[cyanydeez]

the problem is pretty simple. what do you think happens when you ignore the source of income needed to be "effectively altruistic" or the timelength needed to implement your altruism.

if I pollute your groundwater today, but promise you in the future to give you double the clean water, because ill make billions on some industrial process, youd understand.

the simple physics is about entropy: ignoring local effects and claiming youll do global good is effective altruism.

unless you misunderstand: the hard part of altruism is knowing whether you are actually doing good or just making yourself feel good by deluding the subject.

many social science fails to move social improvements from lab to real world implementation because of structural variables that cant be overcome.

so effective altruism is the belief you can reverse entropy by ignoring local effects...in practice

[LoganDark]

Thank you! So, this would cover things like ruining cities with datacenters under the impression that they'll understand once the global superintelligence cures cancer. Or etc.

I don't think Anthropic is the one aggressively expanding their datacenters to areas where literally everybody does not want them, but that's "effective altruism", right? Just justifying bads with a supposedly larger good?

[cyanydeez]

I've got no idea, one of the problems we're all stuck with is American capitalism has spent about half a century ensuring no one knows what it's doing. Read through stuff like this current Uber "problem": https://consumerwatchdog.org/accountability/accountability-r...

Essentially, all these corporations just use LLCs and random corporations to do the things they dont want on their public books, and the actual benefactors arn't required to be listed or registered anywhere. America is one of the largest owners of these poorly defined companies. Combine that with how much dark money can be used in American politics, there's zero chance anyone can figure out whose pushing what agenda.

But we know they all came from the same tech scene, so they could all be in any one of those cults.