[setgree]

Thinking about the counterfactual for a bit: if EAs weren't EAs, who would they be?

* Finance professionals who gave less to charity?

* altruistic folks who gave to poorly validated charities?

* Changemakers who decided instead to go for the money and thereby reify the social structures of their lives?

* Regular people who thought less hard about ethics, e.g. giving vegetarianism or veganism a go?

* Regular people who never considered becoming megalomaniac crypto scammers?

And whether EA is good or bad as a whole depends on the characteristics and composition of this counterfactual group. IMO, that's pretty hard to get a good grip on.

[skinnymuch]

We don’t know what else could happen with the example. Maybe a finance professional would have become a socialist and put their own effort in for societal improvements alongside donating.

[setgree]

Totally! And this is why evaluating whether a movement like EA is good or not is really hard.

In general, for hard questions like this, I take a “know them by their fruit“ approach, I.e. seeing how folks do on easier-to-evaluate ethics tests, like whether someone is vegetarian or vegan. By that light, the movement comes out looking pretty good. If you apply a more anti-capitalist test, the movement does not look so good.