Mike Huemer, my favorite philosopher, has two great pieces on a recent $75M donation to the Johns Hopkins Philosophy Department. They deserve a wider audience, so I’m posting them here with his permission.

I hate* to

rain on anyone’s parade, but this is among the most wasteful charitable

donations I’ve ever heard of (apart from gifts to even richer

universities, like Harvard). Let’s review (a) what this money will

accomplish, and (b) what else could have been accomplished with a $75

million charitable donation.

[*Note: Here, by “hate” I mean “very much enjoy”.]

(a)

Hopkins will use the money to hire 9 more philosophers, and provide

more funding for graduate students. This does not mean that 9 new

brilliant philosophers will be created. Rather, it will most likely

simply move 9 already-successful (and already well-paid) philosophers

from other schools to Hopkins. These philosophers will do pretty much

the same stuff they were already doing, but with more money.

Of

course, the schools they leave will then try to hire replacements; on

net, there will be room for 9 more people in the profession of

philosophy. This means, roughly, that an expected 9 marginal

philosophers will stay in the profession who otherwise would have left –

that is, 9 people who would have just barely failed to make it in

philosophy will instead just barely make it. Of course, there is a lot

of unpredictability, but something like that is the *expected* impact of

a change of this sort. Note: “marginal” is here used in the economic

sense.

In addition, some graduate students will have better

accommodations, or less financial strain during graduate school. Perhaps

this will occasionally make the difference to whether they stay in

philosophy or leave. If so, this might be a benefit to the ones who stay

. . . or it might very well be a cost, since philosophy is not that

great of a career for most people (again, esp. the ‘marginal’ people).

Also, society can look forward to a slightly increased production of

‘philosophy’, that is, more articles and/or books in philosophy – added

to the *tens of thousands* of such articles that are already being

produced every year, and already going almost completely unnoticed

because we have thousands of times more of them than any human being

could read.

Note again, the expected net effect is to increase

production by the *marginal* philosophers, not the top philosophers –

i.e., some people who would have just barely failed to get a research

job will now just barely get one. The *top* researchers would have

continued doing research either way; now they’ll just have a little more

money.

Is this marginal increase in the quantity of philosophy a social benefit? No, it isn’t. It obviously isn’t, for two reasons:

(i) We already have way more philosophy than we know what to do with;

if anyone pays attention to these additional marginal philosophy

articles, that attention will come at the expense of *other* philosophy

articles.

(ii) Most philosophy that people write is false. We know

that because published philosophy papers on the same question usually

contradict each other. We should expect the added, marginal philosophy

articles to be even more likely to be false, and less likely to be

interesting, than the average existing philosophy article. So probably,

the main effect of these added articles will be to take attention away

from better articles. That is actually a social harm.

(b)

What else could have been done with $75 million? According to rough

estimates from GiveWell, the most effective charities save lives at a

cost of around $3000 per life. This means that, instead of the above

effects, Bill Miller could have taken that same money and saved ~25,000

people’s lives.

Now, I’m no utilitarian. I’m not just complaining

that Miller failed to maximize utility. It can be rational to fail to

maximize utility. But when you are specifically *giving to charity*, I

tend to assume that the purpose is to do good for others. If so, it’s

just irrational to give to a philosophy department.

You might

say: maybe his purpose wasn’t to do good. Maybe he just had positive

feelings toward the philosophy department where he had studied, and he

was partial to those people. But then what he should have done is given

money to those individuals – e.g., his favorite professors. Now his gift

is going to go to *other* professors who are presently at other

schools, to make them move to Hopkins. Also, some money will go to

future graduate students whom Bill Miller doesn’t know. So this form of

partiality makes no sense to me.

If you’re trying to do good for

the world, give to GiveWell, the Humane League, or something like that.

If you’re trying to help people that you personally like or have a

special relationship with, then give to those individuals. In neither

case should you give to a university.