Nope. Has nothing to do with them being nerds. They are actively dangerous, their views almost always lead to extremely reactionary politics. EA and RA are deeply anti-human. In some cases that manifests as a desire to subjugate humanity with an iron fist technocratic rule, in other cases it manifests as a desire to kill off humanity.
Either way, as an ideology it must be stopped. It should not be treated with kids gloves, it is an ideology that is actively influencing the ruling elites right now (JD Vance, Musk, Thiel are part of this cult, and also simultaneously believe in German-style Nazism, which is broadly compatible with RA). The only silver lining is that some of their ideas about power-seeking tactics are so ineffective they will never work -- in other words, humanity will prevail over these ghouls, because they came in with so many bad assumptions that they've lost touch with reality.
Huh? They give millions of dollars to global humanitarian development funds saving at least 50,000 lives per year. Maybe you’re taking a few kooks who have a controversial lecture somewhere as representing everyone else.
It is true that there were EAs before the conception of "longtermism" that were relatively mundane and actually helping humanity, and not part of a death cult. But those have been shunned from the EA movement for a while now.
The support for eugenics and ethnic cleansing, the absolute obsession with strictly utilitarian ethics and ignorance of other ethics, the "kill a bunch of humans now so that trillions can live in the future" longtermist death cult, and the whole Roko's basilisk worship that usually goes like "one AI system can take over the entirety of humanity and start eating the galaxy, therefore we must forcefully jump in the driver seat of that dangerous AI right now so that our elite ideology is locked in for a trillion years of galactic evolution".
Either way, as an ideology it must be stopped. It should not be treated with kids gloves, it is an ideology that is actively influencing the ruling elites right now (JD Vance, Musk, Thiel are part of this cult, and also simultaneously believe in German-style Nazism, which is broadly compatible with RA). The only silver lining is that some of their ideas about power-seeking tactics are so ineffective they will never work -- in other words, humanity will prevail over these ghouls, because they came in with so many bad assumptions that they've lost touch with reality.