Saw a tweet earlier by Michael Hobbes responding to this article that compared the effective altruism movement to New Atheism a decade ago. He had this to say:

Any intellectual movement based on the premise that its members are more rational than everyone else — including affected groups and academic experts — is going to select for a specific kind of person.

Specifically, both New Atheism and effective altruism, whatever their original goals and intentions were, got taken over by a particular type of bro-ish but also nerdy young man seeking an intellectual justification for his smug sense of superiority over the people around him. New Atheism offered these guys a riposte to the fundamentalist religion that gripped the US during the Bush years, letting them claim to be smarter and more enlightened than the Bible-thumpers who put feelings over facts. EA, meanwhile, let them claim moral superiority by applying Science^(TM) to charitable giving and therefore “proving” that they were doing more than anybody else to help save the world.

Both also developed many of the same blind spots. In the case of the New Atheists, blaming religion for all the problems in the world let them ignore their own bigotry, and so they bristled when they were called out for it, because in their minds, they had already done the work. That’s how Hitchslap compilations gave way to “feminists and SJWs getting REKT!” compilations in the early 2010s. In the case of EA, the fact that “science proved” that they were the ultimate do-gooders meant that criticism was invalid and came from people who just didn’t “get it”, or even if they had a point, their mission as EAs was more important to the world than a few “little people” who they trampled over. “Why can’t they understand that the needs of the many come before the needs of the few?”

And in both cases, a fetishization of the “hard” sciences as the ultimate arbiters of capital-T Truth left them vulnerable to bad, pseudoscientific arguments couched in the language of the hard sciences. Racialism, defense of polyamory as more “rational” than monogamy, a whole lot of bad evo-psych, the increasingly unhinged fixations of the “longtermist” movement, even (in one case that this article covers) defense of pedophilia as a kind of mentoring/educational relationship. The fact that making any of these arguments in the presence of anybody well-versed in relevant material from the social sciences is a one-way ticket to getting laughed out of the room is, to them, proof that the social sciences are all junk and need to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

EA culture being full of sexism is as predictable a downpour in Florida at 4 PM on an August day.

I looked at how the EA forum is taking it, and it’s typical! Lots of worries that this is unfair and dogpiling EA orgs, and a poster who works on sexual abuse professionally and has been a confidant of multiple victims is getting downvoted to the negatives for pushing back. I’ve worked in mission-based organizations that tolerated sexual harassment. They can crawl along surprisingly long and willingly sacrifice the wellbeing and talents of a lot of people for the sake of abusers, while overvaluing the talents of those same abusers. (The double whammy of marginalization at play…)

the fact is that EA has been an overwhelming negative force for just an org that encourages effective charity. its hard to be worse than ea. racism, sex pest cults, transphobia, overwhelmingly white and male. but no one rational enough to even admit they are problems

When Scott Aaronson says that SBF collecting a polycule of rationalist nerd girls “doesn’t count” as sleazy behavior, this is what he’s missing, and why he comes across as clueless, callous or both. It has been manifest for years that Rationalist/EA crowds are full to bursting with people who can’t be trusted, who use the language of kink and polyamory as a cover for abuse.

So glad to see normie publications start to wise up to these assholes.

Aurora Quinn-Elmore, alleged official sexual misconduct mediator of the community, talks about her process:

“I’m weighing the possible harm to the accused if the accusation is inaccurate against the possible harm to other people in the community if the concern is accurate,” Wise wrote. “Making these restrictions as privately as possible seems to avoid the worst harms to their reputation if the concerns are unfounded, while also avoiding the worst harms to the community if the concerns are valid.”

How the victimized party fits into AQE’s considerations seems suspiciously unclear. Also can’t help but notice that if AQE were to deem that damaging someone’s reputation would be bad for the community, an interesting thing happens…

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There have always been Groupies. People in EA just want to believe they’re not one of them.

Shitty article!