The least impactful way to spend $300M?
I like the <i>idea</i> of Effective Altruism (EA), but it’s ironic to use EA to call out ineffective charitable spending in the wake of all the Effective Altruism ridiculousness of recent years. EA was a key part of SBF’s cover story to make his frauds appear to be coming from a philanthropic angle. An EA figurehead recently spent multiple millions, some of which was FTX donations, on a castle&#x2F;chateau to “host events”, which they rationalized as a good use of funds for weird reasons that even the EA community isn’t buying ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.effectivealtruism.org&#x2F;posts&#x2F;pbe8x4AQDqftQoaT5&#x2F;espr-should-return-the-ftx-funded-chateau" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.effectivealtruism.org&#x2F;posts&#x2F;pbe8x4AQDqftQoaT5&#x2F;...</a> ).<p>When you look into the history of EA movements, a lot of the spending becomes weirdly self-serving and requires a lot of mental gymnastics to justify. One shining example that comes to mind is the $30K grant they allocated to printing Harry Potter rationalist fan fiction and distributing it (Yes, this really happened: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.effectivealtruism.org&#x2F;posts&#x2F;CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g&#x2F;long-term-future-fund-april-2019-grant-recommendations" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.effectivealtruism.org&#x2F;posts&#x2F;CJJDwgyqT4gXktq6g&#x2F;...</a> ). Hardcore EA proponents will get staunchly defensive about all of this weird spending, but then they’ll single out $300mm donations like this for not going to malaria nets. It’s getting old.