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https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2023/02/06/ineffective-altruism-ftx-and-the-future-robot-apocalypse/>
"Effective Altruism is a subculture that wants to quantify charity for maximum
effectiveness. EA did not invent the concept of quantifying charity, though
they tend to try to claim credit whenever the notion comes up. If charity’s
going to exist, who wouldn’t want it to be effective?
EA as we know it started from the ideas of Australian philosopher Peter Singer.
His 1972 paper “Famine, Affluence and Morality” sets out his ideas on how to
make the world better — that you should help people elsewhere in the world just
as you help people nearer to you.
This isn’t a bad idea — if you’re reading this, you’re likely much richer
compared to most of the world than you think of yourself as being, and should
probably put in more effort than you do. And keeping track of how you’re doing
is reasonable. There are a lot of good people in EA, who are sincerely working
their backsides off trying to make the world a better place.
A number of quantified philanthropy groups were inspired by Singer’s ideas in
the early 2000s and came together in the early 2010s to form the “Effective
Altruism” movement as we know it.
There’s a lot of good people in EA, and a lot of terrible ones. For instance,
the increasingly well-documented and frankly cult-like abuses inside EA,
dominated as it is by rich white men in tech. Who’d have thought a subculture
that consciously constructed itself around making rich men feel good about
themselves would treat women as commodities?
The subculture is also just a little too tolerant of weird scientific racists
and eugenicists, as long as they have money or are old friends from the mailing
lists.
There’s also the bit where EA movement leaders spent the FTX money on a castle
or two. But if you do the numbers, you’ll understand that the most effective
possible action is to fit out a really nice castle where movement leaders can
sit and contemplate the future robot apocalypse."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
