Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg

Sam Bankman-Fried made effective altruism a punchline, but the do-gooding philosophy is part of a powerful tech subculture full of opportunism, money, messiah complexes—and alleged abuse. Ellen Huet Illustration: Sophi Gullbrants for Bloomberg Businessweek Subscriber Benefit Subscribe Sonia Joseph was 14 years old when she first read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a mega-popular piece of fan fiction that reimagines the boy wizard as a rigid empiricist. This rational Potter tests his professors’ spells with the scientific method, scoffs at any inconsistencies he finds, and solves all of wizardkind’s problems before he turns 12. “I loved it,” says Joseph, who read HPMOR four times in her teens. She was a neurodivergent, ambitious Indian American who felt out of place in her suburban Massachusetts high school. The story, she says, “very much appeals to smart outsiders.” A search for other writing by the fanfic’s author, Eliezer Yudkowsky, opened more doors for Joseph. Since

Sam Bankman-Fried made effective altruism a punchline, but the do-gooding philosophy is part of a powerful tech subculture full of opportunism, money, messiah complexes—and alleged abuse. Ellen Huet Illustration: Sophi Gullbrants for Bloomberg Businessweek Subscriber Benefit Subscribe Sonia Joseph was 14 years old when she first read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a mega-popular piece of fan fiction that reimagines the boy wizard as a rigid empiricist. This rational Potter tests his professors’ spells with the scientific method, scoffs at any inconsistencies he finds, and solves