[dale_glass]

If you dispense with realism, why couldn't you embrace the animal shelter?

Just bite the bullet. Say, "I've grown disenchanted with people, they suck. I'm going to dedicate myself to improve the lives of animals instead, who are mostly blameless victims of humanity, and are much cheaper to make happy than a human".

Utilitarianism doesn't really tell you how many dogs is a human worth, so you well can decide that you value dogs very highly, and that's all that's needed to make donating to an animal shelter very rational.

[ineptech]

That's the thing, I think you can. If everyone who donates to animal shelters felt as confident about it as you described, I don't think anyone would have a problem with EA. Certainly, no one is complaining about the idea of, between two charities who do the same thing, giving to the one who does it more effectively.

But there's a lot of complaining about the idea of comparing two different kinds of altruism. And the whole point of EA, I think, is that the fact that it's uncomfortable leads people not to do it at all, and prodding them to think about it feels like an attack.