@niplav Ah, recursively Effective Altruists. Do you think it would have made a difference in the FTX/Almeda fiasco? These people must be young to be preoccupied with mating, yuckk.

@flengyel it's really horrible

don't even ask [1]

[1]: https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/

@niplav I read https://keerthanapg.com/random/ea-women/ about the effluvial altruists a couple of months ago. Very slimy. More like effluvial alfalse-ists

@niplav I was led to the post via https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/11/effective-sic-altruists-want-to-treat-girls-like-meat-just-like-guys-who-dont-posture-so-much.html Not surprised these effluvial altruists feel they have to be compensated for the 10% of the income they pledge to give away.

@flengyel I will note that I'm pretty involved in the effective altruism community, and claim that most of them do not feel that they have to be "compensated" for any donations or direct work.
It also doesn't seem to me like EA is *worse* than the median community in the same reference class about with the same gender ratio.

I also think that EAs are mostly doing what everybody else is hugely dropping the ball on (up to and including things that are outside most people's conception of altruism)

@niplav Text fails to convey the good-natured skepticism on my end. Here I rely on the comment of Prof Brian Leiter, who writes, "Anyone familiar with the history of religious cults will hardly be surprised by this. It is certainly not a refutation of EA, of course: the problem with effective [sic] altruism is that it has nothing to do with effectiveness (or even well-being), and everything to do with what is measurable in the short term and thus reportable to the capitalist media."

@flengyel
> Text fails to convey the good-natured skepticism on my end.

Haha it's always the same problem.

@flengyel
As for EA doing "what is measurable in the short term and thus reportable to the capitalist media" — seems false to me. Certainly a lot of wild & out-there stuff with long or non-existent feedback loops (longtermism and trying to prevent extinction) and vague "improve public decision making" goals.

So I like the opposite critique more: EA is *not* doing what it promised to, namely doing the things that are beneficial from a short-term very quantitative perspective.

@flengyel (which I *do* think should exist in the world: with altruism ~everybody else is doing the illegible vibes-based fuzzy feel-good interventions—surely there is a comparative advantage here)

Also I deny that the capitalist media cares about the stuff classic EA focuses on—people (surprisingly, I know) don't like hearing about how awful factory farming is, and generally don't care about large numbers of dark-skinned people having shittier lives because easily preventable diseases

@niplav OK I must revisit the arguments marshalled by certain philosophers against EA. Factory farming is worse than awful and the prevalence of easily preventable disease is disgraceful.