It will still go on. He wasn't the only one, but he definitely supercharged funding as of late.
I think all the longtermism stuff that has come to prominence recently is a side-effect of too much money in EA trying to make up new causes that are magically more effective than philanthropy that currently exists.
I mean I really don't get what they're about. Most of what I know about these guys seems to revolve around shuffling money around so it's not clear to me what exactly is effective or altruistic about what they're doing.
Traditional metrics for charities only included efficiency metrics. Then there was a movement that said actually effectiveness is more important than efficiency even though it's harder to measure, and started trying to measure effectiveness (like Givewell, 80000 hours, etc...). It's called effective altruism because it focuses on effective giving(i.e. altruism).
How much of the actual EA funding is going to longtermist charities vs how much is going to your boring old malaria/infrastructure/de-worming/factory farming initiatives?
I always thought the longtermist stuff was mostly because it was an easy way to criticize EA in a way that drove clicks.
The effective altruism movement has been around for over a decade. SBF's financing has been very beneficial, but EA isn't dependent on one financier or organization. At this point it's like moneyball: a concept that can be used by anyone.
I can't understand the effective altruist movement in a world of Modern Monetary Theory. When money means nothing and central banks can print infinite money, the only reasonable way to effect change is by donating directly to an extended hand on the street or actually physically helping, imo, but I'm open to changing my mind.
GiveWell explains their reasoning here[1]. For each of their top charities, they give a measure of cost-effectiveness and explain why they believe the charity has such a high impact.[2]
For a decade, one of GiveWell's top charities was GiveDirectly[3], which simply gives your money to poor people in developing countries. In August, GiveWell changed their evaluation criteria to prioritize charities with funding gaps.[4] This bumped GiveDirectly out of their top charities, along with some deworming programs. GiveWell still thinks these charities are extremely effective, just not as much as their new list of top charities.
I'd expect the opposite: if FTX's failure means the FTX foundation money is gone then there's more need for money on the margin and more EAs will choose to earn to give.
Isn't the whole point that they work for mega-corps and then donate all the money instead of actually doing anything directly? I am pretty sure I read about this somewhere. I don't think effective altruists are the type to actually do anything other than go along with the status quo.
> work for mega-corps and then donate all the money instead of actually doing anything directly?
Early on most effective altruists were working to earn money and fund important things. More recently, with the money from Open Philanthropy (Dustin Moskovitz, FB), FTX Foundation (SBF, FTX), and others there's been less need for money relative to need for doing things, so many of us have switched away from earning to give. Me included: https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-google-joining-the-nucleic-...
> do anything other than go along with the status quo
EAs are overall pretty weird folks: there are a lot of criticisms you could make but that they're just going along with the status quo is a surprising one ;)
The whole point is you can fly to Africa and build wells. Which feels really good because you can see your impact.
Or you can work as an investment banker and pay 100 Africans to build wells, which doesn't feel as good, but builds 100x as many wells and employs Africans.
He's said repeatedly that he doesn't care about money so what exactly is the point of these articles? The dude's stated goal is to make sure humanity survives and becomes a multi-planetary species which means that anyone with that plan could care less about monetary wealth other than as a means to an end.
Sure. Humanity's survival is why Musk spent six months desperately trying to not buy Twitter. And humanity's survival is why Musk is now flailing about trying to squeeze money out of Twitter to service the debt he incurred to buy it.
