So much vitriol. I understand it's cool to hate on EA after the SBF fiasco, but this is just smearing.
The key to scientific thinking is empiricism and rationalism. Some people in EA and lesswrong extend this to moral reasoning, but utilitarianism is not a pillar of these communities.
Empiricism and rationalism both tempered by a heavy dose of skepticism.
On the other hand, maybe that is some kind of fallacy itself. I almost want to say that "scientific thinking" should be called something else. The main issue being the lack of experiment. Using the word "science" without experiment leads to all sorts of nonsense.
A word that means "scientific thinking is much as possible without experiment" would at least embedded a dose of skepticism in the process.
The Achilles heel of rationalism is the descent into modeling complete nonsense. I should give lesswrong another chance I suppose because that would sum up my experience so far, empirically.
EA to me seems like obvious self serving nonsense. Hiding something in the obvious to avoid detection.