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)?
Because Anthropic is the final manifestation of EA and is about to raise two trillion dollars.
This is beyond absurd.
Effective altruism originates from the intention to rationally approach the obvious question, how to do the most good in the world. That's obviously not a bad thing?
The article here goes on a grotesque witch hunt, claiming baselessly things like "polyamory" was widespread among "the movements" adherents.
You here postulate, Anthropic was a "final" manifestation of that movement. How? Why? Do they practice polyamory there?
Trying to apply rationality in domains where it's ineffective is obviously a bad thing. In the real world, only a limited subset of issues can be reduced to logic and calculations. To believe otherwise is pure hubris, and if you've read the classical tragedies you know the results.
Effective altruism, like economics, is mostly a bunch post hoc justifications for bad behavior.
> Actually, if you think real hard about it, we're the good guys
--the bad guys
The economist likes it because it resembles what their target audience tells themselves so they can sleep at night.
Why would a movement which started as nerds buying mosquito nets to stop malaria be "a bunch [of] post hoc justifications for bad behaviour"? You say this like it's an established fact or at least a common argument, yet I've never heard it before.
The article reads like a smear campaign and the actual target appears to be the opposition to unrestricted AI development.
The claims made there are beyond absurd and based on a remarkable absence of anything resembling reason.
That's echoed by a surprising amount of people here.
I don't know. Lots of movements lose their way. I just know that every time it comes up, the story is that some nerd with a lot of big ideas ended up getting carried away and causing a bunch of harm. The article brings up Sam Bankman-Fried, for instance. But you could also look at the obvious scam that WorldCoin was. Or look at all of the preventable respiratory illnesses which are being caused by the datacenter buildout, and the corresponding mantra re: we have to go fast so AI is smart enough to cure diseases.
If you wanna do good in the world, you can't just aim a bunch of money at a goal and expect the good to happen, you gotta get your hands dirty and course correct when your original plan turns out to be more harmful than helpful. I'm sure there are a lot of good intentions in there, but from the outside it's looking like the supposed rationality has been compromised by greed at the expense of the supposed altruism. As expressions of altruism go, EA just doesn't seem very effective.
The guys who were obsessed with maximizing efficacy of charitable giving, and then later AI risk, are "justifying bad behavior". Right.
I am not familiar with their beliefs (open to learning). But what circulates is troubling. E.g. statistically optimising for future even if it means harming current can be bad dressed in an excuse. Assigning value e.g. to lives (from prawns to humans) can also be a statistical way to do harm with an excuse. Overall, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…
This reads more like an orchestrated proxy smear campaign to attack the actual thing they're after: the opposition to unrestricted AI.
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