5 Historical Case Studies for an EA in Decline

[JWS 🔸]

Introduction

Before November 2022, Effective Altruism only seemed to know success and growth. However, since November 2022, the EA movement has had to deal with significant criticism and multiple scandals. Some have even gone so far to declare that EA is dead or dying,^[1] or no longer worth standing behind,^[2] or otherwise disassociate themselves from the movement even if outside observers would clearly identify them as being ‘EA’.^[3] To me, the environment that EA finds itself in in 2025 is an unclear one and I think certainly less positive than the pre-FTX days.

I’ve come around to see EA as plateauing and entering a phase of decline (though that might not be inevitable). This might not be correct, and is definitely an assumption this post takes for granted and that not something it intends to argue for. So, as I was reflecting on this state of affairs, and thinking about what the prospects for recovery for EA as a movement are, and thought that looking at the historical record for comparable case studies might prove enlightening, and provide an interesting perspective to understand the current tribulations EA is facing. This post is the result of that inquiry.

Method

To be open from the start, I am neither a historian nor a historical expert. You should take what I say, and my summarisation of historical events below, with appropriate scepticism. The investigation and results are the result of a combination of my memory, the internet, and LLM suggestions with google verification. I welcome those with a greater knowledge of history and the dynamic of social movements to weigh in if I’ve summarised historical events incorrectly or overlooked even more appropriate examples than I included here.

Initially I started to look at any movement that had a ‘rise and fall’ dynamic, but soon realised that this was far too broad a net to cast, and so I decided to restrict the search criteria more to look for a more specific kind of journey that I think EA has gone through:

1 - The movement begins with and grows via the academic or intellectual elite of society. There do seem to be important differences between elite-focused movements and mass movements, and EA is clearly one of the former. I suspect that there will be important differences between elite movements and more mass movements in terms of lifecycle and prospects for recovery, and I thought the social dynamics of movements would be more similar to EA if they share this starting point.

2 - The movement grows and gains influence both socially and politically, but does so through indirect means (such as social persuasion) rather than explicitly seeking power (such as through electoral slates or supporting coups). You can’t have a rise and fall dynamic without a rise, and again I suspected there are significant differences between movements who deliberately focus on gaining political power and those that don’t. I think EA belongs on the ‘indirect’ side of the ledger, as its focus on changing power is through intellectual persuasion rather than deliberately controlling power in the name of EA.^[4]

3 - There is a significant scandal/​event that heavily damages the movement’s reputation and prospects. This needn’t be the sole cause of decline and it can take place amongst a more general period of retrenchment, but there should be at least one to point to. The collapse of FTX is such a dramatic event in EA’s history that I thought it essential to include only movements that experienced something comparable. Even if you believe EA made numerous missteps before November 2022, the FTX downfall clearly marks a major inflection point in its trajectory.

I also think the crisis being somewhat self-inflicted is important to note too,^[5] so I tried to exclude movements where the crisis and decline was brought about by explicit enemy action or repression from the state. This removed quite a few candidates, and I make a note about this issue of historical violence and its modern day relevance for EA the end of the post.

4 - Following the crisis, the movement enters a period of retrenchment and disillusionment—this is where EA is currently. This decline could take a variety of forms: declining numbers of explicitly signed-up members, the gradual plateauing and waning of the group’s political influence, or significant numbers of prominent members distancing themselves from the movement. This is the most ‘you know it when you see it’ criteria of the four presented, and hard to be exact about historically as often the rise of movements are more closely studied than the gradual falls. Nevertheless, all of the candidates I’ve found do show this pattern of decline.

I began with a larger list of candidate movements and narrowed it to the final five presented here, with some others appearing in the ‘honourable mentions’ section. These additional cases shared some similarities with EA but ultimately weren’t as good a fit as those I chose to focus on.

Edits

I had a self-set deadline of EoD May 7th to publish as I tend to struggle to finish posts, hoping to get them 100% polished and correct. If I make any significant edits to this post in the future I will note them in this section.

• Thanks to Ollie’s comments I’ve edited the intro o make it more clear that the post is not arguing for “EA is in decline”, it’s assuming that and then looking for comparable case studies. Think of it as arguing for p → q rather than making the case for p.

The Case Studies

#1 - New Atheism

While the origins of New Atheism can be traced to the chatrooms and blogs of the late 90s to early 00s, the term itself was coined in 2006. This coincides with the emergence of the ‘Four Horsemen’ (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens) who all published popular works between 2004 and 2007 - most notably Dawkin’s 2006 ‘The God Delusion’ - and became the public face of the movement. From a broader cultural perspective, I think the rise of the movement is also clearly linked impossible to the sociopolitical problems it set itself up against, namely the 9/​11 attacks and terrorist attacks in Western Europe, and the electoral victories of George W. Bush who openly courted the support of America’s religious right as a political bloc.

Focused on fighting back against the influence of religion on the world and politics, and refusing to give to traditional respect, the movement spread from internet users to mainstream journalists and public intellectuals. In 2011, however, the movement faced a scandal which eventually proved fatal. Rebecca Watson spoke out against sexual harassment she faced with in the movement, first at a 2011 conference and later in a YouTube video. This precipitated a rather tactless response from Dawkins, and then a full-on flame war in the community which later became known as “Elevatorgate”. The scandal exposed a strong rift inside the ‘New Atheism’ movement between those supporting of progressive social justice views and those who did not, and the rift never healed.

From ²⁰¹¹⁄₁₂ various trends that track the movement show an inexorable decline.^[6] Those members associated with the social justice side tried to rebrand into “Atheism+” , but I think this was eventually abandoned and those people just joined social justice movement explicitly. The more vehemently anti-social justice members of the New Atheists initially allied themselves with the ‘anti-woke’ parts of the internet, and some seem to have negatively polarised themselves into being alt-right politically now.^[7] Perhaps equally as important, the former enemy had disappeared. In the 2008 Federal Elections the Democrats swept the Presidency, House, and Senate, and by the time of Obama’s second term the opposition to him was framed around economic or nativist issues. The role of religion was simply no longer the defining crux of American national politics. Finally, Christopher Hitchens died of cancer in 2011, leaving one of the movement lacking perhaps its most eloquent and fierce defender. Regardless, the ‘New Atheist’ movement decidedly no longer exists in the way it clearly did in the 2004-2012 period.

This case was the very first example I thouhgt of when starting to put this post together, and I recommend people read Scott’s article as it goes over this issue in much greater depth. I think New Atheism demographic appeal probably has a large overlap to EA, and had a scandal which ended up causing significant issues for the movement’s cohesion. Finally, the environmental conditions that led to its rise shifted, and it was outcompeted by other ideologies. If EA follows a similar trajectory, we might expect it to fragment in a similar manner as former adherents abandon it for other ideologies that seem more fitting to dealing with the worlds pressing problems.

#2 - Saint-Simonianism

In the early 19th century Europe was still reeling from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and new ideologies circulating rapidly among increasingly literate populations and international intellectual circles. One of the many intellectuals to emerge during this period was Claude Henri de Rouvroy, known more commonly as the Comte de Saint-Simon. I found it fairly difficult to pin down exactly what ‘Saint-Simonianism’ actually stood for, though many identify him as a ‘utopian socialist’. He seems to have been a fervent believer in the power of Science to rebuild a damaged France and create a better world. His influence was concentrated in Paris, both where he lived and the city with the highest incidence of intellectuals and educated professions, perhaps because it’s proto-technocratic ideas appealed to them.

Saint-Simon himself died in 1825. This didn’t mark the end of the movement, instead it continued to grow, however his death did lay the groundwork for the undoing of the movement. With his passing, the leadership of the movement was split between two of his disciples, Amand Bazard and Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin. By 1831 the tensions between these two had reached the point of no return, with Bazard wanting the movement to become more explicitly political, while Enfatin wanted to focus on personal moral and even spiritual change. Enfantin attempted to implement his vision through a ‘model community’ at Ménilmontant, and while exactly what went on there isn’t absolutely clear,^[8] it was probably rather too socially libertine for the general populace of 1830s France. Enfantin and his closest followers were arrested for “outrages against public morality committed in writings printed and distributed”, and though eventually released many prominent members (such as August Comte) either officially dissassociated themselves or simply moved on quietly. Bazard himself died of an illness shortly afterwards.^[9]

After this crisis the credibility of the movement sunk enough that it never recovered, and Saint-Simonianism simply withered away, leaving little lasting imprint on intellectual discourse or broader history.^[10] Similarly to the New Atheism, it never seemed to supply the ideological answers that society was demanding, and instead socialism and nationalism emerged in the mid-19th century to spark a series of wars and revolutions that would change world history. It is still a decent fit for EA, appealing mainly to intellectual elites, having a significant leadership castle, sex scandals (that also potentially involve a castle if you squint). The Saint-Simonian trajectory perhaps suggests a quicker collapse than the New Atheism case, and EAs survival for 2.5 years post FTX suggests that this might not be likely, it does also point to leadership vacuums and departures of significant members harbour poor things for a movement’s prospects.

#3 - The Technocracy Movement

In the early 20th century, with industrialisation and the rise of the academic discipline of economics, various ideas that we would now recognise as ‘technocratic’ were beginning to gain traction. In North America these ideas are often associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor, but they were also harnessed by one Howard Scott, who formed an organisation called the ‘Technical Alliance’ in 1919. Despite the group disbanding in 1921, Scott continued to spread the ideas of Technocracy and soon became recognised as its leading advocate in North America. The movement attracted significant support, especially from engineers and other educated professionals who could see themselves benefiting from the technocratic vision of how to run a society.

Just as we must make distinctions between ‘effective altruism’ and ‘EA’, it’s important to be clear about what specifically ‘The Technocratic Movement’ believed as opposed to the more general idea of ‘technocracy’. The Technocrats were actually quite critical of Capitalist economics and especially the price system. Early supporter Thorstein Veblen had written about this before, and Technocrats often predicted the nearly-imminent-but-not-quite-now collapse of the price system as an economic allocation mechanism. To replace the price system Scott and the Technocrats believed that the economy had to be reconfigured to focus on energy, especially in the era of non-scarcity that would follow once the Technocrats were given the levers of power, and this would involve centrally-planned Energy Certificates and the unification of North America into a “Technate”.^[11] Of course, the people in control of this new order would be the Engineers and other kinds of people who were already drawn to the Technocracy movement.

The peak of the movement came in the early 1930s, where the ongoing Great Depression led many to be critical of the Capitalism and look for alternative ideologies to offer a different economic approach. But even as the Technocratic movement grew to meet this challenge its critics continued to keep pace, and the movement’s image was always hampered by scepticism about Scott’s personal credibility in particular. In 1932, perhaps as Scott hit national headlines, former colleagues at Columbia University rapidly made it publicly clear that they had nothing to do with him. In January 1933 Scott gave a public address in an attempt to counter criticism, but his vague, confusing, and jargon-filled speech only served to garner more criticism and scepticism. By 1936 the movement was beset by factionalism, and intense internal disagreement at The Continental Committee on Technocracy led to the movement splintering thereafter, marking the end of the high water mark of its influence.

As with the previous two examples, longer-term trends were also hampering the movement. Roosevelt’s New Deal appeared to stabilise American capitalism, and with the Second World War the leading problem facing America no longer seemed to be economic. The Technocracy Movement was in fact briefly banned in Canada from 1940-43 for suspected opposition into the war effort. Predictions of the price systems collapse were falsified, and the unfalsifiable ones eroded the credibility of the movement. After WW2, with the ideological question facing the world being “Capitalism vs Communism”, and America neither ‘technocracy’ nor ‘Technocracy’ were really live players ideologically. Scott committed to his vision, but Technocracy had become an ideological relic and remains so to this day, even if the movement ‘officially’ still exists.

This case offers some particularly troubling parallels for EA. Both movements spread among intellectual elites and promised those elites greater societal influence. However, there are key differences around leadership. Scott was clearly a central and totemic leader, and for better or for worse EA does not have, instead possessing a sort-of ‘Inner Circle’, instead of a singular figurehead. Nevertheless, the 1933 speech is a decent approximation of a public humiliation for the movement, matching the effect of FTX on EA’s reputation. We also have the (now repeated) themes of internal factionalism and the pattern of gradual dissolution after a crisis and plateau. I suspect the repeated but never precise proclamations about the collapse of the price system should also be a warning shot for the AI-Safety wing of EA if claims of ‘AGI’ do not appear to bear fruit by the mid-2030s.

#4 - Moral Re-Armament /​ Buchmanism

I’m using the term ‘Moral Re-Armament’ (MRA) to cover a series of movements, sometimes also known as ‘Buchmanism’ after their creator Frank Buchman who was a Lutheran Minister. In his early career, Buchman was connected with the YMCA at Penn State, but seemed a bit disillusioned with its ability to make sustained moral changes amongst. He developed his own ideas and spread them independently, explicitly using house parties amongst the university elite as a vector to do so, and the success of this strategy at Oxford University in the late 1920s led this movement to be called ‘The Oxford Group’ in the UK. What the movement stood for is somewhat unclear, it seemed to be focused on individual moral perfection, and all statements I’ve found of its beliefs seem rather void of specifics.

Still, Buchman’s approach was prescient as the group continued to grow, and were bolstered by intentionally planned outreach campaigns, and met many influential people including the King of Greece and Queen of Romania. It was clearly a movement that he exerted great centralised control either, however, such centralisation also comes with risks. In 1936 Buchman gave an interview where he said “”I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism.” Needless to say, many supporters and detractors of Buchman were united in their negative reaction to this quote. The fate of the movement turned again when Buchman gave a speech in London in 1938 where he called on nations of the world to “re-arm morally”, giving him the name for the new re-brand of the movement. This in turn caused a split from those wishing to keep the ‘Oxford Group’ terminology and those willing to follow Buchman. A few years later in 1941, one of Buchman’s closest allies publicly left the movement and criticised him citing “increasing misgivings” about its direction.

From this time on, the decline seems rather gradual. By 1944 Harry Truman denied having ever met Buchman or having any interest in the Oxford Group, and after the war Moral Re-Armament seemed to struggle to compete with the new ideologies that ruled America or the wider world in the remaking of the world order. Buchman died in 1961, and Moral Re-Armament ceased its work in America by the end of the 1960s. A shadow of the former organisation exists, now rebranded as ‘Initiatives for Change’, but it’s nowhere near the movement that it used to be. Perhaps its most lasting legacy is the role it played leading to the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, as both founders were directly linked to and inspired by the Oxford Group.

The focus on appealing to younger members of society, especially those at university, is quite striking. You could also see EAs appeal to moral improvement as a version of individual ‘moral re-armament’. The future trajectory sketched out by MRA here is similar to the other cases so far, once reaching a plateau there is a long and gradual decline, but perhaps most similar to the Technocratic movement a lot of the pitfalls of the movement were due to having a singular leader who seemed to demand total control of the movement. One major difference is that EA and EAs love writing about what they think, why they think it, and why they might be wrong. In contrast, it was absolutely baffling to try and parse what Buchman are his acolytes actually thought, or how they were going to gain influence over power, and what their interventions would be. A key reason MRA failed was not that it wasn’t offering the wrong solutions for society’s problems, but instead it was just offering hot air and spiritual vibes instead of any solutions at all.

#5 - Early Quakerism

The Reformation had a profound impact on Christian practice in Europe, as religious authority of the Catholic Church was fractured, allowed many new interpretations of the Christian Faith to appear. In mid-17th century England one of these new sects was called ‘The Religious Society of Friends’, which began with the preaching of George Fox but quickly grew into a national movement that argued members could gain direct spiritual experience of God without the need of a clergy. It spread rapidly in England, having tens of thousands of members by the 1660s. While it found fertile ground in cities such as London, Quakerism’s focus on every individual’s ability to directly connect to God also gave it the characteristics of a mass movement.

However, the movement found itself facing numerous early scandals and setbacks, especially as it became popular enough to be noticed by those in power. The Quakers did not accept many of the rituals that defined English society, such as taking oaths, removing hats before judicial authorities, nor did the swear allegiance to the restored King Charles II. In 1656 one notably poor attempt at PR by James Nayler backfired on the reputation of the budding Quakers by entering Bristol on Palm Sunday in a manner reminiscent of Christ entering Jerusalem, which drew public ire across the country as it was deemed an act of blasphemy. While escaping execution, Nayler was given very harsh punishments, and the credibility of the Quakers was eroded. The backlash continued in the early 1660s as Quakers were arrested for their beliefs, and in 1662 Parliament passed an Act (also known as the ‘Quaker Act’) which set out specific punishments for their disobedience.

Despite this controversy and persecution, the movement survived and managed to reform itself. In the aftermath of the Nayler controversy Fox spent his time in the late 50s to early 60s trying to reform and reorganise Quaker practice to something more organised and structured. In 1666, while Fox was briefly imprisoned, other Quaker leaders gathered in London to write “Testimony of the Brethren”, setting out more strict disciplinary rules for both Quaker groups and individuals to follow, which was ordered to be read in all Quaker meetings.^[12] Eventually the paranoia of the mid 1600s gave way to one of more social pluralism and tolerance, eventually leading to the Toleration Act of 1688. The Quakers continued to grow and become especially influential in the growing American colonies, and future Quaker figures would play a key role in the fight against slavery.

The Early Quakers are probably the least good match of the 5 cases presented here. They’re not clearly an elite movement, they gain popular support but not political support, there is no clear singular controversy though Nayler’s is arguable, and their decline is partially related to state persecution (though this is more legal than violent). But a key reason to include them is that they are evidence of a movement which is able to arrest a significant decline and continue growing. What sets Quakerism apart from the 4 failed cases mentioned above is that Fox was willing to delegate and decentralise control of the movement, but also that leaders clearly stepped in in 1666 and reasserted how the movement ought to behave, allowing clear demarcation of those who were or were not following Quaker practice. I’ll save potential takeaways for EA to the Conclusions section.

Honourable Mentions

Chartism—The Chartist movement was one of my first considerations as an analogy for EA. In 1938 the London Working Men’s Association drafted a petition with 6 political reforms, and support for the petition rapidly spread throughout the country. The fate of the Chartist movement came to a head in 1848, when revolutionary fervor sweeping across Europe inspired a massive Chartist demonstration in London with the intent to march on Parliament to have their proposals addressed. Anticipating this, Parliament bolstered the police presence in London significantly and hampered the protest’s progress towards Westminster. The Chartists backed down, and after 1848 its influence quickly faded. Nevertheless, 5 of their 6 reforms ended up being adopted by Britain’s political system, with the only exception being yearly elections to Parliament.

While interesting I decided not to include them as Chartism is clearly a mass movement and not an elite one, and there wasn’t really a ‘scandal’ crisis that can parallel FTX.

Levellers—A radical group that emerged during the First English Civil War, as radical ideas gained new air following the victory of the New Model Army. Centered in London with influential proponents like William Walwyn, the Levellers advocated remarkably egalitarian principles for their era. Their moment of greatest influence came during the Putney Debates, where New Model Army soldiers and officers gathered to discuss England’s political future. However, the influence of Levellerism and other radical ideologies in the army started to concern the senior officers, including Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. After the defeat of the Royalists in the Second English Civil War and the execution of the King, the Levellers were essentially crushed by the new regime. After criticising the centralisation of power occuring under Cromwell, four leading levellers were arrested and held in the Tower of London for most of 1649. In May 1649, a group of Leveller mutineers in the Army were routed by Cromwell with many participants imprisoned, and three of the leaders executed. The movement had been crushed, former Leveller leaders (including those imprisoned) moderated and distanced themsevles, and Cromwell ended up gaining total control of Britain for a time.

The Levellers fit some of the dynamics I was looking for, but are not clearly members of the intellectual elite, and clearly were focused on gaining political power. One parallel I did find amusing was the former leaders of the movement proclaiming themselves only to be Leveller-Adjacent,^[13] which is a very strong parallel, though it was written while the leaders were imprisoned so is possibly done so under duress or ‘extreme reputational concern’

The Narodniks—The cover photo for this post is Ilya Repin’s They Did Not Expect Him, depicting the surprise return of a Nardonik rebel home. The Narodniks were members of the intelligentsia in Russia in the mid-to-late 19th century,who were agitating against the conservative tsarvist regime. Their radical faction, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), supported violent action and terrorism to achieve their goals and were successful in assassinating Tsar Alexander II in 1881. This backfired spectacularly as this did not lead to mass support for the overthrow of the old regime, and the government responded by heavily cracking down by arresting and hanging many leaders of the movement. While unsuccessful, the did preview the kind of violent revolution that was to come to Russia in the early 20th century. In the end, despite being a primarily intellectual group declining after a key negative event, their appeal to explicit political violence to gain political power makes them a poor match for EA.

Related Work on other candidates—Nuño wrote previous post on similar themes, and suggested ‘The Spanish Enlightenment’ as a candidate social movement with a rise-and-fall trajectory. I can’t verify this as I have no access to the sources nor speak Spanish, but I think that ‘The Enlightenment’ is too broad of a category to count unless it refers to a specifically named movement. I’d still recommend reading the post.

Aron Vallinder wrote a summary document on Confucius vs Mozi, where Mohism would take the place of EA. In particular, the “Why did Mohism decline and disappear?” section seems relevant to the historical pattern I’ve been trying to find. Mohism was a potential candidate and I would’ve liked to have included a non-Western example, but I couldn’t find much evidence to turn it into a case study and only saw Vallinder’s post as I was finishing writing this post.

Takeaways and Conclusions

Recovery is not likely historically—The simple fact is that the probability of movement survival following a scandal of FTX’s magnitude, and associated decline thereafter, appears low. Of my five case studies only the Early Quakers were able to reverse their fortunes, and even then they were clearly the least similar to EA based on the criteria I had set out. While EA has avoided an immediate collapse post-November ’22, going by history base rates one wouldn’t expect it to recover to its heyday of influence.

A singular leader is a major risk factor EA does not have − 3 of the 5 cases involved individual leaders whose actions delegitimised the entire movement,^[14] and their inability to let go of control confirmed the eventual demise of the enterprise. By contrast, there is no singular ‘leader’ or ‘founder’ of EA, instead there are a range of groups and influential people. This relative decentralisation, even if that’s ‘Inner Circle’, is actually a benefit for EA. By contrast, it makes the financial dependence on GoodVentures even more risky if Dustin and Cari ever decide to disassociate themselves with Effective Altruism.

The likely pathway is ‘gradual evaporation’ - The most likely outcome in my view, given the case studies and the trends I already see within EA myself, are for a prolonged period where EA is still around but people start to disassociate themselves from the movement,^[15] stop framing their work in EA terms, or referencing EA when talking about the problems of society. This means that we should expect EA institutions to persist for some time, but that they’d gradually lose influence, money, and membership, and other organisations or ideologies would take their place instead. A generalised social ‘Anti-AI’ movement might arise, for instance and sweep away EA in terms of interest and influence, or a new intellectually focused ideology could spring up and siphon off the demographic that EA and other elite-first ideologies try to recruit from.

Hamartiology is good way of explain the dynamics social movements—I’m using ‘harmartiology’ in a similar way that Scott does in his New Atheism article, that is: Ideologies function essentially as explanatory frameworks for what’s wrong with the world and how to fix it. When a movement fails to provide compelling answers to contemporary problems, it tends to fade away, replaced by alternatives better suited to the socio-political environment. Saint-Simonianism couldn’t offer a comprehensive socialist alternative to industrialisation; the Technocratic movement never witnessed the predicted collapse of the price system; Buchmanism had no substantive plan beyond converting influential people through house parties and so on. Does EA know what its harmartiology is? What are the alternative formulations of the world’s ills that might draw current and prospective members away? Identifying these and acting pro-actively might be a crucial point on which the movement’s survival turns.

A Final Note on Historical Violence and its Modern-Day Relevance

Note—this part is highly speculative and likely controversial. I have kept it separate from the main body of the post, as it can be read and judged independently of these observations.

Like most of the people who will read this post, I was born in a very unusual part of history where liberal democratic norms are dominant and taken for granted. So I suppose that it shouldn’t have been surprising to me that, when I examined the historical record where these norms are decidedly not dominant, that many social movements declined or ended because of explicit persecution^[16] by the existing government or authorities. This makes senses from some perspective, when social movements challenge existing power structures, those structures often respond in kind, and if political violence isn’t normative proscribed then that backlash often includes violence. This explains why of my 5 cases only the Quakers predate the 19th century, and suggests that if liberal democratic norms erode movements like EA could face more historically typical fates.

Why might this be relevant? Well, I think that the Second Trump Administration is weakening these norms in a much more rapid and extreme way than Trump 1.0. While I don’t anticipate the deployment of state violence against ideological opponents for political ends in the same way as that governemnts of Europe used their militaries to crack down on the Revolutions of 1848, but it is now something I consider ‘incredibly unlikely’ as opposed to ‘completely implausible’. I think this is an important, but uncomfortable, point to acknowledge. For EA specifically, there is now a potential, albeit very unlikely, endgame for the EA movement that involves Trump using Dustin Moskowitz’s connection with EA as an excuse to target the Democratic Party. Would he paint EAs as traitors for wanting to send your tax dollars Africans instead of American Citizens? Would he claim that the Democratic Party is responsible for funding bizarre eschatological murder cults?

Again, I don’t think such futures are likely, but if American politics continues to get more tense and fraught into the run up to 2028, and jokes about a third term start to get less and less jokey, it could happen here. The idea of using political power to crack down on EAs has already been floated on anti-EA Twitter, or general portray EA types as traitors^[17] or terrorists. And note that those who are spreading these are exactly the Twitter-Tech-Right that has been so empowered by Trumps victory, and as far as I can tell this group positions itself directly against the liberal order whose norms have proscribed political violence. To be clear, I’m not predicting state suppression of EA. Instead, I’m saying that if EA’s rise-and-fall happened in period without these liberal norms, it would be more likely to happen, and if those norms are being eroded and people with hostile sentiment toward EA have the ear of political and military power, you should adapt accordingly.

1. ^

   Cursory examples of very many, Paul Graham and eigenrobot

2. ^

   I think this is the direction Nuño has been going in.

3. ^

   This claim about Holden is in ‘big if true’ territory, for example

4. ^

   Even Carrick Flynn did not campaign explicitly as an EA, as opposed to say Bernie Sanders who did campaign as a socialist. This is the kind of distinction I’m making, not that EA isn’t interested in political power.

5. ^

   I think the preponderance of evidence points towards SBF justifying his actions through totalising utilitarian philosophy (like the 51% coin flips) and the possibility that his AI Safety investments could save the world, instead of the view of him using EA as a front to enrich himself. YMMV on this point, and its not essential to the thesis of the post.

6. ^

   The primary source here is Scott Alexander’s excellent article, The Godlessness that Failed

7. ^

   The most extraordinary example is Ayaan Hirsi Ali becoming a Christian and now railing against the woke ‘mind virus’

8. ^

   It does seem to fit the pattern on ‘cult leader who was new spiritual vision for society retreats to a private location and start stalking about sex a lot’ which is a whole PLA-quantity of red flags

9. ^

   The most detailed source I found on this was this 2011 Thesis, which goes into a lot of detail on the 1925-1931 rise and fall, and includes some primary sources too

10. ^

    With the bizarre exception of the Suez Canal, so maybe they get major plus points there, but it’s debatable how counterfactual that is

11. ^

    Which included Greenland!

12. ^

    Much of the information on earlier Quaker Governance can be found on wikipedia, or in this article

13. ^

    The introduction to the manifesto states that they were “commonly though unjustly styled Levellers”

14. ^

    In the case of Saint-Simonianism I’m actually referring to Enfatin, rather than Saint-Simon himself

15. ^

    Hell, I’m even doing that myself

16. ^

    And I don’t mean ‘overwhelms you with lawfare’ persecution I mean ‘hires mercenaries to chop you into pieces’ persecution

17. ^

    This example in particular has ‘who will rid me of this turbulent priest’ vibes

[OllieBase]

Ever since November 2022, the EA movement has only seemed to know criticism and scandal. Some have even gone so far to declare that EA is dead or dying,^[1] or no longer worth standing behind,^[2] or otherwise disassociate themselves from the movement even if outside observers would clearly identify them as being ‘EA’.^[3] This negative environment that EA finds itself in is, I think, indicative of its state as a social movement in decline.

I don’t think the claim “EA is in decline” is well-defended in this post. You link to a few naysayers here, but I don’t think that’s good evidence. “EA is in decline” is also self-fulfilling—it might decline if everyone’s saying it’s declining—so I expect some people say this because they want it to happen, not because they’ve reviewed the evidence and have concluded this is what’s happening.

Colleagues of mine can pull together more evidence against, but as two examples that are salient to me:

• EA Global London 2025 is on track to be the biggest EA conference ever.

• We expect to welcome more people to EA events (EAG, EAGx, EA Summits) this year than ever before.

I find that hard to square with “EA is in decline”. To be clear, I think the claim might be true, but it’s an important enough question that it deserves some more thoughtful study and data, rather than vibes on Twitter.

[JWS 🔸]

Hey Ollie, thanks for your feedback! It helped me understand some of the downvotes the post was getting which I was a bit confused by. I think you and perhaps others are interpreting the post as “Here are some case studies that show EA is in decline”, but that’s not what I was trying to write, it was more “EA is in decline, what historical cases can inform us about this?” I’m not really arguing for “Is EA in decline?” in the post, in fact I’m just assuming it and punting the empirical evidence for another time, since I was interested in bringing out the historical cases rather than EAs current state. So the tweets are meant to be indicative of mood/​sentiment but not load bearing proof. I do see that the rhetorical flourish in the intro might have given a misleading impression, so I will edit that to make the point of the piece more clear.

As for why, I mean, it does just seem fairly obvious to me, but social movements have fuzzy boundaries and decline doesn’t have to be consistent. Nevertheless answering this question was a post I was planning on write and the evidence seemed fairly damning to me—for instance:

• Spikes in visiting the “Effective Altruism” Wikipedia page seem to mainly be in response to negative media coverage, such as the OpenAI board fallout or a Guardian Article about Wytham Abbey. Other Metrics like Forum engagement that were growing preFTX clearly spike and decline after the scandal period.

• Other organisations similar to EA considering rebounding away. Apparently CE/​AIM was considering this, and Rutger Bregman seems to be trying really hard to keep Moral Ambition free of EAs reputational orbit, which I think he’d be doing much less of if EAs prospects were more positive.

• Previous community members leaving the Forum or EA in general, sometimes turning quite hostile to it. Some examples here are Habryka, Nuño Sempere, Nathan Young, Elizabeth from the more ‘rationalist’ side. I’ve noticed various people who were long term EAs, like Akash Wasil and John Halstead have deactivated their accounts. A lot of more left-wing EAs like Bob Jacobs seem to have started to move away too, or like Habiba moderate their stanc and relationship to EA.

• This goes double so for leadership. I think loads kf the community felt a leadership vacuum post FTX. Dustin has deactivated his account. Holden has left OP, gone quiet, and might not longer consider himself EA? Every so often Ben Todd tweets something which I can only interpret as “testing the waters before jumping ship”. I don’t think leadership of a thriving, growing movement acts this.

• If you search “Effective Altruism” on almost any major social media site (X, Bluesky, Reddit, etc) I suspect the general sentiment toward EA will be strongly negative and probably worse than it was preFTX and staying that way. There might be some counter evidence. Some metrics might have improved, and I know some surveys are showing mixed or positive things. I think Habryka’s point that reputation is evaluated lazily rings true to me even if I disagree on specifics.

  ---

  But again, the above is my memory of a draft, and I’m not sure I’ll ever finish that post. I think hard data on a well formed version of the question would be good, but once again it’s not the question I was trying to get at with this post.

[OllieBase]

Thanks for adding more here :) I think that evidence is more persuasive, though still reads a little vibe-y and data-free, and involves reading intention into some actions that might not be there.

[JWS 🔸]

No worries Ollie, thanks for the feedback :)

As I said, those bullet points were a memory of a draft so I don’t have the hard data to share on hand. But when dealing with social movements it’s always going to be somewhat vibesy—data will necessarily be observational and we can’t travel back in time and run RCTs on whether SBF commits fraud or not. And the case studies do show that declines can go on for a very long time post major crisis. It’s rare for movements to disappear overnight (The Levellers come closest of all the cases I found to that)

Fwiw I think that the general evidence does point to “EA is in decline” broadly understood, and that should be considered the null hypothesis at this point. I’d feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think there’s been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, I’d want to see the data for that.

But as I said, it’s really not the (main) point of the post! I’d love to add my points to a post where someone did try and do a deep dive into that question.

[Denkenberger🔸]

I can’t seem to find it now, but I think someone calculated that funding to EA was higher in 2023 and 2024 than any year except 2022.

[OllieBase]

I’d feel pretty gaslit if someone said EA was going swimmingly and unaffected by the tribulations of the last couple of years, perhaps less so if they think there’s been a bounce back after an initial decline but, you know, I’d want to see the data for that.

I agree with this fwiw, that seems fair

[Throwaway81]

I think it would be helpful to be able to see the number of applications to EA global over time compared to attendance.

[AnonymousTurtle]

And the amount spent in ads, I think X ads to promote EAG might be a new thing

[Chris Leong]

• EA Global London 2025 is on track to be the biggest EA conference ever.

• We expect to welcome more people to EA events (EAG, EAGx, EA Summits) this year than ever before.

I don’t think raw numbers are the right metric. Talent matters as well.

A more important question to me is, “How well are groups at elite universities going?”.

[James Herbert]

Pretty well, according to Joris from the groups team at CEA.

[Jason]

Although the Early OSP intervention at those universities could be influencing the outcomes—checking elite universities at which Early OSP wasn’t offered could control for this.

[James Herbert]

I should hope they’re influencing those outcomes, otherwise they’re wasting resources! ;)

But I guess you’re saying something like, ‘We can’t infer much about the health of EA based on this evidence because this is an area where people are actively trying to grow numbers, so naturally it’s improving’. But this argument feels circular. If that’s the standard, it would be pretty hard to provide evidence that meets your bar. Unless your claim is something like, ‘A healthy movement doesn’t need to actively try and grow itself because it’ll just naturally grow’?

Or maybe I’m completely misunderstanding you?

[Jason]

More like: If EA is healthy, then groups that have been getting a consistent level of support should be as a class either stable or growing. That’s why I suggested looking at non-EOSP elite university groups—them being at least stable as a class would be evidence of general health. On the other hand, if their output is dropping despite holding investment steady, that would not be a great sign.

[James Herbert]

Ah, got you. I think I agree. I only shared the EOSP data since Chris seemed to think it was relevant.

For what it’s worth, my current take is that top-of-funnel growth has slowed in recent years, but bottom-of-funnel growth is holding up well — likely thanks to strong top-of-funnel numbers in earlier years and decent retention.

This view is mostly based on data from the Netherlands.

We’re fairly confident that intro course completions in NL surged in 2022, but have been declining since. Data collection isn’t perfect, but these are our approximate figures:

• 2021: 45

• 2022: 402

• 2023: 298

• 2024: 190

These numbers include completions from uni groups, the national intro course, and the virtual programme.

Meanwhile, bottom-of-funnel metrics — e.g. GWWC pledges — are looking strong:

Year	10% Pledge	Trial Pledge
2022	40	35
2023	36	52
2024	56	57

We haven’t publicly shared our strategy for 2025 yet, but long story short, we’re focusing on top-of-funnel growth.

[Chris Leong]

Hmm… The continued decline in 2024 is worrying.

[James Herbert]

Same. That’s why I’m glad CEA seems to agree with us about the need for a focus on sustainable growth.

[Chris Leong]

If OSP is successful, I expect it’d be scaled to more elite universities.

[Julia_Wise🔸]

A counter-example of a movement that had a burst of success, then an embarrassing decline, then revived: the early animal welfare movement. From my summary: “Lost steam after an initial burst of fundraising. Office was closed and they met in coffee houses. Main staff member was jailed for the society’s debts, another staff member continued working as a volunteer. Fortune turned when Princess Victoria (later Queen) and her mother decided they liked the organization, became the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

[Yarrow Bouchard 🔸]

If you zoom out and think of effective altruism as a movement in favour of charity effectiveness and rigorous evaluations of charity, and in favour of giving more to charity than people typically give, then whether these ideas persist and grow is a different question than whether the term “effective altruism” or organizations like the Centre for Effective Altruism fall into decline.

The Gates Foundation, for example, precedes the term “effective altruism” and embodies some of the same ideas and a similar intellectual spirit as effective altruism.

GiveWell, somewhat surprisingly, for whatever reason, isn’t really associated (as least, it doesn’t seem to me like it is) with the effective altruist “brand”. Maybe I’m wrong, but I could see GiveWell continuing to operate and maintain a decent amount of popularity long after a hypothetical decline and fall of things explicitly called “effective altruism”.

There is a version of effective altruism we could maybe call “EA exceptionalism” or “messianic effective altruism”, which has existed for a long time (at least 10 years) and has never made sense. This is the view that effective altruism is somehow unlike or apart from all other efforts to help the world, that it is has a unique power to see the truth and solve the world’s problems, and that in some sense the world’s fate depends on effective altruism. That’s a crazy view and if it dies, good riddance.

We also have to ask ourselves if the effective altruism movement (the movement explicitly calling itself “effective altruism”) ever fully made sense or ever had a fully coherent version of what it was or what it was for. There’s a weird mix of things in EA — charity effectiveness in the global poverty cause area, veganism, AGI doomsday prophecy, bizarre influences from the “rationalist community”, academic moral philosophy, and weird, miscellaneous stuff that defies simple categorization, partly because some of it is undefined and unformed. (What on Earth is “truthseeking”, for example? If “longtermism” is actually a novel idea, what does it actually tell us we should do differently?)

Maybe that’s a mix of things that don’t need to be together that should come apart again. Maybe this specific convergence of ideas and people and culture existed for a reason or a season, and that time has passed, and that’s okay.

My advice is to adopt a beginner’s mind and go back to basics. Does effective altruism, as a movement, still have a reason for existing? If so, what is that reason? If it’s a good enough reason to motivate you, personally, focus on that. Put your efforts into that.

Investing in long-term interventions in global health and global poverty that are expected to pay off over decades is incompatible with the idea that AGI will be created within 10 years and will have transformative effects on the world, greater than the effects of the Industrial Revolution, akin to a century’s worth of economic growth and a century’s worth of progress in STEM (and adjacent fields) in the subsequent 10 years, and only picking up steam from there. So, the two most important ideas in EA are actually at odds with each other. That doesn’t make sense. Why are they sharing a movement?

I don’t see what good it does to try to keep these incompatible ideas bound together in the same movement. That might be a deeper reason for EA to struggle going forward than anything to do with FTX.

[Arthur Malone🔸]

I really appreciate the value of reevaluating ideas from a beginner’s mind and doing one’s best to examine the status quo with as little bias as possible. That said, among the things to be evaluated at present when considering effective altruism include the existence of a community, professional network, funding, and momentum of active work. This all indicates the revealed preference of thousands of people that find motivation in the ideas and from other members. When trying to personally decide if “effective altruism still has a reason to exist?” one should take into account that it already does exist and provides resources that many people find valuable.

Along with many others, I don’t find any incompatibility between work on AI (and other) x-risk and global health, because I know I’m uncertain about the future. If the probability of TAI within 10 years is, as I believe, somewhere between 20–80% (median 65%), and the probability of my GHWB donations helping people is ~95%, then it makes sense to prioritize both. The wider world understands the value of taking a portfolio approach to investing (e.g. I think a long recession is likely so I have more liquid assets than some recommend, but I still maintain a decent proportion of my worth in standard ETFs, and this is a “normal” way to invest). But EA is the only place I’ve found that “takes doing good under uncertainty” seriously enough to consider impact portfolios as a way to maximize good, rather than primarily as a way to ease investors’ consciences while trying to generate returns.

[Ben_West🔸]

Thanks for writing this, I think it’s interesting to read case studies like these.

Recovery is not likely historically

As with many “p->q” arguments, I think this one is true for the trivial reason that q holds independent of p. I.e. it’s true that it’s unlikely that people will identify as EA’s one hundred years from now^[1] but that also was unlikely 5 years ago.

I asked Claude “What are five randomly chosen social movements which started at least 100 years ago? Give no regard to whether they still currently exist.” and it said:

The Temperance Movement (1820s-1930s) - A campaign to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption, which gained significant momentum in the United States and other countries. It ultimately led to Prohibition in the US from 1920-1933.

The Suffragette Movement (1840s-1920s) - The organized effort to secure voting rights for women, with major campaigns in Britain, the United States, and other countries. It employed tactics ranging from peaceful protests to more militant actions.

The Abolitionist Movement (1830s-1870s) - The campaign to end slavery, particularly prominent in the United States and Britain. It included figures like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison and contributed to the American Civil War.

The Eight-Hour Day Movement (1860s-1880s) - Labor activism focused on establishing an eight-hour working day, with major events like the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886. It was part of broader labor organizing efforts worldwide.

The Theosophical Movement (1875-early 1900s) - A spiritual and philosophical movement founded by Helena Blavatsky and others, blending Eastern and Western religious concepts. It promoted ideas about universal brotherhood and ancient wisdom traditions.

None of these still exist, though three (suffragette, abolitionist, eight-hour day) ~accomplished their goals which maybe you want to exclude as a reason for movements to stop existing. So I asked for three more and it said:

The Back-to-Africa Movement (1890s-1920s) - Led by figures like Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association, this movement encouraged people of African descent to return to Africa and promoted Black nationalism and pride. It was particularly influential in the early 20th century.

The Settlement House Movement (1880s-1920s) - A social reform effort where educated volunteers lived in poor urban neighborhoods to provide services and advocate for better conditions. Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago was one of the most famous examples.

The Eugenics Movement (1900s-1940s) - A pseudoscientific social movement that promoted “improving” human heredity through selective breeding and sterilization programs. While thoroughly discredited today, it was influential in early 20th century policy in many countries including the United States and Germany.

So the base rate for lasting 100+ years is either ⁰⁄₈, ⁰⁄₅, or ³⁄₈, depending on how you want to classify the movements which accomplished their goals. This does not seem far off from the ¹⁄₅ success rate in your data set.

1. ^

   I roughly mentally tried to average the age of your case studies and thought that they were about 100 years old on average, but this isn’t precise.

[JWS 🔸]

As with many “p->q” arguments, I think this one is true for the trivial reason that q holds independent of p. I.e. it’s true that it’s unlikely that people will identify as EA’s one hundred years from now^[1] but that also was unlikely 5 years ago.

This is a good and valid point for sure. I suppose that for the 4 failed movements I bring up in the post, they all failed to achieve their goals in their own terms and their ideas failed to influence other movements.^[1] I think the q of ‘Effective Altruism ends as a movement’ is likely because the rate of dying out for all movements is 100%, just like it is for all living beings

So perhaps I want to distinguish between:

1) Movements that ‘die out’ because they succeed enough that their ideas permeate into the mainstream and outlive the initial social/​intellectual movement

2) Movements that ‘die out’ because they lose enough reputation and support that nobody carries those ideas forward.

This would be different as well from:

3) The Movement’s goals eventually being realised

4) The Movement being a force for good in the world

So The Chartists might be an example of 2 & 3 - after the 1848 demostration they basically completely faded from power, but by 1918 5 out of 6 Chartist reforms had been implemented. It’s not clear to what extent the movement was causally responsible for this though

I think Revolutionary Marxism of various forms might be 1 & 4 - it was hugely popular in the late 19th and early 20th century even after Marx died, or the waning of power of explicitly Marxist parties, the ideas still had massive influence and can be casually traced to those intellectuals I think. I nevertheless think that their influence has been very negative for the world, but YMMV^[2]

So I guess the underlying question is, if EA is in a prolonged or terminal decline (as in, we expect no early-Quaker style reforms to arrest the momentum, which is not guaranteed) then is it of form 1 or 2? I’m not sure, it’s an open question. I think conditioning on an SBF-scale reputational damage and subsequent ‘evaporate cooling’ of the movement since, the odds should have moved toward 2, but it’s not guaranteed for sure and it’d be interesting to see examples of which social movements match 1 vs 2.

1. ^

   There’s maybe some wiggle room around New Atheism/​Technocracy, but the case is harder to make if you think they’re causally responsible

2. ^

   I don’t want to get into a huge debate about Marxism or not, it’s just the first thing that came to mind. If you are, you could just substitute ‘Revolutionary Marxism’ for ‘Neoliberal Capitalism’ of Hayek et al in the 20th century, which had a massively successful impact on the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, for instance

[Ben_West🔸]

Those seem like reasonable categories. I disagree with the antecedent but will rephrase your question as “what type of decline am I most worried about?”, the answer to which is “1″.

In particular: I think it’s possible that AI will be such a compelling issue that the intellectual excitement and labor moves away from cause-neutral EA to EA-flavored AI Safety. This is already happening a bit (and also happened with animal welfare); it doesn’t seem crazy to think that it will become a larger problem.

[Chris Leong]

I already felt that focusing on growth was not ideal as a goal and reading this post has tilted me more in this direction.

Growing EA makes it harder to steer the ship due to increased communication and coordination costs and the more attention we focus on growth, the less attention we have to figure out how to reshape EA for the new context.

I suspect that one of the biggest challenges is that opinions on “How do we do the most good?” have bifurcated quite strongly such that people either think the future is determined by AI, in which case many of the traditional EA discussions feel naive or irrelevant, and those who are more skeptical, and who therefore would be frustrated if discussions are too dominated by AI.

This makes it extremely hard to run a program that really hits it out of the park for both groups of people and if you want top-notch people, you need to be trying to hit it out of the park.

[Jason]

4 - Following the crisis, the movement enters a period of retrenchment and disillusionment—this is where EA is currently. This decline could take a variety of forms: declining numbers of explicitly signed-up members, the gradual plateauing and waning of the group’s political influence, or significant numbers of prominent members distancing themselves from the movement. This is the most ‘you know it when you see it’ criteria of the four presented, and hard to be exact about historically as often the rise of movements are more closely studied than the gradual falls. Nevertheless, all of the candidates I’ve found do show this pattern of decline.

Were movements in which adherents /​ influence /​ resources flowed ~productively into a ~spiritual-successor movement within the scope of your research? Admittedly, drawing a line between the original movement and the spiritual successor movement could be a bit tricky.

Conditioned on EA is in decline, we might be able to learn from those kinds of movements how to decline gracefully and in a way that best empowers spiritual-successor movements.

[Alex (Αλέξανδρος)]

I am curious about one aspect which is not clear to me from the post. Assuming EA is really in decline, do you personally regret it or not?

[SummaryBot]

Executive summary: This exploratory post argues that Effective Altruism (EA) appears to be in a period of decline following the FTX scandal, and examines five historical movements with similar trajectories—elite-led, indirectly influential, scandal-hit—to draw lessons about EA’s future prospects, concluding that recovery is historically rare but not impossible, and emphasizing the importance of decentralization and adaptive ideology.

Key points:

1. The author analyzes five historical movements (New Atheism, Saint-Simonianism, the Technocracy Movement, Moral Re-Armament, and Early Quakerism) that began among intellectual elites, rose to influence without seeking direct political power, and suffered reputational crises.

2. Only one movement—Early Quakerism—recovered from decline, aided by strong internal reforms and a shift toward decentralization, while the others either fragmented, lost relevance, or faded entirely.

3. The post highlights EA’s decentralization and lack of a singular charismatic leader as a potential advantage, contrasting it with movements that faltered due to over-centralized leadership.

4. Despite this, the most likely trajectory for EA is framed as “gradual evaporation”—continued existence but waning influence, with members quietly disassociating or shifting to more resonant ideologies.

5. The author suggests that the ideological explanatory power (or “hamartiology”) of EA may be faltering, and that its future depends on whether it can meaningfully address the problems of its time compared to emerging alternatives.

6. A speculative final note raises the risk of state repression in less liberal political environments, cautioning that EA may not be immune to historically common patterns of crackdown if norms continue to erode.

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.