Failure to optimize is equivalent to directly perpetrating harm, especially when the stakes are high ($8 billion) and optimizing is jaw-droppingly simple and easy (read recommendations from Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, GiveWell, etc., and spend some ultra tiny fraction of time comparing the impact on lives between e.g. donating $1 billion to fucking Cornell vs $1 billion to a cause like Against Malaria or SCI).
Tell the children who have died and will die from directly preventable malaria or waterborne parasites that Feeny’s negligence has done no harm.
By not spending the money on them, he literally facilitated their deaths. For what? Cornell has a fancier campus? Obamacare had a nicer grassroots website? It’s sickening.
And it’s no defense to distract by saying nobody can be perfectly ascetic or optimize away every wasteful purchase or discretionary spending. That’s not at all related or up for discussion. We’re talking about one guy with a stated goal of funding efficacious charities with $8 billion of available funds to do it over time. Just about as pure a thought experiment of negligence as there ever was.
Tell the children who have died and will die from directly preventable malaria or waterborne parasites that Feeny’s negligence has done no harm.
By not spending the money on them, he literally facilitated their deaths. For what? Cornell has a fancier campus? Obamacare had a nicer grassroots website? It’s sickening.
And it’s no defense to distract by saying nobody can be perfectly ascetic or optimize away every wasteful purchase or discretionary spending. That’s not at all related or up for discussion. We’re talking about one guy with a stated goal of funding efficacious charities with $8 billion of available funds to do it over time. Just about as pure a thought experiment of negligence as there ever was.