How Should We Donate $53,000 of xkcd Book Profits? | Hacker News Reader

How Should We Donate $53,000 of xkcd Book Profits?

breadpig.com

39 pointskn0thing29 comments

I said the following in the reddit thread but don't know if anyone read it. Award $5k to ten "help-the-world" projects ($3k would probably go towards organizing everything). Spread the word via reddit/xkcd/HN. Sorta like the Pepsi-Refresh contest but more open and social. Let each of the 10 project owners do a reddit IAMA and keep the online community updated with their idea and progress. Allow them to share videos, photos, and post guest entries on blog.reddit.com. Let reddit/xkcd/HN users vote on all the submitted projects and select the top 10.

If $5k seems too low, then maybe have five $10k projects or some other mix. In a way, this would be a gift that keeps on giving.

heya! Yes, I should've made this more clear :) but we've already promised xkcd book profits to Room to Read (it says so on the copyleft page of each book).

2 years ago when I started breadpig, I had ambitions for a vague 'breadpig prize' -- what your proposing is a much more concrete idea. It's great and I think you're absolutely right on with this (and would love to have your help in the near future, if you're up for it). I'm officially retired from reddit, tho, so there'll probably be no blog.reddit takeover ;)

But I do like this idea. I'm proud to be one of the AwesomeFoundation trustees; the org itself is nothing short of awesome: http://awesomefoundation.org/

Creating something with a more 'help the world' bent would be great, especially if it's software-based. To even play a small part in starting the next Ushahidi...

Looks like they're in good hands with you :)

I'm totally up for this. AwesomeFoundation could be the main host for the prize and you can probably have additional sponsors for each idea, maybe in a different field each (health, farming, education etc.) Give me a shout out whenever you are ready.

I can't vote because I have no idea which of these countries needs the help more and where the dollars would have the biggest marginal utility (maybe it's time to go check GapMinder.org?), but I just want to say that I'm glad they're doing this, and access to education is a great way to change some lives for the better.

And sell more books - that's the real reason breadpig puts profits into nonprofits related to the product. Higher literacy rates means more potential book buyers. It's quite sinister, really.

We did the same thing with LOLmagnetz (for the SF SPCA) so that more dogs & cats get adopted, creating more dog & cat owners and thus more potential LOLmagnetz buyers.

I don't believe that you are actually sinister here. I think it's more like you are claiming to be sinister because the process of narrowing down which specific charity to support out of the vast array of needy charities just feels evil.

Literacy is a good cause. If I was in your position, it would be hard for me to pick a specific cause like literacy over saving the most human lives per dollar.

Out of all the developing country education charities, Givewell rates Pratham highest. http://www.givewell.net/international/charities/pratham Have you considered them for the next Breadpig book project?

Reddit search...

Ok, I am just kidding :). Its hard to vote on donations like this because I am sure they could all use some help, so I only voted for the countries and causes I am more aware of.

I keep telling people: we're open-source :) please consider that an open invitation to fix our search.

http://kiva.org

Your money will make more money and grow.

I believe the grown money would (mostly) go to the partner lenders of the program, Kiva makes it sound perfectly lovely, but someone has to go out and interview those people and file paperwork and take photos an collect the money, and of course make profit doing that.

Aye, most of the MFIs (microfinance institutes = banks to the poor, essentially) are for-profit. Some are non-profit, though, but they all charge interest rates for these loans - kiva lenders essentially are loaning them interest-free loans ($25 at a time) to encourage them to take more risks, that is, lend to poorer clients for lower interest rates.

I just finished a 3month kiva fellowship :) so I can assure you that your kiva loans do not generate interest for you. You will (in most cases, if the loan is repaid in full) at best get all of your loan back, which you can then reloan, donate to kiva, or withdraw. It's still a great nonprofit, but I should've made it more clear that we've already promised publisher profits to Room to Read, we just need to decide where in the world to build.

Great :)

Two words: Raptor Awareness

You can never be too safe. All xkcd-book-built-buildings will have raptor emergency escape plans installed in conspicuous parts of each room, of course.

Old age/metabolic dmg reseach: benefits 99% of all humans on earth.

Benefits some of the humans on earth who are still alive and can afford it at the time it becomes working and widely available.

If you mean people on Earth right now... at a death rate of around 150,000 people per day, assuming 7 billions alive right now, that gives about 500 days before 1% of the population dies, and it needs to benefit everyone else.

Death rate citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate

Benefits 99% of humanity, as opposed to any other disease which benefits only that one.

Benefits only those who live long enough to suffer age related problems, and I doubt that's 99% of all humans born.

"99% of all ________" is an idiom. I'm sure your nitpick is factually correct in the small. I doubt we'll ever get infant mortality down that low. However, you do get the "Comic book guy" award for picking apart an argument on a completely inconsequential detail.

However, the point is MOST EVERYONE dies from something that's a result of getting older, and they'll benefit from age related research.

Most cancers even can't actually progress until older ages, as younger peoples' immune systems are so much better they typically fight off the disease.

Here's a pretty good TED talk on it. http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...

If the measure is "donate to the cause that will benefit the most people" (which the inclusion of "will benefit 99% of people" suggests it is) then pulling apart "how many people will benefit" is hardly a nitpick of a completely inconsequential detail - it's a rebuke of the main detail.

For all de Grey's antiaging speculation, Dean Kamen's external combustion water purifier has the potential to benefit poor people who die young this year, not rich people who live a long time 25+ years from now. On the "where should we donate money now" question, de Grey's ideas are very distant with no clear paths to their realization.

And if you include speculative future technologies then Eliezer Yudkowsky's arguments for pushing AI development seem fundamentally more compelling than de Grey's argument for pushing antiaging research. Not that I can ever find specific Eliezer writings when I want to link to them :/

My immediate thought was to hire a band of ninja to appear at every XKCD speaking appearance.

http://roomtoread.org

Do nerd solidarity.

Scholarships.

I don't think these work very well, in general. What colleges tend to do is look at their student body, observe "Hey! A lot of them are getting big scholarships, so if we raise tuition, they can afford it", and then raise tuition.

EFF

Freedom From Religion Foundation

http://www.ffrf.org/

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