
Dystopia Now Escaping Effective Altruism
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Nov 14, 2025 Explore Émile's journey from his involvement with Effective Altruism to his eventual critique of longtermism. Discover Palantir CEO Alex Karp's political evolution and the contrast between his progressive claims and the company's surveillance contracts. Dive into the cult-like dynamics of the EA community, as Émile reveals its troubling aspects, including obsession with hypothetical extinction scenarios. The discussion examines how such ideologies might risk justifying extreme moral actions for perceived greater goods.
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Quantitative Bias Masks Value Judgments
- Effective altruism blends rigorous evidence with value judgments, so its 'effectiveness' is not value-neutral.
- Emile warns the EA quantitative bias excludes many worthy causes whose impacts are harder to measure.
Question Narrow Charity Metrics
- Question narrow metrics before donating and consider broader social impacts that are hard to quantify.
- Favor grassroots or structural change when effectiveness can't be reduced to simple numbers.
Entrance Via Existential Risk Circles
- Emile entered EA through the existential risk community, not typical campus outreach.
- He became aligned with long-termist ideas by 2009 after studying X-risk literature.






