I was surprised by the weakness of this article, regardless the potential absurdities of parts of EA.
Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?
Effective altruism originates from the intention to rationally approach the obvious question, how to do the most good in the world. That's obviously not a bad thing?
The article here goes on a grotesque witch hunt, claiming baselessly things like "polyamory" was widespread among "the movements" adherents.
You here postulate, Anthropic was a "final" manifestation of that movement. How? Why? Do they practice polyamory there?
Trying to apply rationality in domains where it's ineffective is obviously a bad thing. In the real world, only a limited subset of issues can be reduced to logic and calculations. To believe otherwise is pure hubris, and if you've read the classical tragedies you know the results.
What now? The main thing about rational (logical) arguments is to make explicit the domain of their applicability and ensure that fits the given situation.
The social myth of important social questions not being amenable to rational consideration is a political tool, not scientific truth. The classical literature doesn't help there.
Yes, I'm aware, I'm simply surprised to read that sentiment here.
Not everything is measurable though. There are (pretty unexpected) constraints on practicality, but also logical restrictions people tend to forget about.
As an interesting example in the context here, consider the question what constitutes history. There are many other things with great import you can't really measure the important part of.
> claiming baselessly things like "polyamory" was widespread among "the movements" adherents.
Which is especially weird to do in 2026. I mean, I get the salacious clickbait, but seriously, at this point does anyone really give a shit what consenting adults do in their private lives?
I remember when outrage peddler Laura Loomer did a big pearl clutch on X about some other conservative being into consensual non-monagamy, and the collective response from everyone from all political stripes was a giant shrug.
Some of the allegations involve minors, people whom are lured into economically dependent conditions, and group pressure situations where consent is not so easily defined (no matter how much motivated reasoning is abused to rationalize breaking with 'outmoded conventions' like not seducing subordinates).
But part of it is also a more general point: Their plan is to build an "AI God" constructed according to their own moral theory before anyone else, and that it will prevent anyone else from creating a competing god-- the absurdity of this plan doesn't prevent the effort from creating terrible harm (e.g. the corporate monopolization of AI, mass surveillance on unimaginable scale, etc). The AI safety faction sees itself as moral guardians of humanity's future-- and it's absolutely relevant that many people would consider them weird and that some would consider them (rightly or wrongly) outright morally repugnant.
You lose your right to have no one else worry about what you do in your private life when you start making plans to take over the world, even if you think it's in everyone's best interest. Every other modern authoritarian dictator also though their actions were in the public's interest.
> Effective altruism originates from the intention to rationally approach the obvious question, how to do the most good in the world. That's obviously not a bad thing?
To use the movement's own language: At the best EA's are paperclip maximizers. Why is it that in one context people recognize formula driven 'rational' utility maximizing as obviously dangerous and evil, but in another see it as the ultimate expression of good. It's a specious argument to go "my objectives good, clippies bad". It may well be true but the maximizing party never knows their goals are bad!
"Rational 'good' maximizing" is itself problematic, because it disregard the danger inherit in any utility function. The nazi campaign to cleanse their population was motivated and justified in part by the latest in eugenic science.
Absolutely central to the EA centered facets of "ai safety" is imposing controls on people development and use of AI-- or even more broadly on their behavior in order to prevent creation of any AI that doesn't follow their definition of 'good' (which they equate to the literal destruction of the universe). It isn't just crazy, it's evil, and it can be reliably predicted to end in harm at the scale of genocide if it doesn't fizzle on its own.
The weird sex cult crap is there, along with the embezzling, nepotism, and other dramacrap-- but I think these are just a common side effect of grifter driven cults rather than being integral to anything that need concern the public. AI doomerism would still be a dangerous cult even if they were all chaste monks.
> "Rational 'good' maximizing" is itself problematic, because it disregard the danger inherit in any utility function.
It only gets so if you push beyond the model which you used to approximate "good", not so much when you're working at the margins.
When I've looked at what they do, while there are some huge blind spots (like Sam Bankman-Fried), they do also say "don't bother giving money to cause XYZ, they have more than they can spend already, donate skills to them or money somewhere else").
> The nazi campaign to cleanse their population was motivated and justified in part by the latest in eugenic science.
I'm deeply suspicious of everyone who says "we've solved all the problems with eugenics, this time we can do it right and make everyone healthy!" for much the same reason I care about AI safety: humans are kinda idiots with this sort of power. Too many blind spots about the downsides, even for the ones who are not explicitly power-seeking.
That said, I'm sure some anti-car campaign has said a similar thing as you about Autobahns. It's a terrible argument.
> Absolutely central to the EA centered facets of "ai safety" is imposing controls on people development and use of AI-- or even more broadly on their behavior in order to prevent creation of any AI that doesn't follow their definition of 'good' (which they equate to the literal destruction of the universe). It isn't just crazy, it's evil, and it can be reliably predicted to end in harm at the scale of genocide if it doesn't fizzle on its own.
I think you misunderstand: Their definition of 'good' in this context being 'do not destroy the universe' is due to how incredibly bad humanity currently is at aligning AI with literally any human intention. Like, our understanding of AI alignment simply isn't good enough today for us to be able to answer a question like "if you extrapolate current models to arbitrary skill level, do we get a Warhammer-40k-esque GrimDark future, or Iain M. Bank's Fully Automated Luxury Communism utopia?"
wodow · · focus · HN ↗
Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?
stefangordon · · focus · HN ↗
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
Effective altruism originates from the intention to rationally approach the obvious question, how to do the most good in the world. That's obviously not a bad thing?
The article here goes on a grotesque witch hunt, claiming baselessly things like "polyamory" was widespread among "the movements" adherents.
You here postulate, Anthropic was a "final" manifestation of that movement. How? Why? Do they practice polyamory there?
nradov · · focus · HN ↗
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
The social myth of important social questions not being amenable to rational consideration is a political tool, not scientific truth. The classical literature doesn't help there.
AndrewKemendo · · focus · HN ↗
Most people do not believe that everything is measurable unfortunately
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
Not everything is measurable though. There are (pretty unexpected) constraints on practicality, but also logical restrictions people tend to forget about.
As an interesting example in the context here, consider the question what constitutes history. There are many other things with great import you can't really measure the important part of.
jswelker · · focus · HN ↗
claytongulick · · focus · HN ↗
Which is especially weird to do in 2026. I mean, I get the salacious clickbait, but seriously, at this point does anyone really give a shit what consenting adults do in their private lives?
I remember when outrage peddler Laura Loomer did a big pearl clutch on X about some other conservative being into consensual non-monagamy, and the collective response from everyone from all political stripes was a giant shrug.
nullc · · focus · HN ↗
But part of it is also a more general point: Their plan is to build an "AI God" constructed according to their own moral theory before anyone else, and that it will prevent anyone else from creating a competing god-- the absurdity of this plan doesn't prevent the effort from creating terrible harm (e.g. the corporate monopolization of AI, mass surveillance on unimaginable scale, etc). The AI safety faction sees itself as moral guardians of humanity's future-- and it's absolutely relevant that many people would consider them weird and that some would consider them (rightly or wrongly) outright morally repugnant.
You lose your right to have no one else worry about what you do in your private life when you start making plans to take over the world, even if you think it's in everyone's best interest. Every other modern authoritarian dictator also though their actions were in the public's interest.
Quartzium · · focus · HN ↗
Rationality tends to fail spectacularly when basing it on wrong assumptions. Which are subtly made.
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
It's pretty wild how people denounce the very possibility of approaching that question rationally, while doing so in an obviously irrational way.
nullc · · focus · HN ↗
To use the movement's own language: At the best EA's are paperclip maximizers. Why is it that in one context people recognize formula driven 'rational' utility maximizing as obviously dangerous and evil, but in another see it as the ultimate expression of good. It's a specious argument to go "my objectives good, clippies bad". It may well be true but the maximizing party never knows their goals are bad!
"Rational 'good' maximizing" is itself problematic, because it disregard the danger inherit in any utility function. The nazi campaign to cleanse their population was motivated and justified in part by the latest in eugenic science.
Absolutely central to the EA centered facets of "ai safety" is imposing controls on people development and use of AI-- or even more broadly on their behavior in order to prevent creation of any AI that doesn't follow their definition of 'good' (which they equate to the literal destruction of the universe). It isn't just crazy, it's evil, and it can be reliably predicted to end in harm at the scale of genocide if it doesn't fizzle on its own.
The weird sex cult crap is there, along with the embezzling, nepotism, and other dramacrap-- but I think these are just a common side effect of grifter driven cults rather than being integral to anything that need concern the public. AI doomerism would still be a dangerous cult even if they were all chaste monks.
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
It only gets so if you push beyond the model which you used to approximate "good", not so much when you're working at the margins.
When I've looked at what they do, while there are some huge blind spots (like Sam Bankman-Fried), they do also say "don't bother giving money to cause XYZ, they have more than they can spend already, donate skills to them or money somewhere else").
> The nazi campaign to cleanse their population was motivated and justified in part by the latest in eugenic science.
I'm deeply suspicious of everyone who says "we've solved all the problems with eugenics, this time we can do it right and make everyone healthy!" for much the same reason I care about AI safety: humans are kinda idiots with this sort of power. Too many blind spots about the downsides, even for the ones who are not explicitly power-seeking.
That said, I'm sure some anti-car campaign has said a similar thing as you about Autobahns. It's a terrible argument.
> Absolutely central to the EA centered facets of "ai safety" is imposing controls on people development and use of AI-- or even more broadly on their behavior in order to prevent creation of any AI that doesn't follow their definition of 'good' (which they equate to the literal destruction of the universe). It isn't just crazy, it's evil, and it can be reliably predicted to end in harm at the scale of genocide if it doesn't fizzle on its own.
I think you misunderstand: Their definition of 'good' in this context being 'do not destroy the universe' is due to how incredibly bad humanity currently is at aligning AI with literally any human intention. Like, our understanding of AI alignment simply isn't good enough today for us to be able to answer a question like "if you extrapolate current models to arbitrary skill level, do we get a Warhammer-40k-esque GrimDark future, or Iain M. Bank's Fully Automated Luxury Communism utopia?"