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Have you ever heard of GiveWell? https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities You are concerned about people thinking that dumping clothes in sub-Saharan Africa is "effective". I strongly doubt that any Effective Altruists think this is a worthy cause to support or promote. Some of the questions you ask sound like you would enjoy joining in on Effective Altruism discussions -- it's a welcoming community: read some blog posts first and then start sharing your thoughts: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ You say 10% is "no different than a tithe". I'm unsure where you're going with it, but I recommend you give 10% of your income to cost-effective charities (ones you pick in good faith after doing diligent research). I've been giving for over 10 years now.

There is a lot of conversation internally. You can see these debates here [0]. The guy credited with who got SBF into EA wrote a post [1] which was also debated heavily in the comments. A good introduction, or at least my introduction, was by the same guy's debate [2] which I recommend if people are interested in EA outside of the current media storm. [0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ [1] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WdeiPrwgqW2wHAxgT/a-personal… [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qslo4-DpzPs

Have you thought about participating in the effective altruism community? People in the E.A. community are kind and creative and love to talk about topics like philosophy (especially applied ethics), economics, A.I., animal welfare, space travel, and more. You could check out the E.A. Forum! https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/

It drives me crazy that everything in SF is designed to either be kid-focused or adult-focused. There's very few places where you can have a serious conversation with a collaborator while with your kids. Dogpatch Hub (right by YC) is one of the few exceptions - excellently stocked kids space, snacks, WiFi, and comfy chairs for adults to work. I've been working on something similar at Mox (the effective altruism coworking space in the mission) as part of my (joyful parenting)[https://joyfulparentingsf.com/] efforts but it won't be ready until winter when their 1st floor renovations are done. Others who feel the same way may also be interested in this old post i wrote about (how to be productive before your baby turns one)[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xocdNsa8At3bmQKm3/how-be-pro… on the EA forum

Exactly, some people think 'out of sight, out of mind' is great ethics! See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWSQcNuNnNTy/the-copenh…

Good tools can enable community blogging. I think the effective altruism forum (1) is one of the main reasons why the community is able to have produce so much output. (1) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org

Not all rationalists are EAs, and not all EAs are rationalists, but there are many people who are both. The very idea of using evidence and numbers to choose the optimal charity has a rationalist vibe. But of course, one can donate to an effective charity without being interested in LessWrong-style rationality. https://www.lesswrong.com/ and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ run on the same software, and some people have an account at both of them, but they are generally separate web communities.

> revenue raising through taxes on people who can afford it. Of course, those people are of the opinion that they're entitled to net worths that measure as a significant portion of a trillion dollars millionaires collectively have more than an order of magnitude more wealth than all billionaires: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4zjnFxGWYkEF4nqMi/how-could-…

Epistemic statuses are a great aid in sharing ideas without sounding overly confident. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bbtvDJtb6YwwWtJm7/epistemic-…

I have my issues with EA, but I don't think the "cult" description is accurate. For example, in 2022 they handed out $120K in prizes to the best criticisms of EA: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YgbpxJmEdFhFGpqci/winners-of… I'm doubtful that the "childish idealist" description is accurate. But even if it was, given the choice between having existentially dangerous AI developed by a childish idealist vs a slippery machiavellian like Sam, I would choose the childish idealist. The big risk with a childish idealist is that they become the pawn of a slippery machiavellian. Choosing the slippery machiavellian just seems like speedrunning failure.

I had a quick skim through this one from your list: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8xNSiwj5gjoDTRquQ/announcing… I note this post by the high priest of the cult makes no mention of his recent moral relativist defence of bestiality - surely an oversight?: https://twitter.com/PeterSinger/status/1723269850930491707

(A nit, but the quote was from the body of the post, not a comment on the post.) A decent subthread on this on the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-ce… The money came from a grant from OpenPhil for the purpose. EVF didn't publish a cost-benefit analysis my knowledge, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-ce… suggests it would plausibly cost £1~2M a year to hire similar venues. That said, whether it's worth it to purchase a dedicated venue depends a lot on how much use the venue actually gets. Ultimately, "we were getting ripped off" is a financial judgement made by CEA. I don't think it really has a great deal to do with the wider effective altruist movement tbh.

Wikipedia is unsurprisingly pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism I feel that this summary is useful as a history of the movement. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XTBGAWAXR25atu39P/third-wave… I stopped identifying with the movement around the start of the second wave. I went from "EA is cool and great and you should read about it and donate to help save lives" to "EA has had some cool ideas but is now mostly focused with weird probability math that siphons money away from it's mission of saving lives", but I digress.

> An apocalypse list without climate? The topics listing isn't great, but there's been a lot of discussion about climate change on the forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/climate-change (239 posts)

That is a great point. It’s also worth remembering that most stated beliefs have negligible impact on actions (e.g. my personal opinions about foreign policy). So it’s pretty rational for most people to just take the easy way out of echoing their tribe, and reserve their “weirdness points“[1] for a small percentage of situations that actually matter. [1] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MH9suFZbxXCYsr5Z5/you-have-a…

I understand the worry, but what's the alternative? Doing nothing? Every day, we are confronted with the facts, and we have to make a decision. Doing nothing could be one of them. I am highly convinced doing something is better than nothing, and the somethings I've found (not all the things, but some things) are Effective altruism. If you have better proposals, name them, let us discuss and maybe we can do even better! (the movement is really open about this -- which is one of the reasons some people have seemingly weird beliefs -- simply because some people said 'You should be instead doing X!!', where X was saving humanity from existential risks; maybe you should be shouting at us 'You should be instead doing Y!!', where Y is your idea, and if you're right we sincerely, truly hope you can change our minds) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/

> The example of a community theater highlights another issue I have with effective altruism. It effectively encourages you to only donate to things you can make a quantifiable case for. Then you will be delighted/horrified to find out that the effective altruism community doesn't feel the need to make quantifiable justifications for how they spend their own donations, as evidenced by this $20k grant they gave someone to learn to ride a bike and think about AI[1]. That's about 3853 to 4090 mosquito nets' worth of donations, using GiveWell's numbers for the Against Malaria Foundation[2]. [1] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-… [2] https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf

Mosquito nets and deworming pills were on the better side of it: >Then you will be delighted/horrified to find out that the effective altruism community doesn't feel the need to make quantifiable justifications for how they spend their own donations, as evidenced by this $20k grant they gave someone to learn to ride a bike and think about AI[1]. >That's about 3853 to 4090 mosquito nets' worth of donations, using GiveWell's numbers for the Against Malaria Foundation https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g/long-term-…

Probably worth linking to the estimate by a group of superforecasters who give a 16% chance that Russia uses any type of nuclear weapon in Ukraine. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2nDTrDPZJBEerZGrk/samotsvety…

I donate to GiveWell, so I narrowed in on this section: > Yes, they direct money toward malaria nets and treatments for parasitic worms, but they also supply supplements for vitamin A deficiency, though genetically modified “golden” rice already provides vitamin A more effectively. Hmmm, seems like a move backward. GiveWell also suggests direct cash transfers to solve extreme poverty, similar to universal basic income. A thread on golden rice on the EA forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AF8hvNXFqhZsDmrTc/should-gmo… It's banned in many countries so it seems like supplements are the most "effective" way forwards. If his best criticism of direct cash transfers is that it's similar to UBI, I'm okay with that.

But what is "Effective Altruism"? Is it a charity? A movement? Both? The link https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fd3iQRkmCKCCL289u/Effectivea… circles back to itself, with no simple explanation. The "intro" from the front page has 2800+ words and isn't clear either: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-a… That intro is itself prefaced with a paragraph in italics that recommends a whole "handbook" for a "more thorough introduction". I'm afraid to click on that for fear it leads to a whole library of volumes discussing general ideas about life, freedom, religion and other minor and trivial concepts. Why can't organizations' blogs have a simple, clear and easily accessible "about us" link that describes what they do in one sentence.

i second this. i recommend, for anyone who is interested, reading their write-ups on the ea forum to get a good intro on the problem (and how they work): - https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fd96FtLFACeAshqJP/introducin… - https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ErKzbKWnQMwvzRX4m/seven-thin… or my interview with lucia coulter, one of the co-founders: - https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/interview-with-lucia-coulter-lead…

I think https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ is pretty interesting

For those who would like to delve a bit deeper into the Hinge of History, this is the link from the article and is well worth the read. It was submitted here 2 days ago and got zero points! https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XXLf6FmWujkxna3E6/are-we-liv… Its often a human mistake to think that right now is the most important time ever because it is literally the moment we are in. With the perspective of history and with the imagination for the future you can start to see how what we think is the most urgent things maybe not so, and you can see how small changes elsewhere might be the best thing for the future. It can inoculate you against being manipulated by urgency-based calls for action.

And here's an essay that makes this same argument with a lot more detail: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zwno3Gxb8p6DmfadP/cash-prize…

Recommending to donate is rather misleading. Most of the work on Wikipedia is done by unpaid editors. On the other hand, Wikimedia Foundation (the one that collects donations and manages the project) is accumulating donations and increasing spendings at ever-increasing rates, way above its maintenance and development needs. Just google a bit. Something like this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/should-you… Their history of being wasteful and not transparent about their spending is rather long.

Another similar idea is mission hedging. If there is a company that you believe is causing some harm, you can buy shares of that company and donate any proceeds to a charity that cancels out that harm. For example, if you are worried about climate change, you can buy shares of an oil company and pledge to donate the proceeds to an organization lobbying for a carbon tax. If the oil company does well, the carbon tax lobby will need more financing, which you'll be in a position to provide as a shareholder of the oil company. This idea was developed by economist Brigitte Roth Tran: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2017042pap.pdf . Hauke Hillebrandt also has a great write up: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iZp7TtZdFyW8eT5dA/a-generali…

"At this stage the information gathered doesn’t allow me to give a strong opinion on Cool Earth, but I would recommend that we now consider the earlier [Giving What We Can] analysis out of date." https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RnmZ62kuuC8XzeTBq/why-we-hav…

In this thread: Bingo card (and their rebuttals): – Effective altruists donate money and think it’s the most effective way to do good. [1][2] – They think that exploiting people is fine if money is given to a good cause. [3][4][5] – They think they are so much morally-superior/better than us. [3] – Sam Bankman-Fried is a thief and he self-identified as an EA, so EA must be bad as a whole. [4][6] – It’s dangerous because it’s an “end justifies the means” philosophy. [4][5] – If it’s not perfect then it’s terrible and has no merit whatsoever. [7][8][9] – They think they are so smart but they just stole the idea of donating part of the income from Christians. [10][11] —————————— [1] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs#objectionsto-effective-altruism [2] “80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term”: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-pr… [3] What We Owe The Future (EA book): “naive calculations that justify some harmful action because it has good consequences are, in practice, almost never correct.” and “it's wrong to do harm even when doing so will bring about the best outcome.” [4] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1591218028381102081.html / https://xcancel.com/willmacaskill/status/1591218028381102081 [5] The Precipice (EA book): “Don't act without integrity. When something immensely important is at stake and others are dragging their…