I don't write about it much on this blog, because it it's slightly awkward to talk about, and I'm a small little mind that isn't used to fighting against hyperbolic discounting. But I remain committed to donating at least 10% of my income to the organizations that I think best make the universe a better place, and to talking about it on this blog. Here are my thoughts for 2017.

(0)

These reflect a relatively small amount of thought, reading and discussion with people in the Effective Altruism community, and effectively no independent research. I don't expect that I'm particularly advantaged in evaluating charities, and so my opinion-forming strategy this year has mostly been to seek out the opinions of better-advantaged friends who I believe share my values, ask for their thoughts and reasons, and attempt to understand them.

However, I want to support a culture of sharing and building on each others' opinions, and to that end, I'm sharing my thoughts on my donations for this year, to create common knowledge about organizations that I believe deserve support and to share considerations to which I am sympathetic or find persuasive.

Disclosure: Some of the friends who have helped me form my opinions here work for, or are on the boards of, some of the charities I'm giving to.

I discuss tax considerations unique to 2017 (1a) and logistics for donating (1b), my general approach to identifying charities (2), the specific charities I'm supporting this year (3a, summary), and further reading in the form of evaluators' reports and personal writeups (4).

(1a)

To many people, the 2017 tax environment gives larger incentives to donate than will 2018's. For some people,

One of the problems with being an avowed altruist is that it's hard to talk about it with other people without coming across like you're trying to claim you're better than them.

One of the problems with being an aspiring effective altruist is that it's hard to talk about it with other people without coming across like you're trying to claim you're better than everyone else, including other avowed altruists, and definitely including non-altruistic plebes.

(This, I think, is something of a barrier to effective altruism becoming a more popular thing, and I'd like to see it change.)

But if I can't write about this in the locus of the interval between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can't write about it at all, and that would be really quite sad for me, so here goes. I really, really don't mean to brag or guilt-shame anyone else -- I am trying to normalize talking casually about altruism, because I think a world where we can talk about it without awkwardness is a better world than this.

My brother asked me the other day: "What do you want for Christmas? Give me two things, one which someone could reasonably buy you, and another which you'd ask for from a wish-granting genie who popped out of a lamp."

My answer for the first was an Oculus Rift; my answer for the second was that malaria be eradicated tomorrow.

Now, of course I would actually ask a genie that all communicable diseases be eradicated tomorrow, or that all