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This is getting bad. I have my issues with effective altruism, but I wonder how far the media intends to spread the contagion. I believe that Sam himself is only allowed to blather in an attempt to make his case because they want to get some more juicy material to discredit other spheres and people with. Crypto – obviously, that's in the starter pack. EAs, MacAskill, meh, we'll do without. Veganism, most people who don't eat meat globally act this way for economic reasons. But the very idea of non-kin altruism, perhaps? Or of planning long-term? Worst of all, caution about AI and AI-empowered state-level actors, except the spook-aligned «what if China makes it first or uses our opensource, we gotta give our all to NSA closed model»?
Potentially, this isn't even throwing the baby with the bathwater, this is throwing a powered toaster into the baby's bath because the baby has shat itself. The media is far too powerful to be allowed to play with these matters so frivolously or maliciously.
To me the biggest issue is the media taking down the idea of definite optimism, to borrow a phrase from Thiel. Now these journalists can sit back in their chairs, scoff and say “I told you so! There’s no point in trying to advance technology, solve problems, or do real things in the world. The truly smart people sit around and spend all of their time playing online status games.”
It’s a shame that you almost have to create a cult like movement nowadays to get groups of people to have enough optimism and motivation to change anything, or try to solve any sort of big problems. Larger society wide belief systems have truly failed us and fallen to irony and nihilism.
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When the SPAC fad happened, the question was which company taken public via a SPAC would be the first to see its share price implode via fraud. (A: Nikola.) SPACs have valid advantages over IPOs in terms of speed and cost, but they also have lower oversight. The latter was guaranteed to eventually attract someone like Trevor Milton.
I think about EA in the same way. In particular, encouraging massive wealth accumulation in the hands of a small few and prioritizing solutions for problems that might (AI) or won’t (the need to leave the solar system before the sun goes nova) threaten people in their lifetime was bound to attract a SBF eventually.
Edit: And, it’s dubious how sincere SBF was, so to qualify, attract as in entice some fraudster to espouse it.
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