Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse

Re:Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassme... by jtode on Saturday February 04, 2023 @05:43AM (#34653428)

I am out of the loop a bit, so I'll say that first. An acquaintance introduced me to the phrase effective altruism and talked about sending money to a place that's having problems rather than going there yourself, and I just thought, yah, that's a more effective way of being altruistic and went on with my day.

I'm just learning that they made it into a cult. Who thought that was a good idea? Just be an effective altruist FFS.

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Re:Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassme... by HDThoreaun on Saturday February 04, 2023 @12:14PM (#34656076)

> I'm just learning that they made it into a cult.

EA has a lot of overlap with religion by its very nature. Any moralizing philosophy with dedicated followers will tend to become cultish.

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Re:Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassme... by jtode on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @03:24PM (#34698942)

I mean, I agree, but it seems to me that the abstract concept of being altruistic effectively is not moralizing at all - it merely carries the assumption that the actor has taken a moral stance and leaves it at that.

I saw it more like "If you are going to attempt to make your actions line up with your morals or ethics as a matter of principle, you should do it in a way that actually produces the result your ethics demand."

I mean I'm not really arguing, I know people are gonna do what people do...

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