My guess would be that people have accidentally swapped “founder’s syndrome” with “founder effects.” Founder’s syndrome is widely used outside EA to refer to the things people are talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder’s_syndrome. EA seems to use it to refer to a wider range of things, but this seems more likely than people intentionally applying founder effects from bio, since the meaning of founder effects in bio is pretty different and very specific.
Edit: This looks like it is be wrong—the oldest reference I found on the EA Forum to it is explicitly the biology one: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WAhFnueRgHkAf8KHc/making-ea-groups-more-welcoming.
My guess would be that people have accidentally swapped “founder’s syndrome” with “founder effects.” Founder’s syndrome is widely used outside EA to refer to the things people are talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder’s_syndrome. EA seems to use it to refer to a wider range of things, but this seems more likely than people intentionally applying founder effects from bio, since the meaning of founder effects in bio is pretty different and very specific.