This seems uncharacteristically ad-hominemy of Scott, given all of his other work. He's usually pretty good about separating out the discussion of a topic from

This seems uncharacteristically ad-hominemy of Scott, given all of his other work. He's usually pretty good about separating out the discussion of a topic from the personal virtues of who is doing the discussing. I would even say that is a core tenet of his entire project as a writer and a rationalist. Discussion and criticism of effective altruism, and of any other social movement, is and should be possible separate from the question of whether the people participating in that discussion and criticism are personally doing anything about what they're discussing. Got a problem with US drug policy? Well, what are you doing to heal addicts and stop international crime rings from funding their activities with the drug trade? Got a problem with mass surveillance from intelligence agencies? What are you doing to keep foreign adversaries from infiltrating and sabotaging public information systems? Got a problem with policing strategies? What are you doing to fight crime? In case it isn't clear, I think all of these are bad responses. EA, for better or worse, has made itself more or less a public-facing movement. Publicity exposes you to opinions of people who are not personally involved in whatever you're doing. Lots of people critique the athletes, coaches, and management of their favorite sports without ever having any hope or possibility of getting involved themselves. Very few people who vote are ever going to run for office. That's fine. And if people with opinions on EA are not themselves particularly altruistic in a way that involves giving money directly to charitable causes, so what? Maybe that makes them less personally virtuous according to your system of ethics, but it doesn't make what they're saying either more or less correct. Those are independent axes of evaluation.