Timnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 5, 2023

Who is Nick Beckstead? Lets go down #TESCREAL memory lane

"I am currenting consulting on AI safety & governance. In my last job, I was the CEO of the Future Fund...I was a Program Officer for Open Philanthropy, which I joined...as an early employee...I worked on global catastrophic risk reduction, science philanthropy, & effective altruism grants..I was a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University...
https://www.nickbeckstead.com/

Nick Beckstead

I am currenting consulting on AI safety and governance. In my last job, I was the CEO of the Future Fund. Before that, I was a Program Officer for Open Philanthropy, which I joined in 2014 as an early employee. There I worked on global catastrophic risk reduction, science philanthropy, and

Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 5, 2023

I did a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University, where I wrote a dissertation...on the importance of shaping the distant future and helped launch the Centre for Effective Altruism."

Interesting. What does that dissertation say? 🤔

“Saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving & improving lives in rich countries."

Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive....

Show threadJon (now at neuromatch.social)
@timnitGebru "See, it's not eugenics! We're just saying rich people's lives are worth more than poor people's. Why does everybody thinks #TESCREAL's about eugenics? We're so misunderstood!"
Jun 5, 2023 at 6:14pmWeb
Show threadFoolishOwlJun 5, 2023
@jdp23 @timnitGebru I wonder what connections the #TESCREAL semi-cult has to older cults in the Bay Area, particularly EST and "The Forum".
Show threadJon (now at neuromatch.social)Jun 5, 2023

@foolishowl that's a really interesting question. I remember in the 90s Landmark (which was founded by people from The Forum and licensed the EST stuff from Erhard) had gotten people in to HR roles at big companies like DEC who would then send their employees off to corporate-funded trainings.

@timnitGebru

Show threadFoolishOwlJun 5, 2023
@jdp23 @timnitGebru That sounds about right. I had unpleasant experiences with a few people in "The Forum" in Berkeley in the 90s; they had more money than sense. Years later I read "What The Dormouse Said", by John Markoff, that talked about the rightwing counterculture that influenced Silicon Valley -- not in much detail, unfortunately. But every so often I hear about mandatory HR nonsense and it's frighteningly cultish. (And quite the opposite of what's mocked as "woke".)
Show threadlike jam or bootlacesJun 9, 2023

@foolishowl

Fred Turner's work fits in here, too.

cf https://thedigradio.com/podcast/counterculture-to-cyberculture-with-fred-turner/

@jdp23

Counterculture to Cyberculture with Fred Turner

How the 60s counterculture went on to make the techno-utopian ideology that suffuses our techno-dystopian reality. Dan interviews Fred Turner on his classic From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

The Dig