Towards Ineffective Altruism

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realized. – Karl Popper, “Utopia and Violence” This tweet from Timnit Gebru has been living in my head rent-free for the past month. Recently, she and other critics of big tech (as well as former longtermist Phil Torres) have been loudly sounding the alarm about effective altruism and longtermism on Twitter and in various publications. These ideologies scare me, and I want to engage with them seriously — not because I believe in them, but because they are seemingly rational, relying on the language of science, moral philosophy, and statistics. They are increasingly influential among policymakers, intellectuals, well-funded institutions, and the richest men in the world. Their ubiquity makes them pernicious and har

saved by

• Michelle Pan
• Grace Zhang