If anyone's skimming through these comments, it's worthwhile noting that most of my original ideas as seen in my top-level comment have been thoroughly refuted.
tl;dr - My perspective is, in short, echoed on Marginal Revolution:
‘Of course, there are systematic problems with charitable giving. Most importantly, the feedback mechanism is never going to work as well when people are buying something to be consumed by others (as Milton Friedman explains)’ –
Those criticisms that remain and many stronger points of contention are far more eloquently independently explained by Journeyman's critique here.
Anyhow, I don't like the movements branding, which is essentially its core feature. Since the community would probably reorganise around a new brand anyway. Altruism is fictional, hypothetical, doesn't exist.
It has been observed, however, that the very act of eating (especially, when there are others starving in the world) is such an act of self-interested discrimination. Ethical egoists such as Rand who readily acknowledge the (conditional) value of others to an individual, and who readily endorse empathy for others, have argued the exact reverse from Rachels, that it is altruism which discriminates: "If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, then why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others?"
It is therefore altruism which is an arbitrary position, according to Rand.
Thanks, this helped me!
In this thread, I would like to invite people to summarize their attitude to Effective Altruism and to summarise their justification for their attitude while identifying the framework or perspective their using.
Initially I prepared an article for a discussion post (that got rather long) and I realised it was from a starkly utilitarian value system with capitalistic economic assumptions. I'm interested in exploring the possibility that I'm unjustly mindkilling EA.
I've posted my write-up as a comment to this thread so it doesn't get more air time than anyone else's summarise and they can be benefit equally from the contrasting views.
I encourage anyone who participates to write up their summary and identify their perspective BEFORE they read the others, so that the contrast can be most plain.