Disclaimer: While I criticize several EA critics in this article, I am myself on the EA-skeptical side of things (especially on AI risk).

I am a proud critic of effective altruism, and in particular a critic of AI existential risk, but I have to admit that a lot of the critcism of EA is hostile, or lazy, and is extremely unlikely to convince a believer.

Take this recent Leif Weinar time article as an example. I liked a few of the object level critiques, but many of the points were twisted, and the overall point was hopelessly muddled (are they trying to say that voluntourism is the solution here?). As people have noted, the piece was needlessly hostile to EA (and incredibly hostile to Will Macaskill in particular). And he's far from the only prominent hater. Emille Torres views EA as a [...]

---

Outline:

(02:23) No door to door atheists

(04:52) What went wrong here?

(08:42) Motivation gaps in AI x-risk

(11:01) EA gap analysis

(15:14) Counter-motivations

(25:51) You can’t rely on ingroup criticism

(29:12) How to respond to motivation gaps

---

First published:

Source:

Linkpost URL:
https://titotal.substack.com/p/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.