Read the bio. Found it (emphasis mine):
> While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter.[5]
Just another smart, yet ethically challenged, individual. Nothing to see here.
> While at Columbia, he co-founded the university's effective altruism (EA) chapter.[5]
Just another smart, yet ethically challenged, individual. Nothing to see here.
Because almost everyone prominent in the movement has had some combination of lack of judgment and morals. There various terms for rationally pursuing philanthropy; associating with effective altruism involves embracing its ideas, people and culture.
Going to need a good source for that crowd having done more good than the frauds of even just their most-notorious members.
Masquerading as an altruist to justify massive management fees for running a fund of concentrated, leveraged positions is one of the oldest lipsticks on financial pigs.
And it does not come cheap. Someone who says "I will not work for Facebook" is taking a stand at the expense of significant personal gain.
EA has many tenets, some of make sense per se, but collectively–particulalry when taking into account that EA isn't just an idea but a movement of people with a distinct culture and track record–probably do more harm than good.
Well, for one, the frequency of its members committing mass fraud.
Like, if a church preaches kindness and love but its preachers and members are constantly out there murdering people, it's a bit silly to point to the text alone when evaluating the organisation.
Like, if a church had 100,000 members, you would indeed expect them to commit a few murders each year. And GiveWell alone claims to have induced 150,000 people to donate... https://www.givewell.org/default/citations#Number_of_donors
Another branch is "I make lots of money at a job that's probably making the world a worse place. How do I reframe this to not feel like a bad person?" They do some math and conclude that it's net more good for them to earn a bunch of money and donate some of it than it is to volunteer or it is to work at a job that isn't making the world a worse place. This is an awfully convenient conclusion as it means that all they have to do is pay a tithe and make no real changes to their life.
The notion of making money specifically for the sake of funding good things isn't a completely terrible one, but a vocal portion of the people who espouse it are very obviously not primarily motivated by maximizing the good they do.
As a brand it's tainted. You might argue unfairly, but that's never mattered in "public brand perception" before.
This is a joke of an article. It shows a few incidental deaths while ignoring the total number of saved lives due to EA. It literally points to ~2 incidental deaths while Give Well saves ~300k lives. Its remarkably ignorant.
Is there a word for this kind of fallacy? Cherry picking sounds too Reddit-coded.
In short, Effective Altruism says you don't engage in charity until you have sufficient means to actually make a difference. Basically, you leverage capitalism to accumulate enough wealth to actually be able to solve a big problem, then you go all in on solving that problem. Sounds great right?
In the real world these people never accumulate enough wealth to actually start solving problems. Even when they become billionaires. In practice it is a convenient excuse to act like the most depraved capitalist while still pretending to sit on the high horse and talk down to people who simply try to help with the means available to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQZWMmINqxo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54GrXDjokg
https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/a-mirror-for-tech-br...
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-problem-with-effectiv...
In practice, it can be used as a fully-general counterargument to supporting most charities, since decisively and completely solving problems in this space is rare. It’s harder to split a problem into component parts than it is to throw up one’s hands and say, “well, this isn’t tractable.”
> You can only throw up your hands and say "this isn't tractable" if tractability is 0, i.e. the charity doesn't help at all, no matter how much money you spend on it.
Even I don’t believe this. You’ve gone too far in the other direction and made tractability a useless metric.