fp.

You might benefit from thinking critically about who and what you consider to be greedy. If you don't, it's easy to be tricked by various kinds of shell games, where certain kinds of work are never considered "greedy" or certain kinds of charity make the donor appear disproportionately generous. One game that's become pretty well known is how many "donations" to well-funded schools are in fact admissions payments for wealthy kids.

bawolff•17m ago

Meh, they have some beliefs i disagree with, but ultimately they are spending money on things like feeding the hungry.

I feel like there is this weird thing where people will criticize people who do charity work in not quite the right way (from the criticizers perspective), but are totally fine with people who just use their money to buy a yacht.

I'd much rather have people spend their money on feeding the hungry, even imperfectly then spending it on other pursuits.

I sometimes wonder what the critics of EA are doing to eradicate the ills of the world or even their local community. Is it more than what EA is doing? If not, i'd say those in glass houses should be wary of throwing stones.

s1artibartfast•13m ago

Genuinely curious why you feel that way?

cyanydeez•5m ago

First, you can read about Sam Bankman-Fried; then you can say "oh, he's not _real_ effective altrusim...and do your backflips.

williamcotton•42m ago

Will MacAskill responds to our cover story on effective altruism

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

PunchyHamster•41m ago

Calling it "most important movement" is like calling national socialism "most important movement", just because it made history doesn't make it good

doctoboggan•36m ago

You are conflating "important" with "good", which I don't think the author was intending.

jebarker•11m ago

e.g. climate change will likely be very important in the coming century

giacomoforte•36m 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.

EA-3167•34m 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.

dleslie•33m ago

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

bayarearefugee•19m 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.

bawolff•27m ago

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

giacomoforte•14m ago

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

doctoboggan•34m 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.

oulipo•23m ago

I've always been wary of effective altruism. Anything that geek and people want to "optimize out" by engineering has a risk of just being a "let's ride very fast towards that wall" kind of venture

hypfer•22m ago

> The movement’s long-standing fears of an AI catastrophe make it a villain in the eyes of the Trump administration. “Americanism, not effective altruism,” is the Department of War’s attack line. The president’s allies are going after Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, as a representative of effective altruism.

I'd wager that it's simply the government wanting absolute power (as it should) and going after misaligned oligarchs.

So, effectively, power struggles in circles beyond our reach.

Arguably a good thing that the government would eventually try to claw back power there, given that in theory, it's democratically elected and all.

drywater2•16m ago

EA sounds like an excuse for billionaires to continue being the opposite of altruist.

cogman10•9m ago

That's the take away I get. It's a philosophical justification to being as greedy and heartless as possible because in the future the money you got from burning down the world could potentially be used to reverse that damage.

wodow•12m 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)?

mohamedkoubaa•10m 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.

Barrin92•5m ago

I think much of the world will be surprised to hear that they have been conquered by effective altruism. Seriously what kind of spheres does the person live in who wrote that article?