In practice, Effective Altruism advocates for measurement and comparison.
I think I’m mostly convinced that the contentious claim is not about effectiveness and altruism, but I don’t think this is the only contentious claim that we do make! At least for some people, I think another contentious claim is that there is any normative force to e.g. the observation that the average American adult could likely save several lives a year if they spent less money on completely inessential things.
I think I’m mostly convinced that the contentious claim is not about effectiveness and altruism, but I don’t think this is the only contentious claim that we do make! At least for some people, I think another contentious claim is that there is any normative force to e.g. the observation that the average American adult could likely save several lives a year if they spent less money on completely inessential things.
I agree that those I mentioned are probably not the only contentious claims, and that the one you mention in particular is probably another.