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0 pointsnkmnz1y ago0 comments

Thank you for replying to my critique! The whole point of me reading your text was not to critique your assumptions, but to understand your arguments. It would be great if you'd do the same: make understanding the whole point of your thought, not criticizing.

I'm willing to accept this statement of your's about QF as correct: "QF assumes that all utility is direct utility, benefiting the contributor only." This still does not exclude the utility of saving lives for the savior. If the act of saving a live is worth 10m units of currency to me, the utility that I derive must be at least 10m units of currency. This is the "direct utility benefiting the contributor"! You cannot claim that QF cares only about direct utility of the contributor, but then go on and set that direct utility to 0, claiming QF didn't care about it.

0 pointsnkmnz1y ago0 comments

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4 comments · 2 top-level

imtringued1y ago· 1 in thread

If you value saving lives at a rate of $100,000 worth of utility and a cost of $100,000, then quadratic funding makes you [0] pay $150,000 of money for $100,000 worth of utility.

Make sure to carefully read articles before dismissing them twice. Thank you.

[0] you = your contribution + a magical subsidy (presumably paid by you indirectly)

nkmnzOP1y ago

The problem with the article is that they did not make the point you are conveying here.

They say: 1. QF cares only about direct utility 2. $saving a life brings $100,000 of INdirect utility for society and/or the person who's life is saved 3. we (again: who?!) don't care about the direct utility in this case

I have no idea how you can wrap your head around the idea that this is a good representation of any valid critique.

Btw, I think QF is stupid, but that's not the point here.

Certhas1y ago· 1 in thread

What an uncharitable reply. Not op, but you seem to miss the basic point of the article, I.e. you fail at your own criterion of making understanding your goal.

As someone not in this space I found the argument succinct and easy to follow. QF is optimal if you only have direct utility. To illustrate that this assumption is problematic, confront it with a hypothetical where direct utility is zero. Then you can clearly and immediately see that in this hypothetical it's not optimal.

Maybe the argument is hard to parse if you're not used to reading theoretical literature?

nkmnzOP1y ago

But OP did not follow his own terms: he refuses to take the direct utility of giving your money to charity into account and instead calculates some arbitrary utility of the saved lives, which is indirect utility.

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