On October 17, 2022, Rebecca Ackermann published an MIT Technology Review editorial entitled “Inside effective altruism, where the far future counts a lot more than the present.” It is a piece on Effective Altruism that contains a number of untrue and misleading claims. In response, I offer a response to it in the form of annotations to the original text and figures. I’m open to corrections/criticism. I also thank Ackermann for the engagement and effort that went into the editorial. I believe it was written in good faith. By my count, there are 13 false and 24 misleading claims. Each is explained with sources in the annotations.
I really appreciate this format and would love to see other inaccurate articles covered in this way (so long as the reviewer is intellectually honest, of course).