The Latest Breaking News from William MacAskill

Silicon Valley tech showmen like Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried can blind us with science. A little more scepticism would not go amiss

Trial of philanthropic crypto poster boy Sam Bankman-Fried exposes the flaws in a philosophy that negates the need for social change

Effective altruism is an intellectual and charitable movement that aspires to find the best ways to help others. People dedicated to it rely on evidence and rational arguments to identify what they can do to make the most progress toward solving the world’s most pressing problems, such as reducing malnutrition…

In 2017, the Scottish philosopher William MacAskill coined the name “longtermism” to describe the idea “that positively affecting the long-run future is a key moral priority of our time”. The label took off among like-minded philosophers and members of the “effective altruism” movement, which sets out to use evidence and…

It’s an unfortunate thing that the fiery collapse of the crypto exchange FTX is giving many people their first look at one of the most promising charitable movements of the last decade. It’s called effective altruism, or EA, and in recent years, disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, known as SBF,…

Tech billionaires seem intent on giving away a lot of money. But are those who support ‘longtermism’ and ‘effective altruism’ ignoring the very real problems of today?

The ‘ethics stuff’ was just a front, says the bankrupted cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried said his billions would save the world – but his philanthropic ideas ranged from the worthy to the severely outlandish

I'm not surprised that longtermism led to fraud, corruption and disaster. I'm mostly surprised it wasn't worse