The Scale, Neglectedness, Tractability, (Personal Fit) criteria

Effective Altruism (EA) is a movement trying to invest time and money in causes that do the most possible good per some unit investment. EA was at one point called optimal philanthropy.of effort. The label applies broadly, including a philosophy, a community, a set of organisations and set of behaviours. Likewise it also sometimes means how to donate effectively to charities, choose one's career, do the most good per $, do good in general or ensure the most good happens.  All of these different framings have slightly different implications.

The basic concept behind EA is that youone would really struggle to donate 100 times more money or time to charity than you currently do but, spending a little time researching who to donate to could have an impact on roughly this order of magnitude. The same argument works for doing good with your career or volunteer hours.

Impartiality (geographic, species, time) 

It is not clear why, under many moral systems we should care more about people who are in our country than to those who aren't. But those who are in developing nations can be helped about 100x more cheaply than those in the US. 

On a deeper level, EAs say that species is not the marker of moral worth. If we had evolved from dolphins rather than apes, would we be less deserving of moral consideration? If this logic follows, it implies significant low-cost opportunities to improve welfare.  

 Additional axioms for longtermism

Funding in general 

Criticisms 

• EA is incoherent. Consequentialism applies to one's whole life, but many EAs don’t take it this seriously
  • This argument applies to virtue ethics too, but no one criticises it - “why aren’t you constantly seeking to always do the virtuous action”. People in practice seem to take statements from consequentialist philosophies more seriously than they do from others
  • It is more intellectually honest to surface incoherence in your worldview - "I use 80% of my time as effectively as possible" is more honest that "I try and always do the most good
• EA frames all value in terms of impact creation and this makes members sad^[4]
  • How widespread is this?
  • Many EAs don't feel this way
  • Some people control orders of magnitude more resources than others. They could use their time and money to improve the lives of many other people. It is not idea to say these people should feel free to not create benefit
• EA supports a culture of guilt [Kerry thread]
  • How does EA compare in terms of mental wellbeing to other communities centred around "doing good" eg "Protestant Work Ethic" and "Catholic Guilt"?
  • If you struggle with this, consider reading Replacing Guilt, which is one of only 3 sequences with a permanent place sidebar of the EA Forum.
• EA is spending too much money
  • EA is spending more money but it's not immediately obvious it is spending too much. It might be spending too little. 
• EA is too focused on people in developing nations
  • Dollars go much further in developing nations which does lead to a natural bias in spending
• EA isn't focused enough on systemic change in America
  • Note that this is often used in very similar situations to the above criticism.  And in some of these, they can't both be true. 
• EA is too focused on longtermism and existential risk to the detriment of people who are alive now
  • People who are alive now are far less neglected, they can participate in markets, democracies, and self-advocacy
  • A significant portion of funding goes to present causes
  • Existential risk is arguably high enough to be relevant even to people alive today
• EAs defer too much to authority
• EAs don't listen to outside experts enough
• EA doesn't care about [insert issue]
• The repugnant conclusions is bad
• Utilitarianism is wrong
• EAs lie a bit^[5]
  • Nick Bostrom said he won a national record when really he did more courses than anyone he ever talked to
    • It's hard to say.  This is the sort of thing many people write in book bios.  But regardless, he removed it when pressed
  • If these are the best accusations of dishonesty one can get from a 1000s strong decade long movement, then it sounds like they are pretty honest
• There is a culture of suppressing disagreement while claiming to welcome it
  • This seems much better than comparable communities. 
• Add from Zvi's list

The winners of this https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YgbpxJmEdFhFGpqci/winners-of-the-ea-criticism-and-red-teaming-contest 

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Maybe

• Sam Bankman FriedBill Gates - Vaccination is clearly an EA cause
• Vitalik gave $100m - $1Bn in crypto to GiveWell, it's uncertain whether he's currently a Billionaire
• Bill Gates - Vaccination is clearly an EA cause

Maybe