Seen in a Matt Yglesias tweet:
I don't follow Yglesias, but this is via Scott Summer's page of September 2026 links, which has other good stuff too.
Ah, but what is this Effective Altruism, you ask? Check out Bryan Caplan's take on it: The Good, the Bad, and the Buggy.
Effective altruists have been getting a lot of hate lately. But if you ever actually meet a group of effective altruists, even their harshest critics will struggle to maintain their anger. In person, they’re some of the most cheerful, friendly, curious, and smart people you will ever meet. Effective altruists are the opposite of the angry, self-righteous, apathetic, asocial youths who have given their generation a bad name. (And yes, strange as it seems, human beings can be angry, self-righteous, apathetic, and asocial at the same time).
Not only are EAs extraordinarily likeable; they have also made strong arguments that have causally improved actually-existing philanthropy. Mainstream charities mostly run on a combination of wishful thinking and Social Desirability Bias. As a result, they often do little good or are actively counterproductive. EAs, in contrast, closely study the evidence to figure out how to get the most bang per donor buck. This, in turn, has led to large cash infusions for three charities with demonstrably high benefit/cost ratios: deworming, anti-malaria, and Give Directly. While the typical college EA meeting is just a social club, these social clubs have ultimately made philanthropy better, especially by inspiring tech donors.
Reader, can you guess the first word of Bryan's next paragraph?
But despite their high IQs and winning personalities, EAs are sadly short on common sense. Like other humans, they’re prone to groupthink and paranoia. As a result, many have basically lost interest in philanthropy that demonstrably saves many human lives at low cost, and started obsessing about AI risk.
Well, darn. "Obsessing" doesn't sound good. See what you think. I'm still persuadable either way on "AI risk", but I thought that Pinker stuff I posted yesterday made extremely good points.
Also of note:
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Speaking of AI… I've been looking for an excuse to embed this Flight of the Conchords video:
Which nicely illustrates James Freeman's query: Did the Associated Press Hurt AI’s Feelings? (WSJ gifted link)
President Donald Trump wisely told the United Nations last week that the U.S. would “totally reject” any “globalist scheme” to control artificial intelligence. Fortunately he’s also still rejecting a domestic scheme to shield prominent creators of technology tools from liability and competition.
Jody Godoy reported on Friday for Reuters:
US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said on Friday he would resist describing AI agents as autonomous actors that “break loose” with “wills and desires of their own,” suggesting the developers who instruct agents would be the ones liable for harm.
[…]
Believe it or not, the Associated Press is also seeking to affirm reality. An X account for the AP Stylebook posted last week:
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects. Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
Until clear and convincing proof is shown otherwise, I'm with James: "Here in the nonfictional world, people are responsible for their actions."
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Another scapegoat escapes. At Reason, Daniel Foster debunks: No, Private Equity Isn't Ruining Your Sandwiches, Your Apartment, or Grandma's Nursing Home. His Example One is Jersey Mike's, a sub chain acquired by Blackstone in 2024, to complaints from, well, the usual people who complain about such things. But:
Jersey Mike's revenue increased by more than 10 percent in the first year after the Blackstone deal, and in July the firm went public, raising $1 billion in the largest U.S. consumer initial public offering of the year. Now the brand is bigger than ever, with hundreds of new locations. In 2026, it broke Chick-fil-A's 11-year run as the top-rated fast-food restaurant in the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
This is a familiar story. If you listen to anti–private equity outfits like the Private Equity Stakeholder Project or ProPublica or usual-suspect gadflies on the left, private equity is just another mutation of predatory capitalism: "vampires" engaged in "legalized looting" per Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.); "vultures" embodying "corporate greed at its most disgusting" by the lights of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).
Critics marshal an impressive breadth of bogeymen to make their case, seizing on private equity's infiltration of everything from hospitals to prisons to for-profit schools, and their reliance on extractive financial gizmos like "leasebacks," "roll-ups," and "dividend recapitalizations" to make billions for the few while zombifying the portfolio companies relied upon by the many.
What these critics want you to believe is that there is something uniquely bad about private equity, that it's a poisonous form of hypercapitalism. But case studies and a review of the evidence tell a different story. Private equity isn't a panacea, and it isn't without flaws. But from Italian subs to nursing homes to state pensions, it has plenty to offer both capitalists and consumers. Viewed in this context, it's clear that much of the hatred directed at private equity is just a familiar form of statist opposition to free markets.
As usual with markets, people make mistakes. But generally they are making mistakes with their own money.. Can Liz and Bernie say the same?
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Speaking of markets, I'm always in the market for people who want to tell me how to think. AEI's Peter J. Wallison gives it a shot: How to Think About Trump and Iran.
Although a lifelong Republican, I am not a fan of Donald Trump. He continues to shock me with almost everything he says and does—promising $5,000 to every American if the Republicans win the House and Senate, breaking relations with Canada, and threatening to rename New Mexico as New America—only the most recent examples of his nonpresidential behavior. If these were jokes, I’ve lost my sense of humor.
For those fellow Americans who oppose Trump’s Iran policy, however, I have a simple question: What do you think would happen if Iran were to successfully develop a nuclear weapon? I don’t even have to answer that question. It would be a catastrophe, and Trump is the only president in my lifetime who has faced that question realistically.
He has recognized that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten the world, not just its neighbors, and would be completely immune from any effort by the United States or others to change its government or eliminate its threats to the Middle East, Israel, the US, and the world at large. Previous presidents have been aware of this nightmare, and many tried to do something, but they lost their nerve. They “settled.” But they just bought time, figuring that if Iran actually gets a nuclear weapon, it would be someone else’s problem.
Trump, I think, is trying to do something essential in Iran, which—if successful—would be invaluable for all of us in the future. This of course requires gritting our teeth and remaining patient as he pursues such unworthy personal goals as having his name emblazoned on the Kennedy Center in Washington, enriches himself and his family, and fumbles around with stories about “negotiations.”
Even given the desirability of the outcome, Wallison admits that Trump has been lousy at explaining things to us, a "failure of leadership."
Random thought, however: If "New Mexico" gets renamed to "New America", can New England be far behind?
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But in other areas… Francis Fukuyama thinks Trump’s “Golden Fleet” Is Still Ridiculous.
Of the many ridiculous, counterproductive, and outright harmful things that Donald Trump has done, his effort to create a “Golden Fleet” of “Trump-class” battleships is far from the worst offense. But it is absolutely typical of the personalistic and processless state into which American national security decision making has fallen in his second term.
The United States has not commissioned a new battleship since it launched the USS Missouri in 1944. There are good reasons for this: in an age of naval aviation and missiles, battleships become huge floating targets liable to be sunk way before any of their weapons can be put to use. Battleships had already been made obsolete by aircraft carriers during the Second World War, and since then have been used for shore bombardment when facing an enemy like Iraq that didn’t have the means of fighting back. They would be worse than useless in a war with China or even Iran, both of which field huge numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles that could easily strike such big targets.
Fukuyama says Trump is basing this effort on his watching Victory at Sea, a WWII documentary, at an impressionable age. Unfortunately, this is credible.
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