Ben Todd rebuts philosopher's critique of effective altruism and AI risk point by point
ben_j_todd · x · 2026-10-12
Ben Todd, former president of 80,000 Hours, published a point-by-point rebuttal of philosopher Leif Wenar's article "Can effective altruists grow up?", calling it another embarrassingly bad critique of EA:
- Reducing AI risk solutions to "use good judgment" with no concrete plan
- Dismissing GiveWell's hundreds of thousands of lives saved over 2 bandit deaths among GiveDirectly recipients
- Favoring "common sense" over numbers for evaluating impact
- Dismissing shrimp welfare improvements without argument
- Claiming GiveWell hasn't saved lives due to lack of peer-reviewed papers
- Criticizing METR's close ties to Anthropic, though Todd asks who else would do this work
In a follow-up, Todd added that invoking SBF to dismiss EA ignores that leading VCs, financial media, world leaders, and celebrities also fawned over him — virtually nobody was on record calling FTX a fraud beforehand.
Related event: Ben Todd rebuts philosophers' criticisms of effective altruism(3 posts)→
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