[ben_w]

So far as I can see, the important difference between EA and Christianity, is that all the EA types are looking at everything EA is doing wrong and asking themselves how to make it less wrong.

Perhaps early Christianity was like that too, before it became mandatory, but it’s certainly not what I remember from my Catholic childhood.

[polygamous_bat]

> the important difference between EA and Christianity, is that all the EA types are looking at everything EA is doing wrong and asking themselves how to make it less wrong.

Are they? Because I am meeting a lot of (admittedly self proclaimed) EAs that are busy evangelizing about what "True EA" is and is not, and how SBF was never "True EA". Maybe they are contemplating a lot in their free time, but on a broad stroke it looks like attempting to avoid responsibility to me.

[ben_w]

Fair enough; Nae True Scotsman is always annoying, and big-R Rationalists aren’t any better at avoiding such fallacies than anyone else (to their credit, the ones I pay attention to are also annoyed by this).

What I’m seeing is mostly online rather than in person meetings; these discussions are “could we have spotted this nonsense sooner?” (general consensus: “probably not, his investors and auditors didn’t and that’s not our skillset”), and “hang on, wasn’t this[0] a red flag?” (which generally gets left unresolved as they get nerd-sniped on the actual discussion rather than staying focused on if it should’ve been a warning sign).

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mdbSL9o8H2Z5mjKaj/...