Please consider donating
In our world, there's suffering and deaths, and there's an unacceptably immense chance humanity won't survive another century. That shouldn't be the case. Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to help everyone, to prevent all lives from ending, and prevent all the suffering.
Please donate to the most effective charities in the world. That will save lives and do the most good per dollar. We can't help everyone, but the thing we can do is to save as many people as we can and prevent as much suffering as we're able to with the resources we have. It costs $50k in the US to train a dog that will help a blind person; it costs $5 to cure a disease preventing blindness of a person in Africa. Ideally, we'd like to cure all blindness or, at least, help everyone to the possible extent. We can't do that, so we ought to help the most. GiveWell has a list of the most effective charities in the world. Please consider donating there.
The value of a life is unimaginably large. I hope that at some point, humanity will be able to tear apart stars to save a single life, and I would consider tearing apart stars worth it. At the moment, it costs just around $5k to save a life. For every $5k donated, someone who'd otherwise die will live. It's not ok that saving an invaluable life costs that little, but it's where we at; please, donate and save lives.
If you're interested in how to do the most good with your career, consider visiting 80,000 Hours. It's a nonprofit that gives research-backed advice on how to choose a career with the most impact. Some careers are more impactful than others by orders of magnitude. Having a high income and donating a large portion of it might save more lives than being a doctor. Working on pandemic preparedness (something 80,000 Hours recommended doing even before the Covid-19 pandemic!) or reducing the existential risks arising from climate change or the AI Alignment problem might have even more impact than donating, especially if you consider the impact on the future generations. I'm personally specifically excited about the AI Alignment research; see the 80,000 Hours' review of the problem.
If you're already donating to highly effective charities or pursuing a high-impact career and would also like to support the bot, you can do that! We spend about $100 per month on the Reddit bot (music recognition costs a lot to run!), and while we are willing and currently able to spend the money, we would appreciate your help. If the community supports the bot at least partially, it would be easier for us to continue its operations.
Again, please first consider donating to charities recommended by GiveWell or looking into 80,000 Hours. Seriously, human lives are much more important than some random Reddit bot. But if you're already doing that and able to spend additional money so this bot keeps working, here's our Patreon: patreon.com/audd.
