by feeling abject shame and guilt at not acting for the right reasons.

(raises hand) I'm in this camp. This post was worth reading just to see that I'm not the only one to suffer this form of moral brain damage. It's hard to escape; attempts to argue against guilt are easy to dismiss as motivated reasoning.

ETA: I agonize about such things on a regular basis, and I think I'll be rereading this post a few times to see what comes out of it. You seem to be aiming it mostly at EAs; I'm not one, but I thought you'd like to know it's having an affect outside that audience. I'm glad you wrote it and I hope to see more.