Criticism of effective altruism collects critical discussion of effective altruism ideas (as opposed to criticism of effective altruist organizations, causes, or culture).

This distinction seems rather artificial to me. I don’t think you can criticize effective altruist philosophy without at once criticizing efforts to enact that philosophy in practice (or vice versa). In theory, it’s possible, but in practice, it’s very difficult. It’s a bit like trying to make a distinction, say, between criticizing the idea of socialism versus criticism of actually existing socialist movements: you can make this distinction, sure, but it’s really difficult to criticize socialism without at once criticizing actually existing attempts to enact socialism (or vice versa).

Of course, in practice, some criticisms of effective altruism are more focused on the movement and others are more focused on the philosophy. But to sharply separate the two seems to me rather misguided.

Hi all! I recommend using the Criticism of the effective altruism community tag for posts that primarily criticize (or discuss criticism of) the EA community, behaviors, and dynamics, but using the Criticism of effective altruism tag for criticisms of core ideas in EA, since many criticisms of the community are not criticisms of EA itself. I created the “Criticism of the EA community” tag a while ago but have noticed that many people are still not using it.