Of all the meme complexes to circulate the Internet in recent years, Effective Altruism has been among the most virulent. This is rather curious, given that it’s a philosophy of — all things — philanthropy; of how to most productively give money away. In fact, so potent has this meme become that it’s begun to take on the shape of something of a cult, a secular religion for status-seeking yuppies and tech elites alike. However, as all cults tend to be, Effective Altruism has also grown increasingly controversial, as its proponents have found themselves associated with some rather appalling happenings, seemingly motivated by the underlying ideology. Indeed anti-EA sentiment has recently reached something of a crescendo, with the recent OpenAI coup, which was framed as a battle between two conflicting ideologies, EA and e/acc. Where Effective Altruists consider themselves the vanguards of moral progress, champions of the expansion of our normative sphere, from the vantage point of e/acc, EA amounts to little more than a new-age religion comprised of cold, calculating — disproportionately autistic — consequentialists, divorced from the subtler dimensions of our moral fabric. While this criticism has its merit, it is not, I claim, a problem inherent to the core claims or dogmas of EA itself, but rather the community that has formed itself around them. Effective Altruism, as a moral philosophy, is entirely benign, and, I would argue, overwhelmingly positive. The problem is the miscalculations of the cult. And the problem with criticisms of EA is that they conflate the two.

The core tenet of Effective Altruism is rather straight-forward. Broadly speaking, it’s that we should aspire to do as much good in the world as we can, and that we should, in service of this objective, pay mind to the empirical efficacy of our actions rather than the mere “feels” of doing good. That is to say, rather than doing good in a way that services our own sense of self-righteousness or piety, we should seek to do good in the way that actually does the most good. To this end, we ought to look at the relevant data, to ensure our intentions align with the desired outcomes. Ultimately, it’s a pragmatic view of philanthropy, or simply being a Good human, where the ‘cash-value’ of our charity is the objective impact of our actions on the well-being of others.

Given how self-evidently positive this philosophy would appear to be, how is it possible that it has become the object of veritable contempt? In short, because the potency of the ideas contained within EA, the sense of purpose and mission, of right and wrong, emulate many of the same psychological dynamics as religion. And religions, for all their redemptive qualities, attract nuts. And nuts do nutty things, by definition. It is a mistake, however, to reflexively attribute the actions of nuts to the dogmas of the religion to which they apparently adhere. For instance, one of the greatest frauds in recent history was committed by someone who was famously an Effective Altruist. All of his actions were then interpreted within the context of Effective Altruism. But this is a category error. SBF didn’t defraud millions of people of billions of dollars in service of some greater good. He did so because he was an amphetamine-fuelled megalomaniac who leveraged the status of Effective Altruism to bolster his public reputation and advance his own agenda. To attribute his actions to the ideology of EA is to credit him with far too much character. And so it is with the recent OpenAI fiasco. Even if the actions of the OpenAI board were motivated by some commitment to EA, if we can agree that their actions were, in the end, normatively harmful, then they would have failed to meet even their own standard of Good.

It’s awfully convenient, and philosophically elegant, to reduce the actions of individuals to ideologies or philosophies. And sometimes, there is a straight-forward enough relationship between the two. Jihadism is a good example here. However, more often than not, the actions of individuals are far better understood in terms of the unique psychological dynamics of the individuals in question. And if the behaviour is abhorrent, it’s likely that some underlying pathology, rather than a sophisticated philosophical schema, is to blame. Clearly, there is some overlap between Effective Altruists and folks who are petrified by the prospect of the end of the world and do some pretty insane things on the basis thereof. However, we ought to be able to appreciate that for any sufficiently potent set of ideas, there will be a decent contingent of lunatics that go all-in. It’s unfair, however, to attribute the lunacy of lunatics solely to the ideas to which they claim to subscribe. For a more honest dialogue re Effective Altruism, its virtues and its pitfalls, we ought to hold this view in mind. Crazy people can do crazy things even under the pretence of some ultimately decent ideas.