What's the alternative? Do people even realize what they're saying about themselves when they ask questions like this?
"The plan to wish 50% of the people in the universe dead because resources are limited is flawed. But what's the alternative?"
Like, obviously, use your magic wish-granting macguffin to wish for more resources!
But it's obvious that the well being of anyone but yourself isn't the actual question here. The "betterment of humanity" is a fake target to distract your attention.
"But we have to make life better for people 3000 years in the future!" I mean, ok? But why isn't the first step "make life better for people around you right here and right now"? If you want the "most efficient" use of your altruistic efforts, why is it not "help the people around you"?
The answer is, of course, that just like "solve the problem of scarce resources to help people" could not have been the actual reason for the snap, "help people most efficiently" is not the reason for "effective altruism." In both cases the real reason is basically the same.
Anyway, the alternative is obvious (there are many alternatives) and you should side-eye anyone who doesn't think so--or who is invested in your not thinking so.
I just remembered that I wrote this as a guest post on @cstross.bsky.social's Diary in 2011 and it includes a shorter essay I wrote on livejournal in 2006 and I don't think this extropian tomfoolery is any more well-considered now that I did then: www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...
Hell, the entire load-bearing backstory of my White Space books is "What if all the eschatological tech billionaires and millennarians fucked off into space and left a severely damaged Earth in the hands of the community organizers, who rewired our brains to be more commensal."
