Matt Johnson
Journalist and author writing on politics, liberalism and ideas; a contributor to Quillette and co-author of a book on Christopher Hitchens.
Matt Johnson did not write this page. What is this?
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Where they publish
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 6 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Effective altruism demands hard evidence of effectiveness in some of its causes while accepting abstract conjecture in others, and never justifies the split.
While there are interesting theoretical arguments for these causes, there’s a disconnect between an almost-neurotic focus on hard evidence of effectiveness in some areas of EA and a willingness to accept extremely abstract and conjectural “evidence” in others.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
Spending on existential risk cannot be held accountable, because there is no measurement that would ever show it failing.
Unlike other interventions EA has sponsored, there are scant metrics for tracking the success or failure of investments in existential risk mitigation.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
A movement that has decided its job is to save humanity is uniquely prone to hubris, dogma and motivated reasoning.
This is a worldview that’s uniquely susceptible to hubris, dogma, and motivated reasoning.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
Show 3 more
The more effective altruism has absorbed itself in saving humanity, the less humanistic it has become.
Strangely enough, as EA becomes more absorbed in the task of saving humanity, the movement is becoming less humanistic.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
Moving money out of global health and into existential risk is a gamble paid for with lives that could have been saved now.
Diverting attention and resources from global health and poverty is an enormous gamble, as it will make many lives poorer, sicker, and shorter in the name of fending off threats that may or may not materialize.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
Making humanity's long-term potential the overriding priority licenses imposing real costs on people who are alive today.
The problem with these grand ambitions—saving humanity from extinction and enabling our species to reach its full potential millions of years from now—is that they ostensibly justify any cost in the present.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
Beliefs others hold too
Making humanity's long-term potential the overriding priority licenses imposing real costs on people who are alive today. 2 hold this
The problem with these grand ambitions—saving humanity from extinction and enabling our species to reach its full potential millions of years from now—is that they ostensibly justify any cost in the present.
How Effective Altruism Lost Its Way Said 21 Dec 2023
What is a korrent?
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