What FTX decisively disproved was the idea that people's origin stories involving apparently sincere desire to do good in the world and them constantly broadcasting that should be used as a reason to unquestioningly trust them when their notion of greater good happens to align perfectly with them accumulating enormous quantities of wealth and power. (and Sam, bless him, originally wanted to help animals rather than own the machine god. And probably sincerely believed he was going to do great things for humanity from all the misappropriated funds he was definitely going to win back against a backdrop of EAs and VCs queueing up to glaze him and his commitment to the greater good)

I don't think people are objecting to the EA idea that some charities are more evidence based than others so much as the distinctly EA idea that it would be more effective still to donate to charities like OpenAI

todays EA is not about giving to charities, that was the original mission with 40k hours and ethereum (i think vitalik still believes in this version). then the yudkowsky xrisk/ai safety crowd took over lesswrong and turned it into a cult.

now its utilitarianism taken to the extreme. if you believe a skynet scenario killing everyone on earth is plausible then the "logical" thing to do is allow literally anything in the name of stopping it. that includes mass murder and dictatorship. the only thing that can balance the infinite negative value from an evil machine god is the infinite positive value from a good machine god.

thats the main difference today, one faction around sam and dario believes in creating the good ASI first and sacrificing all the world resources to do it before someone makes the bad one, the more pessimistic like yud want to stop all ai development to reduce the risk that an evil god is made to zero.

at this point its basically a religion.