If like me, you have been confused by your mixed feelings about #EffectiveAltruism, this is a great read.

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-problem-with-effective-altruism

"Both Marxism and effective altruism claim that they have figured out the true way to make the world a better place. And both Marxism and effective altruism flatter their adherents into thinking that this gives them a key role in a movement that will prove to have world-historical importance."

Imho, #buddhism solves these problems naturally. What do you think?

The Problem with Effective Altruism

A partial defense.

Persuasion

@erwinrossen
> I am extra hesitant when a so-called solution conflicts with common sense, no matter what comes rolling out of the cost effectiveness analysis (CEA).

i am happy to hear this.

once i was at an EA talk where the speakers main point was that we need more professional managers to ensure that there is more effective activism being made for less money.

during questions, i argued that our local animal rights activist group worked quite well, despite not having any managers, because we had a lot of succesful campaigns on no budget at all.

then this EA speaker argued that i was completely mistaken about this, because the time i spent speaking up for animals is time i could have spent working in a bank to earn money. (which is what #PeterSinger argues as well.)

that is unfortunately my impression from local EA people, as well as people i hear from online: an unhealthy obsession with effectiveness, always being defined in terms of money.

> However, most people are (in my opinion) on the not-rational-enough side when it comes to giving, and therefore I promote effective altruism to at least shift the balance a bit more towards that middle ground.

i think this "giving" word can be extremely deceptive. many animal liberation activists i am around are extremely deducated, yet they usually don't donate to charities (which is often the EA definition of "giving") because they're poor and frugal persons.

the "giving" of these activists is often defined as worthless or harmful by EA, because of the sole focus on money.

on the other hand, rich people, billionaires, are often praised as philantropists by EA proponents, for "giving" parts of their large fortunes.

i would argue these rich assholes are "takers" instead, and that describing people from the epstein class (like #BillGates) as "givers" (like peter singer does, when he argues for #EffectiveAltruism ) is upside down.

yes, i think the link inside the #podcast feed was broken. here is a direct link to #AliceCrary's criticism of EA.

https://pdcn.co/e/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/overpopulationpodcast/Alice_Crary.mp3?dest-id=1132n667

also, i do think that the average person has a deeply toxic relationship to "giving" that no rationalist calculation can fix.

people here think that if they give 10€ per month to an NGO that say they save 2 animals for 10€, then they have permission to eat 2 animals, because then they're in 0.

people believe this, because NGOs like #farmkind tell people they can offset their harms by giving rationally and effectively.

in fact pretty much all the "animal welfare" NGOs here use that thinking. they suck up all the money, and then they put some labels on the meat packages.

even #greenpeace advertise fish products here under the #naturskånsom label.

the danish society for protection of animals recommend gas chamber for pigs. people feel like they "protect" animals when they "give" to this NGO or buy meat products with their label.

we really really really can't just talk about "rational giving" without clarifying, because when it's not, then i assume it's like the scam that these NGOs are running.

at an EA talk, i heard how EA was donating farming equipment to fish farms, because their rational analysis proved that was best.

and similarly, EA proponents have been pushing #cagefree, which is great advertisement for chicken farmers, but doesn't translate into freedom or wellbeing for #chickens. that is one criticism #AliceCrary is making.

before we dismiss criticism of EA as irrational, and before we let EA proponents monopolize concepts of "rationality" and "effectiveness" and let them define who is "giving" and who is "taking", i think we have to take this criticism in.

@erwinrossen
> Quite a misframing of the tenets of EA: do good and think of how to do this best.

in the context of the #overshoot #podcast, https://populationbalance.org/the-dangers-of-effective-altruism-alice-crary
do you think this is #AliceCrary who gives a wrong picture of what #PeterSinger, #WilliamMacAskill and #SamBankmanFried are saying and doing?

or do you think that bankman-fried, macaskill or singer are misusing the #EffectiveAltruism label?

> Yes, there are people misusing this frame to do evil, but equating EA with that frame is the dangerous path instead.

is this just a discussion of labels? one might say: »yes, lenin, trotsky and stalin called themselves communists but really they were misusing that label to do evil. don't equate communism with them.«

i don't mind if you have another definition of what EA is. i am curious to hear it!

however, peter singer is talking a lot about effective altruism, so i don't think it is wrong of me to talk about him as being a proponent of what he calls effective altruism.

RE: https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/116149931726546755

Please read this excellent post and understand that many of our tech leaders are steeped in cultic thinking that allows them to justify any atrocity they foist onto us in the present by claiming that they're doing it to improve the lives of trillions of future humans in a pan-galactic civilization thousands of years from now. No, I am not exaggerating. Read the article. #AI #claude #effectivealtruism

Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump https://alecmuffett.com/article/147459 #EffectiveAltruism #anthropic #hegseth

Across Civil Society you can a...
Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump

ZOMG! Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk | The Verge archived at Anthropic response & rebuttal:

Dropsafe
Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump
https://alecmuffett.com/article/147459
#EffectiveAltruism #anthropic #hegseth
Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump

ZOMG! Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk | The Verge archived at Anthropic response & rebuttal:

Dropsafe

Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump

ZOMG!

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk | The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff archived at https://archive.ph/2026.02.27-231311/https://www.theverge.com/policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff

Anthropic response & rebuttal:

https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

#anthropic #effectiveAltruism #feed #hegseth
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk

The Pentagon is designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk over its AI stance, banning it from doing business with military contractors and suppliers.

The Verge

Ik had Rutger Bregman al grotendeels – maar nog niet helemaal – afgeschreven door zijn geïnstitutionaliseerde effective-altruism-mentaliteit.

Maar hij is met het schrijven van zijn laatste boek verworden tot een heuse prompt engineer! Helemaal met AI geschreven, dus. De tijd om hem serieus te nemen is nu écht voorbij 👋

(Over één ding ben ik het met hem eens: journalisten en schrijvers moeten eerlijker worden over hun AI-gebruik. Maar in mijn geval is dat zodat ik ze allemaal bij het grofvuil kan zetten.)

https://youtu.be/JlSHFhafZn8?t=2263

#RutgerBregman #AI #slop #EffectiveAltruism

Rutger Bregman over zijn jaar in de VS, zijn school voor morele ambitie en zijn nieuwe boek | JFS#24

YouTube

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity | Adam Becker (interview)

Silicon Valley billionaires, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, promise salvation through space colonization, immortality, superintelligent AI, and endless growth. Adam Becker, astrophysicist and author of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, debunks these profoundly immoral and biophysically impossible delusions, and explains why resisting them through collective action is essential. Highlights include:

  • How tech billionaires confuse science fiction for reality and why their fantasies of space colonization are biophysically impossible;
  • Why Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) remains an ill-defined concept that is based in the false assumption that humans’ evolved brains work like computing machines;
  • Why large language models (LLMs), the dominant form of AI, are neither creative nor accurate enough to achieve the dreamed-for leap in machine intelligence;
  • What the end of Moore’s Law tells us about diminishing returns to technological complexity and the expectation of endless technological growth;
  • Why longtermism is a dangerous ideology of technological salvation and endless growth, prioritizing hypothetical future populations while excusing present-day social injustice and ecological destruction;
  • How the fear of death underlies techno-utopian off-planet and transhumanist fantasies;
  • Why resisting their oligarchic visions requires calling out the ridiculousness of their ideas and organizing collectively to push back both politically and economically.

0:00 Introduction

4:44 Motivations to write the book

9:23 Confusing science fiction for reality

12:37 Musk and Bezos reasons for off-planet plans

15:55 Musk Mars plans are delusional

20:33 Bezos space station plans are delusional

23:34 Kurzweil’s AGI dream

29:27 End of Moore’s Law

34:38 Limits of large language models

36:37 Longtermism perversion of ethics

44:58 Effective accelerationists

48:42 Malcolm and Simone Collins

50:32 Fear of death and technological salvation

53:57 Meaningful democratic resistance

More Everything Forever | Adam Becker

YouTube

UND was kann ich tun?

Ich biete folgende Definitionen an:
#Wohlstand herrscht, wenn jeder bekommt, was er braucht.
#Reichtum ist, wenn jemand mehr hat als er braucht.
#Geld vermittelt den #Zugang zu dem, was ich brauche.

UND jetzt kommt's:
Wohlstand schützt vor Extremismus.

Diejenigen, die bereits in langer Tradition von Macht und Wohlstand leben, wissen das und betreiben #effectivealtruism.

Denn:
durch #Geben schützt DU Dich und Deine Lebensweise.