I take issue with this attitude. How is this anything but degrading and shaming those who give their time and money to a noble cause? I frankly don't see how your opinion on efficacy matters, it appears you want to make people feel bad for doing good-but-not-good-enough things.
If you want me to stop saying that, prove me wrong. Calling me mean isn't an argument. If what I say makes people feel bad, the solution isn't to start lying to make them feel better.
Me spending $40 to go out to dinner with my wife is motivated by a desire to feel good. Should I instead "set aside my feelings" and spend that on your list of approved charities "in order to do the right thing"? Have you given up all frivolous spending and donate it to causes you believe to be effective?
I should have started by saying that it's good that you're thinking of which charities you find to be a more effective target for donations. It turns from thoughtful to unnecessary when you pass judgment on others for giving differently than you would give.
EA is just doing the same moral judgement using a different accounting metric.
By going out to dinner with you wife, you are making both you and your wife happy. For that, you get 1 morality point in my book.
If you instead took that money and gave it to the make a wish foundation, you get 10 morality points.
And by giving it to the gates foundation, to help prevent Malaria, you get 100 morality points.
It is exactly the same thing it you yourself were to congratulate someone else on donating to a charity that you like. You are making a moral judgement on them.
Me making a moral judgement on you is no different.
Nobody "has" to do anything. I will fully admit that the average doctor is a better person than I am. Just like how I am probably a better person than the average pay day loan scammer.
Everyone makes judgements every day about other people. EA is just saying that these judgements should be evidence based.
I think it is 100% a valid moral stance to care about your community or your nation, and not feel any moral obligation to help people outside of that. The world is too big and chaotic for every human to feel the same degree of moral obligation for every other human.
Moreover, maybe Make-A-Wish's main positive outcome is not that one kid gets a wish, but that everyone gets to 'live in a society where Make-A-Wish exists', thus kindling optimism and community and reminding us that the world is still kind in big ways. It is not hard to see that the net result on one's society of Make-a-Wish could, for some systems of evaluating morality of actions, be far higher than well-intentioned throwing money at some faraway place where you would never see any result, either if you care much more about local effects, or if you think signaling effects can be comparable in magnitude to actual 'good'.
Anyway, the crux of it is that your way of accounting for the morality of actions is actually pretty particular and you're demanding everyone else follow it and then shaming them if they don't. Not your morality, your system of accounting, which is far less 'obviously' right.
> If you want me to stop saying that, prove me wrong. Calling me mean isn't an argument. If what I say makes people feel bad, the solution isn't to start lying to make them feel better.
People aren't robots, and there's no moral obligation for them to act like they are.