I constantly experience [the Gell-Mann amnesia] effect on this subreddit; everyone sounds so smart and so knowledgeable until they start talking about the handful of things I know a little bit about (leftism, the arts, philosophy) and they’re so far off the mark — then there’s another post and I’ve forgotten all about it

Bias noted, impact not reduced. Basic rationality failed. These people are so willing to discard their own sense of right and wrong, moral or rational, just to belong in their weird cult. Why is it so hard for these dorks to admit that they don’t actually care about being smart or rational and that they just want a bunch of other dorks to be friends with?

At risk of going NSFW, it’s obvious that none of these folks have read Singer 1971, which is the paper that kickstarted the EA movement. This paper’s argument has a massive fucking hole right in the middle.

Without cracking open the paper, I seem to recall that it is specifically about Oxfam and famine in Africa. The central claim of the paper is that everybody should donate to Oxfam. However, if one is an employee of Oxfam, then suddenly the utilitarian arithmetic fails; his argument only allows for money going from non-Oxfam taxpayers to Oxfam employees.

Can’t help but notice how the main problem with EA charities is the fucking nepotism. Almost as if the EA movement rests on a philosophical foundation of ignoring when charities employ friends of donors.