I wrote this (lengthy) response to a lot of the post-FTX/SBF criticisms of EA, particularly focused on evaluating the ethical framework of EA. I do not think these criticisms touch the intellectual project of EA. It is a bit late posting this (I wrote it December 2022), but now that EA is getting back in the news with the SBF trial, I figured I would post it here. This can be downloaded as a Word document or PDF, and here is the abstract:
Effective altruism (EA) has been in the news recently following the crash of a cryptocurrency exchange and trading firm, the head of which was publicly connected to EA. The highly-publicized event resulted in several articles arguing that EA is incorrect or morally problematic because EA increases the probability of a similar scandal, or that EA implies the ends justify the means, or that EA is inherently utilitarian, or that EA can be used to justify anything. In this post, I will demonstrate the failures of these arguments and others that have been amassed. Instead, there is not much we can conclude about EA as an intellectual project or a moral framework because of this cryptocurrency scandal. EA remains a defensible and powerful tool for good and framework for assessing charitable donations and career choices.
Let me know your thoughts, complaints, concerns, etc.
I've thought about this a bit, and in the last part of my writeup on deconfusing EA, also written in the wake of the FTX blowup, I conclude that we need to be careful about not using EA as a motte-and-bailey, and I think that you've done some of that - the philosophical ideas may be untainted, and I argue for that claim, and more strongly, that EA as philosophy is effectively universal - but the community and its beliefs are a real part of EA, and were at least closely connected with parts of the failure that occurred.
Cool, and thank you very much!