A developer's critique of how EA/longtermism rhetoric pulls people in
banteg · x · 2026-09-18
Developer banteg shares both a satirical greentext and a more serious reading on how effective altruism/longtermism rhetorical arguments progressively onboard people into the movement.
The greentext sketches the classic path: spreadsheet-optimal charity (mosquito nets) → 'why only count people alive today?' → future people matter → sliding toward prioritizing the far future over present suffering. The author also used ChatGPT to generate a rhetoric-and-counterargument analysis, criticizing longtermism's slippery-slope logic. A notable piece of AI-community ideological commentary.
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