I recalled your challenges with analysis and empathy paralysis in a fun hijack in the Pit (again, Pit warning). Making good choices requires a degree of self and world analysis that a lot of the tech-bro subset of Effective Altruists don’t bother with IMHO. Instead, just as you pointed out, they mostly seem to be arguing from an end state where they’re filthy rich, and work backwards to assemble a “moral” justification for that end state.
NOT that they’re alone in this by any means. Humans are very good at being ruthless / criminal / evil to get what they want, and then later on, attempt to buy their way into respectability / heaven / etc. via their blood money. It’s endemic to the species I suspect.
And of course (full circle back to cults) the same morality of allowing any cult to dictate what is the greatest good is risky. If a single person (or small group) can dictate to the rest what is good, and what is evil, then you run the risk of abandoning your own ability to judge, because the definition of “good” is that of the cult or religion to which you have granted authority. For all my known distrust and dislike of organized religion, the most wide reaching ones generally (yes, HUGE simplification and generalization) act to dilute the power of specific individuals to reduce the risk. But even there it isn’t gone, and modern mass communications arguably makes it easier for a single populist leader to reach out (religious or otherwise) and bypass all the traditional methods of dilution.