> When I first heard of Effective Altruism, it was all about vaccines and mosquito nets [...] When I checked back a few years later, the community seemed to be

> When I first heard of Effective Altruism, it was all about vaccines and mosquito nets [...] When I checked back a few years later, the community seemed to be all about surviving the Rapture, I mean “Singularity” I feel exactly the same way - but having been present through a lot of it, perhaps I can add some context. Back in ~2009, Toby Ord was at 'The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics' and started 'Giving What We Can' which is exactly what you remember: Demonstrably cost-effective interventions like mosquito nets and deworming tablets. Measuring charity impact by quality-adjusted life years. Membership by pledging to donate 10% of your income to such causes. Approving of earning to give. The thing is, GWWC was basically complete when it launched. Their recommended most efficient charities today are the same ones they launched with. Oh, there were still some things to discuss - is it even more efficient to spend money on lobbying government to spend the foreign aid budget on those highly efficient causes? - but not enough to create a thriving discussion community or keep philosophy professors employed. But GWWC wasn't the only thing happening at Oxford's philosophy department at the time. GWWC, The Oxford Uehiro Centre, the Centre for Effective Altruism and the Future of Humanity Institute were all in the same place at the same time - and in some senses EA is a broader version of GWWC, sharing its spreadsheet-and-QALYs-based approach. Toby Ord's focus moved from global poverty to existential risks, and GWWC and EA just sort of got rolled up together. Thus creating this strange organisation - where one branch of the organisation would say the benefits of donating to medical research aren't quantifiable enough; while another branch works on things that are a hundred times more speculative than that. And as the 'existential risk' branch has a lot more to argue about - they're a much more visible part of the community.