[low_tech_love]

Some political/social communities simply kidnap words and terms and use them as if their solution is the only solution to a problem. You are absolutely right to be suspicious; the fact that they are oblivious enough to reality that they really believe themselves to be more effective than others (simply because they hide behind arbitrary numerical computations) is reason enough to suspect that their numbers aren’t really covering everything.

It is a bit like the way feminists think of themselves as the only line of fight for women’s rights, or right-wing extremists and populists keep labelling themselves as “freedom fighters”. All of a sudden if you’re opposed to them you become a woman-hater, or a freedom-hating socialist (because they can’t understand that there are other alternative ways to defend the same ideas). These are just political groups with one specific ideology who are marketing themselves as the solution. Thankfully nowadays with the fall of SBF people are dismissing EA as the fad that it is, but there was a time when opposing EA would elicit reactions such as “oh so you’re against effectiveness/transparency?” or “so you are in favor of corruption?” Sigh.