly how different the world would be if he donated $250,000 to, say, combating malaria instead of building a better Batmobile. But I would give at least 10:1 odds (if such a bet could be judged) that it would have more people alive in 20 years, for example.
But saving many lives thousands of miles away doesn't feel as good as making sick children happy right here, and it doesn't make as good press.
Don't get me wrong: he earned that $250,000, he's under no particular obligation to do anything with it. I consider it $250,000 that he's spending on a cool hobby that he enjoys, that also makes kids happy, and that also brings publicity to doing-good-things (probably not optimal publicity, but better than nothing).
And he's certainly making the world a better place than I am, right now.
But if his objective is to do as much good for the world as he can, he's not acheiving it.
And we shouldn't be too critical of him, because I think criticism is more likely to turn potential Batmans to the path of not-bothering, rather than the path of utility-maximisation.
But I would give at least 10:1 odds
(if such a bet could be judged) that it would
have more people alive in 20 years, for example.
There are 2 problems with this statement:
(1) many people sick with cancer or malaria are going to die anyway and bringing a little happiness into their lives is worth the trouble, even if those people won't count towards your "alive" statistics.
"Making the world a better place" is not necessarily about keeping people alive. It's also about literally making the world a nicer place to live in.
(2) When it comes to research, $250.000 is basically the salary of a good researcher or two for a year. That still counts for something, but it's peanuts.
Exactly. But by continuing to debate this, we're perpetuating the doing nothing aspect. If you were really concerned about efficiency, you wouldn't be debating this on hacker news.
Compassion isn't always about efficiency. Doing something to make a difference in someone's life isn't always about allocating resources most efficiently.
If every single person who wanted to help out just kept saying "But these people need it more!" Then these kids wouldn't get the morale boosts they so sorely need.
People need to do these things. You can't just say "He isn't being efficient enough! Malaria patients need it more!" Because that's just unfair on these kids.
If every single person who wanted to help out looked for the most efficient thing to do on the margin, then there would hardly be any malaria patients. The most efficient opportunities for philanthropy would be exhausted. Then the next most efficient, then the next, and so forth. Maybe eventually we'd get around to giving these kids morale boosts, but if we didn't, it'd be because there were more important things to do.
This is a pretty reductionist view of his activities, IMO. Keeping cancer patients "happy," especially young children, is a huge part of their recovery. People like to speak in broad, fuzzy terms about the power of "smiles" and all that, but there's plenty of clinical research showing the significance of attitude on the workings of the body's response to disease. (And, even if the smiles had no effect whatsoever, it's still a noble cause to provide comfort to the sick and dying).
"...if his objective is to do as much good for the world as he can, he's not acheiving it."
But who said this was his objective? This is merely conjecture by a handful of HN commenters. Batman himself has neither stated, nor implied, that he's seeking to maximize utility of his efforts.
Even still, there's a very credible argument to be made in his defense against this charge.
Sure, he may not be maximizing his direct impact. But I imagine that the novelty of his approach, coupled with the publicity he's received, will have a large, indirect effect. Maybe more "Batmen" will answer the call of duty. Maybe more people will open up their hearts and wallets this week. Etc. It's highly likely that the sum total of his direct + indirect impact on the world is greater here than if he'd simply min/maxed the direct impact (e.g., by donation to X causes in Y locations).
He's now got symbolic value, as does the $250,000 Batmobile, and it's hard to measure the impact of that value. But it's certainly nontrivial.
As Ra's al-Ghul taught Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, the goal is to "become an idea." That way, what you stand for becomes far bigger than what you, alone, can achieve. You leverage your personal impact on the world. It's a lesson that this version of Batman seems to have learned well.
Certainly not me. "I consider it $250,000 that he's spending on a cool hobby that he enjoys, that also makes kids happy, and that also brings publicity to doing-good-things"
> He's now got symbolic value, as does the $250,000 Batmobile
He already has symbolic value, and I doubt that the $250,000 Batmobile will have that much symbolic value over his current one.
I agree with the rest of your post; but while your defense of the "Batman" approach is valid, remember that he didn't try to get this publicity. If he hadn't been pulled over, we wouldn't know about him.
With that in mind, we can assume that he didn't sit down and try to work out how to maximise his effect on the world; which in turn means that he probably isn't maximising his effect on the world.
I don't disagree with you about the incremental value of the additional +$250,000 spend on the new Batmobile. To me, that seems a little wasteful in service of whatever his goal happens to be (be it maximization, or otherwise). I won't begrudge him that decision; it's his money to spend, his passion, and a good cause to boot. But I could certainly think of better ways for him to spend that money in service of the same cause. (For instance, starting a "Batman Development Kit" of sorts, by creating a program for others to provide similar services across the country. Or, if the folks at DC/Warner Bros were smart, they might reach out to him to license the "Superfriends" collection and superhero roster gratis, for use in such a program).
Actually, I don't disagree with most of what you're saying here. But:
"remember that he didn't try to get this publicity. If he hadn't been pulled over, we wouldn't know about him."
Totally fair. But he provided symbolic value to his intended (albeit smaller) subset even before he went viral. And I would imagine that the indirect financial impact of that symbolism already exceeded the monetary value of his investment in said symbolism, even to the smaller (intended) target audience.
Of course, I realize that all of this discussion is somewhat academic unless we really understand what his motives were, and were not. To your point, it's a safe bet that he didn't sit down one day and try to quantitatively project his impact. :)
Awesome! Even $10 would have satisfied the intent of the question. It's people who seem to understand the concept but give literally zero that make me want to hit something with a stick.
Slightly off-topic, but your post reminded me of Slavoj Zizek's fiery verbal attack on charity[1], especially the line at the very end:
"It's horrible to see a child whose life is ruined because of an operation that costs 20$. .. (but) If you operate the child, they will live a little bit better, but in the same situation that produced them"
That's pretty much the most heartless thing I've ever read.
I work with children with mental disabilities. The medium happens to be theraputic horseback riding. Theres a lot reasons why this is a good thing for them (motor skills, confidence, etc etc) but ultimately for me I can tell it makes them happy. And I can tell over the course of a few months they improve. at motor skills and verbal skills.
But by your estimation, since the money spent upkeeping a barn and feeding horses could be "better" spent on malaria nets for people across the globe, this is a waste?
It seems like you think maximum efficiency is achieved by taking 'lives saved' / 'dollars spent'.
You aren't accounting for 'improvements in peoples lives'. If I don't save anyone's life, but I make 20 people's better, haven't I done some good in the world? Why is the only noble cause the one where it saves someones life?
And why are we responsible for everyone? There are a huge number of people in the world who would be saved by simple changes in behavior - whether it comes to mosquito nets preventing malaria, condoms preventing HIV spread, or sanitary conditions preventing chlorea outbreaks. I've done engineers without borders, it's not hard/expensive to improve sanitation, but a lot of people just have no interest in doing anything. Why do you have to shit on people doing good work here by pointing out they're not solving problems halfway across the globe?
> It seems like you think maximum efficiency is achieved by taking 'lives saved' / 'dollars spent'.
I never actually said this; "more people alive in 20 years" was an example. My main point was not "this future is better than that future", but "it is possible to decide which of these two futures is likely to be better".
This is also why I'm not accounting for 'improvements in peoples lives'. Not because we shouldn't account for that, but because accounting for it was beside the point.
That said, I think this would be a reasonable first-order estimate when it comes to comparing two charities. But I don't expect to ever be in a situation where a first-order estimate is all I can make.
And yes, I currently think the "malaria" world would be better than the "batmobile" world. I haven't thought about it very hard, so maybe I'm wrong.
> And why are we responsible for everyone?
If I can make a small improvement here or a large improvement in Africa, why would I not choose Africa?
(The improvement sizes should be assumed to have already taken into account things like funds being redirected, and all the other reasons why charities might sometimes not be efficient.)
> Why do you have to shit on people doing good work here
Note: I'm sort of meta-replying to all your posts in this thread here, so some of the bits I talk about come from other posts too.
It seems that your analytical process in this is only one-dimensional - maximize impact per dollar. This is reasonable, however it seems to ignore many possible definitions of "impact". Impact could be "lives saved" or "infections avoided" or any number of things that fit nicely in an optimization like you suggest. However, there are other forms of impact which could be considered:
* Instead of maximizing number of people impacted, there is a maximization on "best impact" per person.
* There are non-monetary forms of impact, in the form of giving people a feeling that someone really cares and respects them. A token donation, or some "bare minimum" bit of charity leaves many people feeling worse than they would without it, particularly when done poorly. Perhaps the optimization is on "make those who can get it, feel they really have someone on their side"
* And so on.
Further, as I mentioned, impact alone is not a bellwether dimension in how to figure this stuff out. There are considerations of:
* what does the giver feel comfortable giving (e.g. does the target cause ethical conflict w/in the giver)
* Does the giver have any non-monetary contributions as well?
* Does the giver want to be semi-anonymous?
* Does the giver want direct contact?
* What does the giver get as a result of this? It may sound "unaltruistic" or some other BS, but just handing over cash does not satisfy some people the way direct helping does.
Basically, my point is, while you have a decent metric, it is not the only one, nor is it worth discussing in isolation of the rest.
> It seems that your analytical process in this is only one-dimensional - maximize impact per dollar. This is reasonable, however it seems to ignore many possible definitions of "impact".
As I said in another post,
> My main point was not "this future is better than that future", but "it is possible to decide which of these two futures is likely to be better".
Yes, I'm ignoring the question of which forms of impact give the most utility. That's something people have to decide for themselves.
I'm saying that it is possible to take two potential actions, look at the potential results, and say "I like the average future of this action more than the average future of that action", even though you don't have perfect knowledge of what the outcomes will be.
I'm saying that I don't think Batman did this.
And I'm saying (though I haven't made it clear) that he's still doing more good than most, in an absolute sense and probably also as a fraction of how much good he could be doing.
And he deserves heaps of praise for this, because I don't want to discourage future Batmans; but I do want future Batmans to do better than this Batman, not because this Batman isn't good but simply because better is possible.
This might be true, but then what would the odds be for 50 years? 100? He may be literally saving a couple lives, but he's enriching and giving hope to a lot more, and they'll remember it. How do you quantify that effect on their life, and how it affects what they do? If 10 of them donate 25k for malaria because he helped them, then the balance is even. If one finds a cure because they're interested in helping people, then...?
I think I would still give 2:1 odds for 50 years, and better than even odds for 100 years.
It's possible that what he's doing will have disproportionate knock-on effects. It's also possible (though I think slightly less likely) that the malaria thing would have disproportionate knock-on effects.
Also, I think "a couple of lives" is understating it. With $250,000, I would be surprised if you couldn't save 100 lives.
Ah, sorry - the 'couple of lives' was meant to refer to what he was doing now. Hope makes a concrete difference, but it's hard to estimate how much since. With 250k to malaria vaccines, you'd end up saving a lot more.
I think the off-the-shelf solution to this is to purchase fuzzies and utilons separately - be Batman if it keeps you going, but maybe also give $10,000/year to efficient charities on the side?
I did a minor in international development studies. One of the things that I took away from there was that the problems of so-called developing countries (and poor people in rich countries as well) are very complex. There have been numerous well intended, philanthropic projects in past, which actually did more harm than good. Really determining what the most effective way to spend your money is, would require years of study.
There are consultants you can hire to help determine this for you. That said, the influence (be it good or bad) you could have with a couple million dollar is so minuscule, that you might as well measure the benefit of it in terms of emotional value, instead of any "objective" measure.
couple million dollar is so minuscule, that you might as well measure the benefit of it in terms of emotional value, instead of any "objective" measure.
You made excellent points up until this sentence. On a world wide scale, a couple million dollars is not even a drop in the bucket. But it can do tremendous good locally.
In my own life, I was helped out enormously because someone loaned me just $5000 at a critical time. More broadly, one of my professors is involved in a small nonprofit that targets one poor village in Africa. Their global impact is minute, but they have already helped that village create (not given, but helped it create for itself) a school for its children. Globally, a couple of million is probably not objectively measurable, but if targetted and used well it can make an enormous difference in the lives of a smaller group of people.
It's a large part of what drives me to be an entrepreneur. Pretty hard to cruise around in a Lambo visiting kids in the hospital working middle management.
But figuring out interesting ways to give back should be in the future of every successful entrepreneur, and never to early to get started.