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That's like saying that medical care is pointless, because even I save a child from dying of anaphylactic shock, they'll grow old and die anyway. Then they might have kids, who will, if they're not prone to atopy, still inevitably die.
I'm not an EA, and I don't particularly care about people with HIV in Africa, but I still find this a weak criticism at best. They believe that extending/saving lives is good, which I can't disagree with on a general principle. I'm certainly not on the shrimp welfare train, but I must concede that if you care about that inane cause, you might as well make sure your money is as effective as it can be.
That makes little sense. The child has great potential, if saved, to do things that are positive and good, like have children of their own, like start a business or work at a business. If you are talking about old age care, correct. The government should not be in that business, medicare, despite being highly popular is probably the worst program ever implemented by the US Government.
But keeping people alive with money is just bog standard charity. If you want a modifier like "effective" you should earn it.
Once again, I will state that I'm not an EA.
That being said:
The core tenet of Effective Altruism is a semi-universalist strain of utilitarianism. They genuinely believe that extending lifespan, particularly healthy lifespan, is good in of itself. In a vacuum, all else being equal, I have no reason to disagree. The real world, unfortunately, has atmosphere.
They tie themselves in knots evaluating the relative impact of charity. They (correctly) claim that donating to that breast cancer charity that hands out pink ribbons is a waste of money compared to distributing malaria nets or antiretrovirals. At least in terms of naive QALYs or DALYs.
An African with HIV, in their eyes, is interchangeable with any other human. I have a far more cynical outlook, but I cannot argue values, I care far more about actual potential. To a first approximation, their approach works. I get off the train because I both, don't really care, and because I think consequentialism demands more thought cycles that consider second order effects.
So an essential part of EA is extreme blank slatism to such extremes they even apply it to adults.
Blank slatism for adults isn't extreme, as it isn't limited to EA, nor limited to progressives. It's a part of mainstream Western white culture, e.g., magic dirty theory. Or see for a specific example, a white woman forgiving her mother and cousin's murderer (who's of the demographic one might expect), hiring him to work on her property, only to get murdered by him herself.
Yeah, I don't think that sort of thinking is held by anything close to a majority of Americans.
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