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Great piece by @xriskology.bsky.social on how the effective altruism cult has helped destroy actual philanthropy - with dangerous and deadly results for many people in need:

Nick Beckstead, noted longtermist and "effective altruist,” just comes out and says it: "But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal."

I think this is unfair. bsky.app/profile/meas...

not remotely exculpatory. the criticism of the passage wasn't that he said that rich lives are *intrinsically* more valuable than poor lives

Yeah it is, because Bergstrom spent a good portion of his career advocating for charity for the 3rd world. Which he states in the above note. Heck, he writes in the same dissertation, "...this consideration wouldn’t normally get much weight in deciding which lives to save (p 72)." This is a smear.

You don't have to be impressed by him. I just think it's polite not to distort the position they took. The quote looked out of context to me and the fact is the guy has definitely *not* advocated for less 3rd world spending. Very much the contrary.

I don’t feel like I owe these people *politeness*.

Famous big tech celebrity Nick Beckstead doesn't even have a wiki article about him. Admittedly Nick Bostrom does and I mixed the 2 up until 2 minutes ago. I'm a bit out of my depth here, but methinks there are many better targets for vitriol. Plug this for this book I have on order: