Effective altruism is a complicated idea. When an idea is complicated, often people don't understand the full idea but instead some low resolution version of the idea which they get from snippets of conversation, impressions they have from other people, and vague recollection of media articles.
What's the current low resolution version of effective altruism? Is it positive? What would a better low resolution image be?
Tyler Cowen's low resolution version: "COWEN: A lot of giving is not very rational. Whether that’s good or bad, it’s a fact. And if you try to make it too rational in a particular way, a very culturally specific way, you’ll simply end up with less giving. And then also, a lot of the particular targets of effective altruism, I’m not sure, are bad ideas. So somewhere like Harvard, it has a huge endowment, it’s super non- or even anti-egalitarian. But it’s nonetheless a self-replicating cluster of creativity. And if you’re a rich person, Harvard was your alma mater, and you give them a million dollars, is that a bad idea? I don’t know, but effective altruists tend to be quite sure it’s a bad idea." from https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/patrick-collison/
Seems mostly focused on the idea of 'EA tries to shift existing philanthropy to be given using more rational decision making procedures'