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Notes -
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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