I’m not sure I agree with your appreciation of upper and lower cased EA. The article refers to “lower case” effective altruism as:
“A philosophy that advocates using evidence and reasoning to try to do the most good possible with a given amount of resources.”
That is EA and all of our cause areas and strategies have come out of that.
But the article seems to insinuate that some cause areas are somehow different to this philosophy of EA, being injected into us by people like SBF. The article defines “Upper case” effective altruism as “assigning numerical values to human suffering and the “worth” of current and future human beings”, which includes longtermism and earning to give. I don’t think this distinction makes sense, and I don’t think it’s good for the movement to oust unpopular areas of EA onto a different boat, like a plague that’s unjustified by the core of EA.
Near-termist vs longtermist EA is a neat distinction that helps when talking about the EA community and funding areas. But honestly I have no idea how the author of this article is drawing a line between “lower case” and “upper case” EA other than how the general public has responded to the movement. In my view of EA, everything is occurring in the same arena of debate under the umbrella of EA’s core principles—so it’s all “lower case”.
I’m not sure I agree with your appreciation of upper and lower cased EA. The article refers to “lower case” effective altruism as:
That is EA and all of our cause areas and strategies have come out of that.
But the article seems to insinuate that some cause areas are somehow different to this philosophy of EA, being injected into us by people like SBF. The article defines “Upper case” effective altruism as “assigning numerical values to human suffering and the “worth” of current and future human beings”, which includes longtermism and earning to give. I don’t think this distinction makes sense, and I don’t think it’s good for the movement to oust unpopular areas of EA onto a different boat, like a plague that’s unjustified by the core of EA.
Near-termist vs longtermist EA is a neat distinction that helps when talking about the EA community and funding areas. But honestly I have no idea how the author of this article is drawing a line between “lower case” and “upper case” EA other than how the general public has responded to the movement. In my view of EA, everything is occurring in the same arena of debate under the umbrella of EA’s core principles—so it’s all “lower case”.