Sublime

Effective altruism in its simplest form is just the “Moneyball of charities”, a reference to a movie where the sport became all about statistics and less about the players.

Charity is good; there are aspects of the effective altruism movement that are good, but the mandate to maximize it at scale deserves to be questioned and investigated.

"The movement, known as E.A. to its practitioners, who themselves are known as E.A.s, takes as its premise that people ought to do good in the most clear-sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental way possible. Among other back-of-the-envelope estimates, E.A.s believe that a life in the developing world can be saved for about four thousand dollars. Effe... See more

One day some historian of effective altruism will marvel at how easily it transformed itself. It turned its back on living people without bloodshed or even, really, much shouting. You might think that people who had sacrificed fame and fortune to save poor children in Africa would rebel at the idea of moving on from poor children in Africa to futur

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“Maximizing the most good for the most number of people” can lead to repugnant conclusions when applied at-scale

However, most people in first world countries are in this situation of opportunity to do extreme good in exchange for a relatively small sacrifice, but most don't do it, mainly due to ignorance of a tractable way in which to do it.