to what extent was the ongoing death of effective altruism, as this article puts it, caused by the various problems it inherited from utilitarianism? The inability to effectively quantify human wellbeing, for instance, or the ways in which Singer’s drowning child analogy (a foundation of EA) seems to discount the possibility that some people (say, children that we have brought into the world) might have special moral claims on us that other people do not.
Don’t think it’s really because of its philosophical consequences. EA as an organization was super corrupt and suspicious. That’s why it’s falling apart. Like it quickly went from “buy the best mosquito net” to “make sure AI doesn’t wipe out humanity”. Oh and also let’s buy a castle as EA headquarters. Its motivations quickly shifted from charity work to prostelyzation.
Most of its issues seem to fundamentally lie in the fact that it’s an organization run by wealthy, privileged people that use “rationality” to justify their actions.
r/philosophy response: https://old.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1bw3ok2/the_deaths_of_effective_altruism_wired_march_2024/