If by "spreading rationality" you mean spreading LW material and ideas, then a potential problem is that it causes many people to donate their money to AI friendliness research instead of to malaria nets. Although these people consider this to be "effective altruism", as an AI skeptic it's not clear to me that this is significantly more effective than, say, donating money to cancer research (as non-EA people often do).
My goal is convincing people to have more clear and rational, evidence-thinking, as informed by LW materials. Some people may choose to donate to AI, and others to EA - as you can see from the blog I cited, I specifically highlight the benefits of the EA movement. Regardless, as Brian Tomasik points out, helping people be more rational contributes to improving the world, and thus the ultimate goal of the EA movement.
So does spreading rationality contribute to Effective Altruism? I certainly think so, as a rationality popularizer and an Effective Altruist myself. My own donations of money and time is focused on my project, Intentional Insights, of trying to spread rationality to a broad audience and thus raise the sanity waterline, including about effective, evidence-based philanthropy. Specifically in relation to EA, in blogs for Intentional Insights, and in our resources page, I make sure to highlight EA as an awesome thing to get involved in.
I'd particularly appreciate feedback on a draft fundraising letter (link here) for Effective Altruists on the way that Intentional Insights contributes to improving the world and specifically by getting people more engaged with Effective Altruism. I'd like to hear any thoughts on how I can optimize the letter to make it more effective. You can simply respond in comments, or send an email to gleb@intentionalinsights.org
I'd also like to hear your opinion of the broader issue of how spreading rationality helps contribute to improving the world and the EA movement in particular. Let me share my take. For the first, I think that, as shown by Brian Tomasik in this essay, increasing rational thinking is robustly positive for a broad range of short and long term future outcomes, and thus our broader work contributes to improving people’s lives overall. For the second, getting people to think rationally about themselves and their interactions with the world and use evidence-based means to evaluate reality and make their decisions will result in people applying these methods of thinking to their altruism.
What do you think?