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Comment by hollerith | Hacker News Reader

There is no HR department or board of quality assurance for effective altruism: it's like Spiderman fandom: the only qualification for becoming a fan of Spiderman is saying that you are a fan of Spiderman. The other Spiderman fans have no way to kick you out of the fandom. EA is more like Spiderman fandom than it is like priesthood in the Catholic Church.

At least in the Bay Area, I heard that the people who regularly organize in-person events will refuse entry to certain men who have a history of preying on women, but really there is no way to prevent those men or anyone else from persisting in publicly proclaiming that they are effective altruists.

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I mean they purchased a building for their HQ and had group meetups and stuff. It's a bit less nebulous than your spiderman fans example.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33903850

If a web site owner misbehaves, no one concludes that the misbehavior reflects poorly on all the other web site owners because everyone understands that there is no way for the other web site owners to eject the misbehaving owner from their ranks. The fact that some of these web site owners are in fact very wealthy and own buildings is not relevant.

Similarly, effectivealtruism.org is just one non-profit in an ecosystem of dozens and does not own the trademark "effective altruism" or "effective altruist" (which might give it some ability to control how the trademark is used or by whom it is used).

> The fact that some of these web site owners are in fact very wealthy and own buildings is not relevant.

You're overgeneralizing too far. This is like saying just because a church has a building doesn't mean they are an organization. The building was purchased with the expressed intent of being used for the group. It appears you trying to suggest there are weak ties where there are actually strong ones. These people all know each other and shared ideas.

more like: just because a church is an organization, it doesn't mean that every christian believer is a member of that organization. like there is no requirement to be a member of a church to practice christianity, there is no requirement to be a member of any EA organization to practice EA.

correct. and bad people doing EA or bad people doing EA badly doesn't make EA bad.

I'm not a huge fan of EA, but I'm sick of seeing HN and EA endorse tribalism by saying that all Christians this or all Republicans this or all white people that or all rich people that....

-rich white Republican Christian

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