Post by @davidculley@hachyderm.io

2026-08-12 06:59 UTC

Eliezer Yudkowsky is the guy who coined the term Effective Altruism, the toxic ideology that billionaires and capitalism-brained aspiring millionaires use to excuse their greed. They tell themselves, for example, that it's good to work at awful companies such as Facebook/Meta to make ungodly amounts of money because, "look at all the good things I could do with all that money," while ignoring all the awful consequences of them working for these companies. Eliezer Yudkowsky is in large parts responsible for introducing and turning billionaires to this toxic ideology. He's also responsbile for another toxic ideology called Rationalism where they suppress all their feelings, and its communities such as LessWrong or Slate Star Codex. He apparently also wrote a fan-fiction book for Harry Potter, called "Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality". Its premise is that Harry Potter was raised by scientists and University of Oxford professors (🙄), and at the age of 10 having already received a rigorous scientific education, before being sent to Hogwarts, where he then examines the magic through the lens of science. "Productivity YouTuber" Ali Abdaal who has millions of uneducated gullible followers, is now promoting that book with a video literally titled, "I am begging you to read [this book]." Promoting Harry Potter in 2026 is definitely a choice. J. K. Rowling is doing her best to ensure the death of all transgender people. What Rowling is doing literally falls under the definition of genocide. Promoting the works of Effective Altruists in 2026 is definitely a choice. Ali Abdaal represents everything that is wrong with Gen Z aspiring to become millionaires by way of becoming YouTubers. Please stop watching him. I discovered his channel in 2018 or so, when he showed his viewers the flashcard app Anki. And I learned how to study effectively thanks to him, something school or my parents never taught me. But I quickly got turned off by his channel around 2019 or so when he started pivoting to iPad reviews like every other tech channel. And especially when his popularity exploded in 2020 with everyone stuck at home due to the pandemic. Please stop watching him if you do. #EffectiveAltruism #TESCREAL #HarryPotter

Replies (3)

@davidculley@hachyderm.io 2026-08-25 12:46

My explanation of "rationalism": #TESCREAL #rationalism https://hachyderm.io/@davidculley/116280132406013694

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@davidculley@hachyderm.io 2026-08-25 14:14

In the summer of 2024, in Europe, there was this petition to #TaxTheRich that needed to get 1 million signatures. Had this number been reached, the EU politicians would *have* to discuss the topic. We had a year to get the 1 million signatures, but even after 10 months we still had only 250,000 signatures. No sane working-class person can be against #TaxTheRich, so I figured it's only because nobody even hears of the existence of this petitition that it never took off. As the deadline came closer and closer, I saw the petitition shared more and more on Mastodon. But Mastodon is a tiny network. With our cozy little bubble we would never find 750,000 signatures in less than two months. What we needed was a person with a massive reach to boost the initiative. A single "influencer" with a few million followers could get us the 750,000 missing signatures within a day. So I figured a promising winning strategy is to write to a few YouTubers with large followings. You can imagine how that went, but I thought it worth a try, and then I could at least say I didn't leave a single stone unturned. I wrote to Ali Abdaal, since he had already mentioned (and made a few videos about) the "10% Pledge", about donating to charities for the rest of his life. https://aliabdaal.com/giving-what-we-can/ At the time, in the summer of 2024, he also flew his entire team to Turkey for some "off-site"/"workcation". He apparently ran out of ideas for videos to create to keep the needy YouTube algorithm happy, so he just filmed himself and his crew having a holiday in a rented mansion with a swimming pool, masquerading as work and planning quarterly goals or whatever. Imagine the CO2 emissions of flying 15 people or so to an "off-site"/vacation. Of course I never received an answer from Ali Abdaal, who was portraying himself being serious about giving away 10% of the money he makes. Of course I foresaw that beforehand but thought it worth a try. The deadline passed and #TaxTheRich didn't even come close to the necessary number of signatures. Only later (after the deadline had passed) did I learn that "Giving What We Can" is founded by Toby Ord, William MacAskill, and Bernadette Young. It's Effective Altruism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giving_What_We_Can #TESCREAL #EffectiveAltruism

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@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-08-12 12:35

@davidculley@hachyderm.io They tell themselves, for example, that it's good to work at awful companies such as Facebook/Meta to make ungodly amounts of money because, "look at all the good things I could do with all that money," while ignoring all the awful consequences of them working for these companies. Warren Buffet made a similar claim: he didn't give to charities because he could use the money from the donations to instead make significantly more money, which would mean that he'd later be able to give more money to charities and have a bigger impact. Which sounds completely plausible if you ignore two important things: The time value of money. An intervention now may have a cascading impact and do much more good long term than a bigger intervention later. The people you might help today might die without the intervention.The fact that wealth inequality is the cause of a lot of the things charities exist to help and making wealth inequality worse to be able to do good later is not really a winning strategy.

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