Just the capitalized term EA to me reads like a scam. It’s a new term created to explain some behavior that is simply injurious to the broader population, claiming that its for their benefit. I’m just not sure I buy it.
what "behavior" are you talking about? The second paragraph of the wikipedia article on EA says:
>Common practices of effective altruists include choosing careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves, donating to charities based on maximising impact, and earning to give. Popular cause priorities within EA include global health and development, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future.
I'm not sure how any of those causes can be considered "simply injurious to the broader population".
Sorry, but this whole FTX thing isn't just an "oopsie." They knew exactly what they were doing and tried to justify it with a few targeted donations. The landing page alone only showcases 6 initiatives, 50% of which are exactly what I described above.
This seems totally expected if you think of effective altruism as a movement focused on figuring out where your money would be best spent, rather than as some sort of organization that wants your money. This is reflected in what SBF did. He didn't donate all his money to effective altruism like it's a cult or whatever, he set up a charity and hired various people to decide which worthy projects should be funded.
>(relative to the billions moving through FTX).
And why would you compare that to "the billions moving through FTX"? FTX isn't EA, nor does FTX operate as some sort of non-profit. FTX does have a charitable arm, but they only issued $160 million worth of grants, nowhere near "the billions" you speak of. You can see their grant list here: https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/
Because they were parading SBF around as this bastion of EA. No doubt a lot of people anchored their ships to FTX because of this and used his affiliation as evidence of FTX being "the good guys." Is it a direct relationship? Not as far as I've seen, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of the money they were taking in (as investment and deposits) as a low-key slush fund for people tied to EA.