Just generally, I like the idea of putting something out there in the world even if the first version isn’t perfect :)

Really cool! Easy to use and looks great. Some feedback:

The word "offsetting" seems to have bad PR.  But I quite like "Leave no harm" and "a clean slate". I think the general idea could be really compelling to certain parts of the population. There is at least some subsection of the population that thinks about charity in a "guilty conscious" sense. Maybe guilt is a good framing, especially since it is more generalizable here than most charities are capable of eliciting.  

I'm certainly not an expert on this, but I wonder if this could have particular appeal to religious groups? The concept of "Ahimsa" in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism seems relevant.

Last suggestion: Air pollution may be a good additional category of harms. I'm not sure what the best charity target would be though, given that it is hyper regional. Medical research? Could also add second-hand cigarette smoke to that. 

Seems like the best bet is to make it as comprehensive as possible, without overly diluting the most important and evidence backed stuff like farmed animal welfare.

Cool project!

One point of improvement I noticed was that when it asked for zip-code you could only add American ones, I would suggest adding  an option to choose different countries! I think the platform could be especially popular with Europeans, so I would suggest focusing on adding those countries first.

Anyway, I like the platform and I feel like it has a lot of potential to do good. Good work!

A very cool idea and nice implementation, thanks for sharing! I sympathize a lot with the idea and "we take responsibility to correct negative consequences of our actions where feasible" could be a good norm to coordinate around.

Some comments

I want the website to give confident, simple numbers so people don't have to think about the uncertainty ranges. I want them to be given a simple number with no uncertainty, and explain the uncertainty further into the site if they dig further.

I think this makes a lot of sense! It can be tricky to get the balance right and at the moment I think some formulations that try to emphasize clarity err in the direction of being too confident - but I fully understand that it is a lot of effort to do these things well.

Formulations on the website:

Inspired by effective altruism principles, we've identified the four areas where your money can do the most good—and calculated exactly how much it takes to balance your share.

The formulation "the four cause areas where your money can do the most good" seems mistaken? If I got this right, the reasoning is to effectively undo (offset) the harms associated with one's personal lifestyle for major areas individually. The effectiveness mostly enters when deciding on which org to donate to within the chosen cause area. Of course, to some degree, the cause areas are still chosen with effectiveness in mind but I think that a different formulation could capture the reasoning better. A suggestion might be

"Inspired by effective altruism principles, for each of the major areas where our lifestyle comes along with negative impact, we've identified where your money can do the most good—and calculated how much it takes to balance your share."

Offset your impact

I feel the formulation "undo/offset my impact" is a little unfortunate as, in my mind, impact mainly is related to intended and thus positive consequences. It takes a little extra concentration to realize that in this case I do want to get rid of the impact. On the other hand, I cannot find a similarly short alternative formulation. Maybe "rectify your impact" could work?

Thanks for doing this, Myles! I strongly upvoted your post.

I do not know whether improving the conditions of farmed animals, and mitigating global warming, habitat destruction, and plastic waste increase or decrease welfare due to potentially dominant uncertain effects on soil animals and microorganisms. However, I still think offseting the effects of personal consumption by funding the most cost-effective interventions is a good norm to spread.

Executive summary: The author presents leavenoharm.org, a website designed to make “moral offsetting” easy by calculating how much individuals should donate to specific charities to offset the negative impacts of their lifestyle, and argues that this approach is unlikely to increase harm and may encourage more overall good.

Key points:

1. The author was motivated by difficulty answering how much and to whom one should donate to offset measurable harms from personal lifestyle choices.
2. leavenoharm.org focuses on offsetting impacts from animal welfare, climate change, habitat destruction, and plastic waste using a single recommended fund per cause area.
3. The site offers a calculator to estimate required donations based on lifestyle inputs and a dashboard to track progress toward offsetting projected lifetime harm.
4. The author explicitly excludes many traditional EA cause areas, arguing that the site targets harms that scale with people living in surplus.
5. In response to critiques of moral offsetting, the author claims it is hard to imagine effective donations increasing suffering and hypothesizes that offsetting may create inertia toward further positive actions.
6. The author acknowledges uncertainty in the underlying estimates but prioritizes simple, confident numbers, with plans to improve automation, expand internationally, and reduce donation friction.

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Happy to see something like this. I did notice I got $3.45 for animal suffering despite being vegan, just curious as to why that is? (I don't think being vegan eliminates animal suffering entirely, I just want to know the reasoning). I imagine there are a lot of kinks to iron out, but I like the concept a lot :)

A nit

lifestyle supports the planet, rather than taking from it

appeals to me, I'm sure to some others, but (I sense) could come across with a particular political-tribal flavour, which you might want to try neutralising. (Or not! if that'd detract from the net appeal)