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

Şerife (Sherry) WongJun 5, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).

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....

Jun 5, 2023 at 5:59pmWeb
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 5, 2023

By ordinary standards—at least by ordinary enlightened humanitarian standards—saving and improving lives in rich countries is about equally as important...as saving & improving lives in poor countries, provided lives are improved by roughly comparable amounts. But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal"

Indeed.

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

This is called eugenicst and blatant racism in scholar-speak and here they are normalized everywhere, pouring money into "AI safety" all over the UN, all over lisgistlation, all over corporations and startups and all over anything "AI".

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk

The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” ❧ Current Affairs

<p>So-called rationalists have created a disturbing secular religion that looks like it addresses humanity’s deepest problems, but actually justifies pursuing the social preferences of elites.</p>

Current Affairs
Show threadjilleduffyJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru 💯
Show threaddr elmyraJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru dear gods
Show threadnumbakrunchJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru They're just getting bolder in what they say publicly. They increasingly think there's no consequence for admitting it.
Show threadJon Cardoso-SilvaJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru ugh!
Show threadRich Stein (he/him)Jun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru
The Princeton bioethicist and philosopher, Peter Singer, is the "go to" imparting equal value to all lives, rather than being trapped valuing lives based on wealth or income. Wish we saw more of his thinking and less from so many others.
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦Jun 5, 2023
@RichStein @timnitGebru singer is an unabashed eugenicist and a racist too.
Show threadCorbinJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru Well-spotted. Indeed these are longtermist accelerationist dogwhistles. The only surprising part of this is that they don't appear to be pushing cryptocurrencies as a solution for banking in the developing world.
Show threadTacitus 🇮🇪Jun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru
So, long story short, the ends justify the means and worsening wealth inequality is good because population growth means there will more people who are happy than there are today because... There will just be more people. There'll still be even more unhappy people but absolute is more important than relative so shut up and give me your money, peasant.
Show threadGojira1000Jun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru I'm glad people are finally taking notice. This bullshit has been around for ages and it's just class-based eugenics with a fancy name.
Show thread@krisnelsonJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru I’m increasingly of the opinion that this billionaire-driven “longtermism” nonsense will provide the new pseudo-theoretical underpinnings of contemporary (neo-)fascism (and like the old underpinnings, it’s both evil & poorly reasoned)
Show threadzenkatJun 5, 2023

@timnitGebru
Apart from the vile genocidal undercurrents of Longtermism, one thing I find strange about their worldview is the simultaneous celebration of uncountable multitudes of "humans existing in computer simulations", alongside the existential dread of superintelligent AIs wiping out humanity.

Even in the weird sci-fi fantasy world these people live in, how are those not both the same thing?

Show threadzenkatJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru In any case, the whole movement strangely reminds me of the Chicago School of Economics. There is always power and money available to academics who are willing to provide theories that justify (and consequently strengthen) the rule of the elite.
Show threadShachihokoJun 5, 2023

@timnitGebru

More people need to understand that "longtermism" is a fucking scam, possibly even more of one than similarly-lauded-by-the-far-right objectivism.

Show threadThe FrogJun 5, 2023

@timnitGebru

It like the worse of Catholic Counter Reform mixed with the Nazi Ideology.

Holy heck

Show threadchiasmJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru Whoah. Even wrapped in a PhD that's freakin' blatant. 😡
Show threadElio CampitelliJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru "... and the fact that I and my loved ones live in a rich country has nothing to do with this."
Show threadHairyChrisJun 6, 2023

@timnitGebru But "other things" are most certainly not equal. Which is the problem.

Yay colonialism.

Show threadInfoSecBenJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru Indefensible. How awful must you be to value someone more or less based off where they are born. All human life is precious, anywhere in the world. Further, the ethical duty to the future may be important but that can’t be an excuse to ignore ethical duties in the present moment.
Show threadJ. R. DePriest    :EA DATA. SF:Jun 5, 2023
@Infosecben @timnitGebru
Not just "where they are born" but to put the value of someone's life in terms of the future wealth they might produce. It devalues so many people with a single thought. It is social theory by way of Capitalism. . It is a calculation, pretending to be objective, filled with assumptions and biases.
In Christian terms, it is a sin
Show threadJon (now at neuromatch.social)Jun 5, 2023
@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!"
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
Show threadAnne OminousJun 5, 2023

@timnitGebru JFC. his work is disgusting. rather than spending his time thinking about and implementing solutions to say, the expense and inequitable distributuion of healthcare, he spends time assigning value to human lives so that we can use the guise of ethics or philosophy to determine who might be worthy of receiving healthcare. bc if you're sick, we should just toss your quality of life, amirite?

http://amirrorclear.net/files/bubbles-under-the-wallpaper.pdf

Show threadOpenDNA⚙️Jun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru "For every million poor people who do not die today, many billions of people will not be born in the future distant future. Therefore, the ethical calculus clearly requires a policy of immediate and vigorous population suppression of the global poor." (paraphrased)
Show threadDennis ClarkJun 5, 2023

@timnitGebru
So he has a Philosophy degree and his dissertation actively endorses treating rich countries like Robert Nozick's Utility Monster?

It's bad enough when technologists spout dangerous and horrible ideas while being unaware of past work on exploring such ideas. He is wilfully ignoring such work.

I'm no philosophy expert but it sounds like a socioeconomic form of eugenics to me

Show threadCharlie StrossJun 5, 2023
@timnitGebru which is transparently bullshit because rich countries don't stay rich (eg. the UK since 1850) and poor countries don't stay poor (eg. South Korea since 1950). And that's over a period of decades! We have no way of predicting what centuries or millennia will bring: back in 1500 who in Europe would have bet on England eclipsing the Spanish Empire by 1900? (Then cratering within a century?)
Show threaddangrsmindJun 5, 2023
@cstross @timnitGebru which is what I have been saying for over a decade now. Not that anyone cares what I say.
Show thread❓ucblockheadJun 5, 2023
@cstross @timnitGebru Yeah, don't forget that the reason Europeans were so eager to sail their boats far and wide in the 15th-16th centuries was because they were dirt poor and wanted access to that fabulously wealthy empire of China.
Show threadTimothy ClarkJun 5, 2023
@cstross @timnitGebru the EA folks know it's bullshit, and they don't care. they just love all the media stroking and credulous hype for warmed-over eugenics.
Show threadPeter CockJun 5, 2023

@timnitGebru Stumbled on this post alone & it only made sense once I realised it was part of a thread. Maybe edit to add opening quote marks or (Continued) at start?

Anyway, an utterly cynical self-centred interpretation from Nick Beckstead. Thanks for posting.