Effective Altruism

Movement·Founded 2011 CE·No adherent count is meaningful. The nearest hard number is the Giving What We Can register: 11,153 people from 118 countries have taken the 10% pledge, with a further 1,601 on time-limited trial pledges.

Effective Altruism

The Centre for Effective AltruismGiving What We Can — the 10% PledgeThe recordTIME: Effective Altruist Leaders Were Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried

Branch
Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1 You × Effective Altruism Discussion
Story of Effective Altruism

November 2022.

FTX collapsed, and with it the largest funder the movement had ever had. What followed inside effective altruism was a year of public self-examination that its own writers described in the language of a crisis of faith.

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Where it is toldContemporary reporting, the movement's own forum, and the federal court record
Who appearsSam Bankman-Fried, William MacAskill, Nick Beckstead
What it teachesWhat happened when the movement's own reasoning was turned back on it
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

FTX collapsed in November 2022. Its founder Sam Bankman-Fried had been the movement's largest funder — the FTX Future Fund committed around 160 million dollars to effective altruist causes during 2022 — and had been publicly presented as the exemplar of earning to give. The Future Fund's entire staff resigned within days, citing fundamental questions about the legitimacy and integrity of the operation they had been running. MacAskill wrote publicly of rage at Bankman-Fried and self-hatred at having been deceived, and noted that the community had for years emphasised integrity, honesty and respect for common-sense moral constraints, and that if customer funds were misused then Bankman-Fried had not listened. In March 2023 TIME reported that MacAskill, Nick Beckstead and Holden Karnofsky had been warned about Bankman-Fried's conduct in 2018 and 2019 — including an internal document alleging gross negligence — and that the warnings were downplayed or dismissed. Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven counts on 2 November 2023 and sentenced on 28 March 2024 to 25 years. Grant recipients, including small charities, faced clawback demands from the bankruptcy estate.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The mountain, and the fast, in court. Jainism · community Go deeper →
The first fitna. Islam Read it in full →
Chamkaur — forty against an army. Sikhism Read it in full →
State Shinto, and Yasukuni. Shinto · community Go deeper →
The indemnity. Haitian Vodou Read it in full →
22 June 1984 — Island Pond. The Twelve Tribes Read it in full →

The conversation

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Where next

Effective Altruism's Stories & Scripture roomback up one layer Propose a change to this passageone button — it routes to the review pool

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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