The evolution of effective altruism

Posted by bazzmt 8 hours ago

The evolution of effective altruism(www.economist.com)

45 points | 65 comments

wodow 1 hour ago|

I was surprised by the weakness of this article, regardless the potential absurdities of parts of EA.

Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?

Daishiman 1 hour ago|

[dead]

PoignardAzur 40 minutes ago||

> There is an elusive quality to effective altruism. The movement is tiny, with an informal membership probably in the tens of thousands, many of whom claim to be only “EA adjacent”.

Oof, that one hit close to home.

williamcotton 1 hour ago||

Will MacAskill responds to our cover story on effective altruism

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/10/04/will-maca...

dang 57 minutes ago|

Added above. Thanks!

giacomoforte 1 hour ago||

I do not think you can call it a social movement because it does not have any significant mass of people behind it and by its nature, never will.

barbazoo 1 hour ago||

Maybe if you consider the wealth of the in group vs out group. It makes more sense to me that way. Scary how few people it might need to keep the world from moving forward.

dleslie 1 hour ago|||

It is a social movement of note and importance because of the power wielded by its adherents.

bayarearefugee 1 hour ago||

> It is a social movement of note and importance because of the power wielded by its adherents.

We should tax the shit out of them, if only to reduce the unelected power their wealth buys.

Just like we should tax the shit out of the non-EA ultra wealthy.

We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.

dleslie 34 minutes ago||

I strongly agree, but I don't think the USA is capable of doing that. That sort of socialist communitarianism is at odds with the objectivist individualism that they commonly valorize, and underpins most of their heroic stories.

bawolff 1 hour ago|||

Social movements come in all sizes. Its a bunch of people who all agree on something. That is a social movement.

giacomoforte 1 hour ago||

You can call it a subculture or philosophy or movement, but social movement to me implies something with broad appeal.

mohamedkoubaa 1 hour ago|||

A better term would be an 'order'

xg15 24 minutes ago|||

How about "conspiracy" then?

EA-3167 1 hour ago||

It’s another bubble that a handful of people invented for themselves to insulate them from the reality of the effect on the world. It’s one of the most genuinely pathetic “movements” I’ve ever seen.

smitty1e 23 minutes ago||

If this is "conquered the world", one wonders what The Economist thinks defeat would resemble.

mohamedkoubaa 1 hour ago||

There was modest farmland in Iraq managed by a trust for about 400 years that paid for the wedding dresses for all women in the nearby town. The colonial administrators found this ineffective and dismantled the trust fund and privatized the land.

There is something to be said about how we sometimes fail to account for the effectiveness of ineffective altruism.

SpicyLemonZest 51 minutes ago|

When people talk about ineffective altruism, they're generally talking about organizations like the American Heart Association, which spends over half of annual donations on payroll (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/135...). I don't think many people in the effective altruist movement would complain about a targeted trust that successfully and reliably achieves some niche goal.

UncleMeat 22 minutes ago|||

Imagine you have a charitable organization that receives funds and then pays its staff of doctors to provide free treatment to the poor. All of their donations would be spent on payroll and overhead. But this would not demonstrate that the organization is wasteful.

SpicyLemonZest 7 minutes ago||

While that's true, the AHA does not perform medical treatments or have an in-house research lab.

If someone's really passionate about putting up healthy living posters and shifting the cost of CPR education from healthcare providers, more power to them! But my guess is that most AHA donors don't know or ask what exactly their donations are accomplishing.

mohamedkoubaa 25 minutes ago|||

When effective altruists talk about ineffective altruism, they talk about AHA. When I talk about ineffective altruism, I talk about things like a targeted trust.

It's the EA people who generalize from AHA to make grand ethical claims that lead to absurdity.

doctoboggan 1 hour ago||

Interesting, I wasn't aware that EA had made it into the American culture wars. There will be a ton of grist for the conspiracy mills with all the sex cults, murders, and high power democratic donations. Can't see it going well for the EA crowd, or democrats.

rvz 44 minutes ago|

EA is a dynamic saviour complex cult that is devoid of reality and gave birth to the FTX fraud.

The whole concept of it is a scam.

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