As another example, I had an EA VC investor nuke one of my seed investments in order to have a different one of his portcos acquire the IP for scrap because he had a far higher stake in the other portco, which was in the same vertical. Ruined a lot of employees' ISOs as well as my equity. But hey he's an EA - can't blame him!
In my experiences, lots of them are simply good people trying to do more good. I hope you can have better experiences with them in the future.
Take anything you like. A cause, religious group, political party, sports fanbase, etc.
Some subset of each group are generally decent people, who do their best to be good to the people around them, and to live their lives in a generally moral and ethical manner.
Some subset of each group have no interest in morals or ethics, and attach themselves to the group for purely selfish reasons.
Judging the entire group based on the selfish or amoral subset is a logical fallacy of the most basic sort, and is bordering religiosity. This is even more problematic when you look at the kinds of negative EA situations that have (rightly) caused controversy. The high profile big money cases get attention.
If confronted with someone who ascribes to the EA philosophy and by all measurable indicators has done incredibly good things for the world, would you be willing to change your mind?
There is to me no ontological distinction between means and ends, or the cause and the effect as an action. There is a vast literature prioritizing the latter at the expense of the former, an illusion brought upon us by the arrow of time our consciousness happens to be travelling in the same direction as. But if we're going to prioritize along that axis we might as well claim actions to the left of us are privileged relative to actions to the right of us.
I admit this is splitting philosophical hairs. "Doing X at time T means at time T + 1 many many sentient beings will benefit" is not really a hard-consequentialist argument - we don't prioritize X because it is at time T. But now consider: "if future sentient beings no longer care about Y, then doing X now will benefit nobody; deciding on not-X, however, saves resources we can then use towards whatever we do care about." Now totalize that, and add in a modesty claim: As the people at the start of history, we (maybe) have no control over what moral concerns future beings will have at all, and if we do then we can (maybe) can choose to craft a future where no moral concerns are detected by any sentient beings in the future at all.
Is that good? I have no idea, but it's a lot more fun to try to puzzle through.
A cynic might say "Even the very wise cannot see any ends."
(Clearly, there is some ability to see ends.)
That Aside,
> As if you can reduce "societal benefit" to some quantifiable number
I assume your business doesn't mark any Goodwill value or other non-tangibles in its GAAP-compliant financial statements then?
If we are going to live in a society where some people pretend they can calculate the benefit of all their actions, then I am free to say how absolutely fucked that entire process is, and point out the real world damage that is has explicitly caused.
If someone was openly a National Socialist, we wouldn't have any problem pointing out the problems the Nazis caused. But with EAs who recently lit tens of billions of dollars on fire to buy penthouses on Caribbean islands and castles in rural England, we have to give them a pass? Excuse me if I'm not open to listening to their thoughtful commentary.
I have a good friend who is a communist I strongly disagree with. I believe quite-bad things about communism as a philosophy and what it inevitably leads to. As of yet I have not excluded all people who are communists from my life or business interests due to believing their philosophy makes all or them bad people. I can say the same about Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses or Randian libertarians or Kantians.
I strongly disagree with all their ethical worldviews and metaphysics, but I don't automatically believe people are evil in those categories nor believe they would stab me in the back if they could, even it I believe the philosophies in question can lead to more backstabbing behavior.
It's simply discrimination and would morally compromise me to hate any group of people for what they believe. It wouldn't surprise me if also very illegal, especially if you decline to hire someone who identifies as EA.
Source: https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/3-who-protecte...
Which isn't to say that either is so unforgiveably horrible, just that it's very funny to see someone try to make this case without a shred of self-awareness.
No. You don't need a castle to host conferences. I am confident they had some sort of Eyes Wide Shut fantasy for all the effective altruists https://youtu.be/KnQB88wRMdk?t=39
I cannot properly describe how intensely I despise the effective altruism philosophy. As if you can reduce "societal benefit" to some quantifiable number. I work in an industry that intersects with cryptocurrency and at the executive level I deal with a surprisingly high number of EAs. I will straight-up ask people if they are EAs so I can immediately cease all contact and blackball them from all of my business interests. I do this to protect my wealth, businesses, and family from their danger.
Effective Altruism is mental training for sociopathy. It is the definition of "the ends justify the means". I'm someone who is loyal AF and will go hard to back someone I like and is my friend - EAs will stab you in the back if the expected value of destroying your relationship for their personal gain is higher than maintaining you as a friend.
If you get one takeaway from this comment, let it be that those guys who bought the castle were utter fucking pieces of shit.