Effective Altruism has been a controversial topic on social media, so today my guest and I are going to settle the question once and for all: Is it good or bad?

Jonas Sota is a Software Engineer at Rippling, BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley, who’s been observing the Effective Altruism (EA) movement in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade… and he’s not a fan.

00:00 Introduction

01:22 Jonas’s Criticisms of EA

03:23 Recoil Exaggeration

05:53 Impact of Malaria Nets

10:48 Local vs. Global Altruism

13:02 Shrimp Welfare

25:14 Capitalism vs. Charity

33:37 Cultural Sensitivity

34:43 The Impact of Direct Cash Transfers

37:23 Long-Term Solutions vs. Immediate Aid

42:21 Charity Budgets

45:47 Prioritizing Local Issues

50:55 The EA Community

59:34 Debate Recap

1:03:57 Announcements

Show Notes

Jonas’s Instagram: @jonas_wanders

Will MacAskill’s famous book, Doing Good Better: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/doing-good-better

Scott Alexander’s excellent post about the people he met at EA Global: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/16/fear-and-loathing-at-effective-altruism-global-2017/

Watch the Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate introduction to AI x-risk!

PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of: https://pauseai.info

Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel!

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates

Get full access to Doom Debates at lironshapira.substack.com/subscribe