[zucker42]

> I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong?

I disagree that this article give an accurate impression of the EA. The main point of effective altruism is that people should use evidence in choosing which charitable causes to devote their time to. I don't feel like the author sufficiently engages with this point; instead he attacks Singer for not coming up with a satisfactory standard for what percentage of one's wealth to donate, and laments that EA isn't political enough.

EA arose based partially based on the observation that people do most of their giving to, for example, local churches and schools than to truly desperate people in other parts of the world. People also tend donate their effort to local and relatable causes. The argument isn't that buying Malaria nets is going to eliminate all the evil in the world, the argument is it's a better use of money than other charities, and that we should use evidence to determine how to expend our resources.

[cycomanic]

Well, I disagree the whole premise of Singer is that we can't change things through the political process so instead we should use "effective altruism".

Now if we are donating to charity should we follow the principles of EA? The answer to that is probably yes, but that's a different question and is not the point raised by the author.

[zucker42]

> the whole premise of Singer is that we can't change things through the political process so instead we should use "effective altruism".

(I'm assuming "I disagree" was meant to be a separate sentence)

I think Singer would say that it's often but not always hard to change things through the political process. But he hardly shuns politics entirely; he often speaks and writes about political issues, and he ran for Australian Senate in 1996.

But anyways Singer's beliefs about the effectiveness of political causes isn't the central point of Singer's EA advocacy, it's just one piece of his beliefs.