[gonehome]

It's a little different - I don't personally identify as part of the EA movement because of the associated baggage, but the ideas around trying to do the most good, extending empathy beyond kin/culture to other people suffering that you cannot see, and reasoning about the effectiveness of charity make sense to me.

Without getting into a flame war not fit for HN, the same cannot be said for the supernatural foundations and epistemic claims of religions - the foundational ideas of EA are not the problem in this case.

I think Sam Harris breaks it down decently here: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/303... though that's a little out of date with how fast news on the topic is moving.

It's also another reminder why it's good to keep your identity small [0] and deal with the ideas directly.

Said another way:

"Go three-quarters of the way from deontology to utilitarianism and then stop. You are now in the right place. Stay there at least until you have become a god."[1]

[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

[1]: https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1497157447219232768?s...