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Comment by jdotjdot | Hacker News Reader

I can't decide how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I love the initiative you're taking here and the drive you have. Reading the article, my immediate thought was "that's terrible"--whereas yours was "What can I personally do about this right now?"

On the other hand, I remain unconvinced that directing resources simply to the people and charities that come my way through the media is the best way to distribute these resources. Yes, Meem will greatly benefit from this money. But is it good that Meem gets it simply because she happened to be written up in the paper? What about those who are never written up--and does that simply incentivize people in need to seek publicity rather than promote more sustainable macro-level solutions?

I don't have a real answer here, it's just that actions like these make me feel strongly ambivalent, if you'll forgive my oxymoron.

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There actually is an answer here. Namely, http://www.givewell.org/

The "effective altruism" movement attempts to compare all of the altruistic interventions available to maximize the amount of good done per dollar of your donation, and GiveWell is a part of this movement (although there are others you can explore). Currently GiveWell's top-rated charity is one providing malaria nets in Africa, and their second rated is one that provides direct wealth transfers to Kenyans. They have ridiculously high epistemic standards which are detailed in their published articles and on their blog.

I probably would have felt the same way as you even a year ago. But then it started to feel like I was always waiting to be "effective" and never actually doing anything. If every human on this planet who could just adopted one other random person on this planet to look out for, wouldn't the world be a much better place?

Possibly, except my point was Meem is hardly random. If everyone took that initiative, Meem would get a ton of support because of the publicity--but no one else would.

And if everyone thought like you did, then Meem wouldn't get any support at all. So, who's position sits better with you?

Look, the best we can do is take care of the actionable problems in front of us. I don't consider "get vast numbers of people out of poverty" to be an actionable problem. I don't study poverty, I don't know what statistically significant levers to pull (or try to pull). I just know that when I see a situation like Meem's, I know I can help so I can at least make the effort.

And who knows? Maybe in trying to help one person I'll have some insight (currently lacking) into the larger problems. But I find it hard to take that someone can sit back in their armchair, never having helped a single person out of poverty in their life, criticizing someone for taking concrete action because it doesn't address the larger issues.

The simple fact is that unless you have vast wealth, or you have a tremendous amount of influence on those with wealth, then you have about as much ability to address larger issues as I do, that is, nil. So if you want to let your contradictory beliefs paralyze you into inaction, that's your problem. Meanwhile, let me do what I can in peace.

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