These are the sketchy intellectual underpinnings I was mentioning. It's less an intellectual endeavor than a small rich white guy social club. Having a little money and hanging out in EA circles means I might get the ear of somebody with a lot of money; especially if I can somehow fit my elevator pitch into their MCU dreams.
I'm a believer that altruism should be as effective as possible, but there's little crossover between that and what most Effective Altruists are saying and doing. They seem to largely be either using money for direct world poverty alleviation (usually a very good thing, unless it has second-order effects) which is what gets mentioned (you know, goats or wells, nothing new), or using it as an excuse to waste money on their own idiosyncratic libertarian sci-fi fantasies but disguised as charity i.e. secular Scientologists.
I agree that the long termism stuff is largely not effective, but I take issue with your characterization of most effective altruists. Most EA's are just donating to the givewell general fund which I believe does reasonably well at researching and funding effective charities. They're very transparent unlike the long termists, you'd have no problem reading the white papers they publish to see if you agree with their conclusions on effectiveness. And if you don't you're free to do your own investigation and act on what you find. You'd still be an EA.
I do think it's unfortunate that the long termism get all the publicity, but I can't say I'm surprised. WHo wants to hear about boring old philanthropy? Saving humanity from the ai apocalypse much more interesting.
I'm a believer that altruism should be as effective as possible, but there's little crossover between that and what most Effective Altruists are saying and doing. They seem to largely be either using money for direct world poverty alleviation (usually a very good thing, unless it has second-order effects) which is what gets mentioned (you know, goats or wells, nothing new), or using it as an excuse to waste money on their own idiosyncratic libertarian sci-fi fantasies but disguised as charity i.e. secular Scientologists.