this piece is about whether earning to give is the best way to be altruistic.

but I think a big issue is what altruism is. do most people mostly agree on what's altruistic or good? have effective altruists tried to determine what real people or organizations want?

you don't want to push "altruism given hidden assumptions X, Y and Z that most people don't agree with." for example, in Ben Kuhn's critique he talks about a principle of egalitarianism. But I don't think most people think of "altruism" as something that applies equally to the guy next door and to a person in Africa. Maybe smart idealistic Anglophone folks in the 2010s do. And some people think religion has equal or greater importance than physical human life does. So if you can convert a person to Christianity then you've done a huge good. And abortions and adultery are grave sins and so forth. Also, making political improvements is not a core part of EA.

maybe you should talk about apolitical egalitarian secular altruism.

but there is also another thing effective altruists favor that I think is clearly good: they use evidence. We do want evidence-based altruism. Kinda like evidence-based policy.

I think once you get beyond apolitical secular egalitarian altruism there are lots of different possibilities and it's as hard to figure out where you stand as it is to maximize impact. so maybe we should add something like reflection-based altruism.

I wonder if you can have more political impact through "earning to give" to political causes or through direct political involvement. the answer may vary with the type of cause. We might include the three types of economically left (e.g. socialism), economically neutral (e.g. abortion) and economically right (e.g. abolish estate taxes)