The social scene has an extremely vindictive vibe, very much suited to such soi-disant prophets. If you need anything from these people, my sense has always been, it isn't really safe to even let them think you might someday harbor the desire to cross them.

Of course butter wouldn't melt in their mouths to hear them tell it, but when ever in a case like this isn't that true?

The hate for EA comes from a bug in it.

If you put your time horizon out far enough, you can calculate an almost infinite positive value as the end result of your actions today. From an infinite positive value, you can justify doing almost infinite amounts of damage now in order to reach that golden future.

But like most "ends justify the means" philosophies, we never seem to actually get the claimed ends, but we do get the damage from the means. If you do terrible things to create a wonderful future, your theoretical wonderful future never seems to show up, but you still do the terrible things.

I'm not the one you were asking, but I think this summarizes most peoples' objection to EA.

The problem is that EA isn't true to its label. If you really wanted to do effective altruism, you'd make sure that it actually works. I could get behind that.

You are correct about what EA references. There was corruption in the EA community (e.g. Sam Bankman) and some extremist factions as well. It was fashionable for a bit to point to the worst sections and dismiss the whole movement which largely has centered on being financially efficient in improving the world. For example, supporting malaria nets, direct cash transfers, and other basically not wasteful altruism.