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submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by ieightpi@lemmy.world to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world

Peter Singer conceived Effective Altruism in earnest to address urgent global suffering, grounding it in a simple moral obligation: using evidence and reason to save as many lives as possible. However, its utilitarian logic prioritizes maximum metrics over structural reform. This opened the door for tech billionaires to adopt the movement as a high-minded shield. By framing massive wealth accumulation as a necessary tool to fund grand, future-oriented causes, elites can weaponize the philosophy to validate unchecked economic power and justify doing whatever they want with their fortunes under the banner of "doing good."

If anyone was confused for example, of Musk's motivations, this will clear things up.

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[-] Artisian@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Famously, the drowning child analogy asks if one should their nice clothing to save a drowning child? If yes, why not spend an equal amount to save children starving far away?

The effective altruism charities haven't been totally incompetent on building institutions. They're notable for GiveDirectly and our world in data and deworming the world.

The article does a good job of mentioning SBF as a point against earning to give (though everyone seems to agree that SBF was just a con-artist).

(A smaller point; Musk isn't mentioned in the article, and doesn't seem particularly oriented towards EA. He's used it before to justify space + tech investment, but I see mostly old articles/quotes when I google this (and he's not spoken of so highly in LessWrong (a reddit alternative run by the EA community) or Aaronson's blog). I think you can better model Musk as a fascist.)

this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
46 points (96.0% liked)

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