[Barrin92]

>Why not just read some of the direct sources and their motivations?

Because, and this may not come as a shock after the SBF revelations, those people may not be sincere and honest, to others, themselves or both.

With something like EA the interesting part isn't what's being said out loud, it's what philosophic and in particular aesthetic goals aren't literally spelled out. This is the case for almost any form of activism, ideology or lifestyle. The interesting parts are never the banal things people advertise.

For example take an adjacent belief, also practiced by the EA folks. Veganism. Now superficially they will tell you this is all about animal welfare, but what they won't tell, they may not even be aware of it, is also that it's an upper class signal of purity, their own modern recreation of the Brahmin class. When you look at things that way it suddenly becomes less surprising why a 28 year old effective-altruist Potterhead also seems weirdly fascinated with Indian caste systems and imperial Chinese social dynamics.