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Humility in Eight Ways

Humility is often seen as a single trait, but this article makes the case that there are different kinds of humility, and they serve different purposes. As a parent, I could have used more familial humility a lot of times as my sons can attest.

We’re also learning that there are many different kinds of humility—and that each one can have limitations…Here’s an overview of eight varieties of humility—and of all the ways they can keep us grounded even in the face of injustices.

The Eight Kinds of Humility That Can Help You Stay Grounded | Ravi Chandra

A study of high-stakes, anonymous generosity

Related to yesterday’s post: Many studies of generosity have been done over the years, but with relatively small amounts. To study high-stakes generosity, you need a lot of research funding to give to study participants.

That’s what these researchers were able to do, and the results show that people are quite generous in large amounts, and will be generous even without social praise.

How generous are people when making consequential financial decisions in the real world? We took advantage of a rare opportunity to examine generosity among a diverse sample of adults who received a gift of U.S. $10,000 from a pair of wealthy donors, with nearly no strings attached. Two-hundred participants were drawn from three low-income countries (Indonesia, Brazil, and Kenya) and four high-income countries (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States) as part of a preregistered study. On average, participants spent over $6,400 on purchases that benefited others, including nearly $1,700 on donations to charity, suggesting that humans exhibit remarkable generosity even when the stakes are high. To address whether generosity was driven by reputational concerns, we asked half the participants to share their spending decisions publicly on Twitter, whereas the other half were asked to keep their spending private. Generous spending was similar between the groups, in contrast to our preregistered hypothesis that enhancing reputational concerns would increase generosity.

Are People Generous When the Financial Stakes Are High? | Sage Journals

Does pure altruism exist, and do we even want it?

I don’t think pure altruism is what we want people to experience, as I’ve told my nonprofit finance students for years. Philosopher Judith Lichtenberg wrote a great piece in the NYT back in 2010 that articulates why we should care far less about why people are generous and care far more that they act generously.

Altruism is possible and altruism is real, although in healthy people it intertwines subtly with the well-being of the agent who does good. And this is crucial for seeing how to increase the amount of altruism in the world.

Is Pure Altruism Possible? - The New York Times

Lessons from Scaling Solar in Africa

If you’re inclined to believe that solving things like poverty (in this case energy poverty) just takes a bunch of money and willpower, then I strongly recommend this article. It’s a real-world example of why scaling solutions is hard: complex problems, competing interests, hidden subsidies, and so on.

I do think we’re headed to a future where solar infrastructure becomes the default power solution in much of the world, but this article illustrates what it will take to get there.

The solution seems so obvious. A region synonymous with abundant sun is hungry for more electricity. Given Africa’s colossal untapped solar radiation, the continent should be installing solar panels at a furious pace. But it’s not. Though home to 60% of the world’s best solar resources, Africa today represents just 1% of installed solar photovoltaic capacity.

Why Isn’t Solar Scaling in Africa?—Asterisk

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