Hacker News Reader

If they donate to something you approve of, often people will excuse their failures by saying “at least the money is going to a good cause”

when I made my bets to places I don’t approve of—-well I would never lose a bet where I had money to the KKK on the line, I’ll tell you that

View on HN

Hi Maneesh! I'm actually opposed to anti-charities because I think they're bad for the world and not necessary -- you can get equal motivation with a neutral (non-evil) 3rd party, as long as you make the amount at risk high enough. More at https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity/

PS: As you know I'm a huge fan of Pavlok -- https://pavlok.com/ -- and definitely don't think that my arguments against anti-charities apply to it even though they're both very punishment focused. Pavlok (obviously I'm saying this for others, not Maneesh, founder of Pavlok!) is more about classical conditioning while Beeminder is more operant conditioning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com