The confluence of Bay Area rationalism and academic philosophy means a lot of other EA space is given to discussing hypotheticals in longwinded forum posts, blogs and papers. Some of those are well-trod utilitarian debates, others take it towards uniquely EA arguments like asserting that given that there could be as many as 10^31 future humans, essentially anything which claims to reduce existential risk - no matter how implausible the mechanism - has higher expected value than doing stuff that would certainly save human lives. An apparently completely unironic forum argument asked their fellow EAs to consider the possibility that given various heroic assumptions, the sum total of the suffering caused to mosquitos by anti-malaria nets might in fact be larger than the suffering caused by malaria they prevent. Obviously not a view shared by EAs who donate to antimalaria charities, but absolutely characteristic of the sort of knots EAs like to tie themselves in - it even has its own jokey jargon ('the rebugnant conclusion' and 'taking the train to crazy town') to describe adjacent arguments and the impulse to pursue them.
The newsletter is of course far more to the point than that, but even then you'll notice half of it is devoted to understanding the emotional state and intentions of LLMs...
It is of course entirely possible to identify as an "Effective Altruist" whilst making above-average donations to charities with rigorous efficacy metrics and otherwise being completely normal, but that's not the centre of EA debate or culture....
Sure, but I'd say that the philosophical musings of EA's leadership, events, university outreach centres, and official forum were more representative of "the centre of EA debate or culture" than pledge signatories, even though I've got wayyy more time for stuff like the Giving Pledge.
GiveWell continues to plow its own rigorous international development-focused furrow, but it's cofounder, once noted for calling out everyone else for lack of rigour in their evidence base, has moved on to fluffy essays about how this is probably "the most important century" because it's either AI armageddon or maybe his wife's $61B startup will save us all...
The newsletter is of course far more to the point than that, but even then you'll notice half of it is devoted to understanding the emotional state and intentions of LLMs...
It is of course entirely possible to identify as an "Effective Altruist" whilst making above-average donations to charities with rigorous efficacy metrics and otherwise being completely normal, but that's not the centre of EA debate or culture....