SBF used effective altruism as cover for his fraud. People in the movement swallowed his bs. Like everyone else...
Anything Sam Altman is near, I stay away from.
The community is a piece of work but the founding ideas are worth learning from.
Will MacAskill, nope.
Eg the founding ideas of almost all religions are nuts [0], but the communities are often worth learning from.
[0] Most religions' ideas are mutually exclusive, so at most one or zero can be true. The rest must be nuts. Figuring out which, if any, religion is not nuts is left as an exercise for the reader.
> Yet this crisis also creates an opportunity. * Effective altruism, the movement, is not the same thing as effective altruism, the practice of financially maximalist and rigorously data-driven philanthropy. * Divorcing the latter from the former would benefit everyone on the planet.
I've been wondering why you guys care about some guy who ran a crypto exchange and what that has to do the with the core philosophy of effective altruism but it seems like you've all linked the movement with the philosophy to my chagrin.
1) I believe the thought leaders behind the philosophy severely downplay the downsides of making money amorally. It’s considered a completely legitimate approach to find the highest paying job you can and donate lots of your salary. High paying jobs that attract EA believers (finance in particular, many areas of tech as well) tend to destabilize the economy, oppress people, and contribute to unreasonable expectations about economic growth that kill our planet.
2) The movement is culturally weak, doesn’t really attempt to branch out of a few men with similar finance/tech backgrounds with huge egos and savior complexes. This, to me, is not how change occurs. Culture is a necessary part of change. Sure, you can provide mosquito nets to malaria-ridden areas of the world, but that doesn’t change a culture of corruption or encourage the next generation to solve the local systemic issues that only they’re capable of fixing. Real movements attempt to change hearts and minds and incorporate different types of people. In other words, movements are inseparable from their community. Any philosophy that doesn’t incorporate community building is not going to be the most effective way of creating positive change.