The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
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Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#2Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#3"effective altruism" was never either effective nor altruistic. If people are finally working that out, good for them.
Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#4"effective altruism" was never either effective nor altruistic. If people are finally working that out, good for them.
How did it fall short?
Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#5The title is unfairly conflating the idea with one organization. Plenty of people quietly donate some fraction of income to effective charities (effective altruism), without engaging with the Effective Altruism institution.
Though, yeah wow, I didn't realize how cliquey Effective Altruism had become.
Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#6Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#7"effective altruism" was never either effective nor altruistic. If people are finally working that out, good for them.
How did it fall short?
It is purely people justifying doing the evil things they personally desire by claiming some unverifiable benefit that accrues to hypothetical future people who may never even exist.
Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#8Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#9"effective altruism" was never either effective nor altruistic. If people are finally working that out, good for them.
Ok, but please don't post shallow dismissals to Hacker News. We're hoping for something more than putdowns and supercilious swipes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. You've unfortunately been posting a bunch of unsubstantive/baity comments lately. Can you please not? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
#10Like most things: EA as a concept is fine. Finding the "maximal" way to improve the lives of others is great, and finding better ways to contribute than charity and volunteering is honorable.
The issue is when people take it to the extreme (like someone who literally argued that a person doing mere charity or volunteer work is bad, because they are wasting time and effort that they could've spent making money and recruiting to contribute more charity and volunteering), or just sidestepping "altruism" entirely and using the name and community as a stepping stone to push your unrelated scam.
I don't know whether or not SBF genuinely believed in effective altruism, but if he did, he let the "principles" override common sense.