A new book about the origins of Effective Altruism

Evidence-Based Charity & “$5k per Life” Claims

• Several commenters highlight empirical work (e.g., charity evaluators, RCTs) suggesting certain global-health charities can avert a death for a few thousand dollars.
• Direct cash transfers to people in extreme poverty are widely praised as simple, low-overhead, and demonstrably beneficial.
• Some note that evaluators benchmark programs against cash; only options that outperform “just give cash” are recommended.
• Others stress that harder-to-measure work (infrastructure, research, policy) can still be valuable even if it resists RCT-style evaluation.

Overhead, Self-Perpetuation, and Organizational Drift

• There is concern that almost any large organization drifts toward self-preservation and bloat, including NGOs and health insurers.
• Debates arise about “overhead” vs. impact: fundraising and admin can be necessary, but can also become rent-seeking or reputation-laundering.
• Some see standard charity-rating approaches as crude (focusing on admin ratios) and regard EA-style impact analysis as a genuine improvement.

Moral Foundations: Utilitarianism, Longtermism & “Ends Justify Means”

• Supporters frame EA as two claims: we can significantly help others, and some ways help far more than others.
• Critics argue EA, especially in its longtermist and tech-centric forms, easily slides into “ends justify the means,” enabling rationalizations for harmful behavior (fraud, exploitation, eugenics talk, AI utopianism).
• Others counter that core EA writings explicitly reject harming people even for large expected benefits.
• There’s extensive discussion on consequentialism vs virtue ethics: some say “be a good person” is safer than trying to compute global utility; others see virtue ethics as “open-loop” and needing outcome checks.

Wealth, Power, and Bad Actors

• Many see EA as attractive to very rich, morally questionable people who want to justify extreme wealth or delay giving (“earn to give later”).
• Defenders reply that notorious donors are an unrepresentative minority, and most EA-aligned people are ordinary donors trying to be more helpful.
• There are broader arguments about whether extreme wealth is inherently exploitative, and whether philanthropy distracts from systemic fixes like taxation and public programs.

Local Help vs Global Optimization & Branding Problems

• Some argue real altruism should focus on direct, local relationships; EA’s distant, optimized giving feels cold, elitist, or anti-human.
• Others respond that local mutual aid cannot address massive preventable deaths abroad; ignoring global cost-effectiveness leaves many to die.
• Multiple commenters distinguish “effective altruism the practice” (thinking hard about impact) from “EA the movement/brand,” which they see as politically and reputationally damaged.