‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute
‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute
Founded in 2005 and lauded by Silicon Valley, the Nick Bostrom’s centre for studying existential risk warned about AI but also gave rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruism
Bostrom…possessed one of those elusive, rather abstract personalities that perhaps lend credence to the simulation theory.
What a sick, understated burn
rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruism
I hadn't heard of any controversies around EA, it always seemed like a positive thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism
So what I'm getting is that the philosophies aren't the problem, but rather it's members of the community doing unethical things in the name of the movement
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Sam Bankman-Fried
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Bay Area Misogyny
In a 2023 Time magazine article, seven women reported misconduct and controversy in the effective altruism movement. They accused men within the movement, typically in the Bay Area, of using their power to groom younger women for polyamorous sexual relationships.[147] The accusers argued that the majority male demographic and the polyamorous subculture combined to create an environment where sexual misconduct was tolerated, excused or rationalized away.
Still bad and needs calling out
Philosophy Tube have a great video about Effective Altruism. It was some time ago that I watched, but iirc, EA is just "let us do unregulated capitalism at our own benefit, because in the future trillions and trillions of humans are going to benefit from it. Don't mind the planet being destroyed now, and the billions of humans suffering now, everything would be cool in future. Trust me bro."
God they just rebranded trickle-down-economics
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That's only "longtermism". EA as introduced by Peter Singer in "the life you can save" is an incredibly sincere and well founded philosophy of charity.
The EA movement, based on what I know of it, seems as though it’s complete hogwash, just a veneer of ‘mathematically proven’ benevolence hiding privileged people who are really only endeavoring to further enrich themselves. It looks and smells like bullshit to me. I’m sure some good things have been done by people who call themselves EAs but it’s still really reminiscent to trickle down economics from my perspective
Check out the original episodes Behind the Bastards did on Bankman-Fried for a more in depth and entertaining breakdown of why they suck
I must have had a very surface level understanding of what it was. The parts I saw previously were about finding which charities to donate to and career development.
I've got more to read about for sure
Sam Bankman-Fried
To be fair they seem to admit that promoting him as a positive example was a mistake.
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Currently it seems that there is a negative correlation in some places between intellectual achievement and fertility
It's ironic because the more people who accept the plot of 'Idiocracy' (2006) as plausible or scientific is evidence that humanity is getting stupider.
Bostrom wrote a paper on existential risk that helped launch the longtermist movement, in which he discusses “dysgenic pressures” – dysgenic is the opposite of eugenic. Bostrom wrote:
“Currently it seems that there is a negative correlation in some places between intellectual achievement and fertility. If such selection were to operate over a long period of time, we might evolve into a less brainy but more fertile species, homo philoprogenitus (‘lover of many offspring’).”
Well I would rather people discuss and look at these issues. Currently it seems people have made the decision before, and potentially in spite of, evidence and that decision is final. That not how the world should work.
that statement is such bullshit: it implies intelligence is an easily quantifiable and purely genetic trait. What constitutes intelligence? If i know quantum physics but nothing of genetic, how smart I am? If i know both but know nothing of sociology, of politics, of the injustices perpretrated in the world, how dumb does that make me? is it decided by my genetics, or is it the nurture i am shown and i have towards my intellect that grows it?
What we call intelligence is largely a genetic trait. Otherwise I'd be able to have this conversation with my dog.
I think the main point is, if the genetic predisposition to what we call intelligence does not positively affect the reproduction rate, the process of evolution could phase it out at any time. The "goal" of evolution is adaptation in order to reproduce. The intelligence is not THE strategy to adapt, its A strategy. It could be replaced by something else, like faster reproduction rate, or the ability to survive in harsh environment without a need for clothes, housing, and medicine.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The institute, which was dedicated to studying existential risks to humanity, was founded in 2005 by the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom and quickly made a name for itself beyond academic circles – particularly in Silicon Valley, where a number of tech billionaires sang its praises and provided financial support.
Bostrom is perhaps best known for his bestselling 2014 book Superintelligence, which warned of the existential dangers of artificial intelligence, but he also gained widespread recognition for his 2003 academic paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”.
His office, located in a medieval backstreet, was a typically cramped Oxford affair, and it would have been easy to dismiss the institute as a whimsical undertaking, an eccentric, if laudable, field of study for those, like Bostrom, with a penchant for science fiction.
Among the other ideas and movements that have emerged from the FHI are longtermism – the notion that humanity should prioritise the needs of the distant future because it theoretically contains hugely more lives than the present – and effective altruism (EA), a utilitarian approach to maximising global good.
Fifteen months ago Bostrom was forced to issue an apology for comments he’d made in a group email back in 1996, when he was a 23-year-old postgraduate student at the London School of Economics.
Just a month before Bostrom’s incendiary comments came to light, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas to face charges in the US relating to a multibillion-dollar fraud.
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