In the last decade the cool thing for a smart kid was to be a New Atheist. EA is an ideological framework that can fit into that slot. That's a big deal and it allows a group of different organisations to come together and profit from each other.
If you look at GiveWell, the idea of actually finding out the evidence of the effect of a donation is new. What's new is the depth towards which GiveWell researched other organisations.
Concerns over wild animal suffering are surprising/new elements of EA but they aren't central to the movement.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.