5 Comments

The link was to the front page of GiveMeaning.com, the charity offering the service. I have edited the post to link separately to the gift card purchase page and the 'about' page, which has the information for charities to sign up.

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Carl, your link does not work.

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Humans show similarly conflicted behaviour in many areas: expressing desire to lose weight while regularly gorging, claiming to want to save more but procrastinating in taking advantage of free money for 401 (k) funds, etc. When a conflict arises between the rational portions of the brain, the part concerned in explicit, conscious motives, and our hidden genetic masters (I have read http://hanson.gmu.edu/matri... I select the former. Since overcoming bias and the rationalist program are matters of the cortex, I feel no qualms in favoring the 'illusion' over the amygdala in the context of this blog.

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No way, if we're more concerned with appearing helpful than helping, it by no means follows that we should help less. Helping conspicuously should be a win-win. If so, we would indeed support Carl's charity proposal.

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Humans are in many ways hypocrites regarding charity; we say we want to help but really seem to care more about looking helpful. But even though some of us might support exposing the hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another, we need not support the one thing. We might instead accept being selfish and wanting to look good. If so, we would not support your charity proposal.

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