From a Vox article titled "I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried."
We're supposed to equate the failure to come into existence with the death of an existing human being? Will Vox sign on to the abortion-is-genocide position?
ADDED: That last question suggests that Vox is signing on with the people its headline calls "nerds." That's an inappropriate suggestion.
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A genocide causes massive suffering. Extinction wouldn't cause suffering to the nonexistent people who were never conceived.
Will Vox sign on to the abortion-is-genocide position?
Silly girl. Of course not. cuz....
Anyone who has lived a while has met people who are brilliant at math, science or art, who are idiots at common sense.
There's no easy way back once a person accommodates the idea that genes are making us do their bidding.
Next on my agenda is figuring out whether the illusion of free will is adaptive.
How does this argument apply to vegetarians and vegans? Wouldn't most farm animals go extinct if they no longer were useful to people?
I just read a great book called Superintelligence. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about the very real existential threat posed by the development of a generally intelligent AI. It was actually pretty scary.
That'd set up a process of exponential growth in intelligence until we get an AI so smart that it would almost certainly be able to control the world if it wanted to.
Because, when you look at human history, the folks who lorded it over the rest of humanity were --- the smartest guys in the room! Yeah, that's it --- smart. Everybody's read Genghis Khan's pioneering work on the law of large numbers & it's importance for the understanding of stochastic processes, right?
Do you think that maybe this was a bunch of nerds seeing the world through nerdish lenses? Just a bit?
As for what's going to end it all, the answer is volcanism, and we can't do a damn thing about it except move to another planet. If & when another Siberian Traps type event occurs, we & the rest of the biosphere, are just fucked.
The quote in the post headline is not Vox's opinion, it's Vox reporting what (some?) of the "Effective Altruism"crowd believes. I haven't read the whole article, but the headline and the tone of what I read, Vox is explicitly rejecting that logic. Which is consistent with their pro-abortion politics, but isn't consistent with the generally pro-abortion politics of most of the people in the EA movement.
Imagine the loss of humanity caused by a single condom!
Imagine the loss of humanity caused by a single condom!
Vox and the Pope are on the same page!
Ann,
I think you misread the article- Dylan Matthews cites that as something the attendees at the Effective Altruism Global conference believe, and then goes on to reject it and write about how they're missing the point. You could rightly ask that question of the appropriate EA Global folks (I assure you, there's numerous EA advocates besides just Dylan who don't subscribe to the "X-risks uber alles" concept, and he knows it). But neither Vox nor Dylan Matthews is on the hook for endorsing it.
I see Anthony @ 9:58 beat me to the punch.
(Is that phrase even acceptable anymore?)
By that standard, all of our money ought to be going into prevention of comet impacts, every cent spent on global warming prevention is misspent.
Supposedly I read, in a book called "Rain of Iron and Ice" that some monks were looking at the moon and it took an impact from an asteroid, apparently, and visibly rung like a bell.
10K years ago the planet was hit by a comet, apparently, and the climate cooled drastically for two centuries.
Those things happened, well, who knows, the monks may have been lying, but I doubt it. They can happen again.
Forget abortion: By the logic of the Voxers, the loss of potential human life from contraception and then the progeny of same, is a vast loss of human life.
Even in natural conception, there is loss of hundreds of millions of potential humans--only one sperm gets to fertilize the one egg. The hundreds of million others, which each would have made a different person, don't make that potential person.
One can think of potential humans, but this way lies madness.
As the article reports, those EA types are very white and very male. Nuff said.
They assume "human extinction is far, far worse than anything that could happen to real, living humans today," which one would expect of arrogant anthropocentric white males.
They should get with the neo-Malthusian, deep-eco program pronto.
Before Vox, there was Monty Python
There is a reason Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor. That's different than taking a general interest in the plight of humanity in general, which can be used to justify a whole lot of self indulgent nonsense.
An underlying, unexamined assumption, is that existence is an automatic good. There are plenty of philosophers that would argue that with you about that.
Is the albino in Africa who has had their limbs amputated so they can be used to make magic potions better off being alive? If they had never existed then they would not have suffered.
From a purely Utilitarian standpoint, the extinction of the Human Race could be seen as a moral necessity.
Humans going extinct is an absolute under the current physical properties of the universe.
And why, exactly, should the Homo Sapien species be privileged over whatever evolves to replace us?
And what about all the other animal species we exploit? Wouldn't they be better off without us around?
And why, exactly, should the Homo Sapien species be privileged over whatever evolves to replace us?
The only inalienable right is to self defense.
Also, what @Henry said. You would think a bunch of nerds would understand the Laws of Thermodynamics and "Heat Death."
This nerd-shaming has got to stop.
Bobby said...
I see Anthony @ 9:58 beat me to the punch.
(Is that phrase even acceptable anymore?)
Only after a trigger warning, and with provision of a safe room with small snuggly stuffed animals to cuddle.
@tim in vermont
I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm assuming that most of the "nerds" are going to be Utilitarians, at least functionally even if they are not aware of it, but have not really examined their underlying assumptions.
I meant to credit that to Robert Heinlein, but it could have been Frank Herbert.
Yeah, what about the suffering of "future humans" who are this close (holds fingers 6cm apart) from being born?
Intellectual consistency is SO hard!
@Ron,
I just like to use that quote when I can fit it in.
(Is that phrase even acceptable anymore?)
Only if it's strong, and served in a bowl.
They were using a future span of 50 million years in their projections.
The chances that human society will not be massively disrupted, or even extinguished, during that period of time are extremely low. The uncontrollable events include asteroid hit, volcanic activity, solar events, continental drift and natural climate change. Controllable events include war, disease, famine, exhaustion of resources, pollution, political failure, misuse of technology and probably other factors we can not image now. It's hardly imaginable what human society might look like a thousand years from now, let alone multiples of a million. The best we can hope for is that the disruptions do not extinguish the species and a remnant can start to rebuild. The rebuilding might require a reinvention of technology, and that might even be taboo depending on the nature of the disruptive event.
It is interesting that all of this supposed brain power is concentrated on such a distant future. Are they just uninterested in the problems we need to solve today? If so why? Perhaps they are just feckless and grandiose.
dbp said...
Anyone who has lived a while has met people who are brilliant at math, science or art, who are idiots at common sense.
8/13/15, 9:43 AM"
Question: if through genetic engineering the average IQ could be raised to 160, and every human born would have no less than that IQ over three generations would anyone be considered brilliant in maths, sciences or art? And would there be an overall increase in what is considered common sense and in wisdom?
Thanks for the push to write a clarification.
Absent a divinity that prevents it, the human race will be extinct in 50 million years.
If nothing else, we will have modified our own genome to such an extent that our descendants will be another species.
YoungHegelian said...
Because, when you look at human history, the folks who lorded it over the rest of humanity were --- the smartest guys in the room! Yeah, that's it --- smart. Everybody's read Genghis Khan's pioneering work on the law of large numbers & it's importance for the understanding of stochastic processes, right?
It does not necessarily take science or book smarts, but it does take the ability to plan, assess risks, that sort of thing. And, all other things being equal, the better you are at those things, the more likely you are to succeed.
It also takes a motivation to achieve domination, and a lack of moral inhibitors that would get in the way of doing what is necessary to achieve your goals.
The AI community is actively working to achieve the kind of intelligence that would be able to greatly outthink all of humanity. They are working on motivation and goal-setting, as those are useful skills for a wide range of tasks to which we might apply AI. So it is entirely conceivable that an artificial intelligence might stumble upon world domination as its goal.
That is why researchers are concerned, and why they are advocating research, including finding a way to add the equivalent of a moral inhibitor, and how to do it in a way that the AI itself can't remove, even when it is much smarter than we are.
John Althouse Cohen said...
A genocide causes massive suffering. Extinction wouldn't cause suffering to the nonexistent people who were never conceived.
So if we could develop a painless form of death, and apply it by surprise, that would be okay?
Consider the auk;
Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
Consider man, who may well become extinct
Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.
Ogden Nash
Voyager should have had a picture of an awk too.
Sebastian said...
As the article reports, those EA types are very white and very male. Nuff said.
8/13/15, 10:13 AM
Right, cause only "very white and very male" people can be nutters...
If PETA's message is "Meat is Murder" then is their message, "Contraception is Killing"? Think of the potential lives that will not exist (and all because of your selfishness).
But if contraception is killing, wouldn't that imply a duty to produce as many children as possible (or at least support research on artificial wombs)? Or would that forbidden due to potential ecocatastrophe?
If you thought possible extinction was (or should be) humanity's most pressing concern and you were a Silicon Valley zillionaire, shouldn't you be supporting efforts to build self-sustaining colonies on Mars (or the Moon, or Lagrangian point habitats, or something)?
So if we could develop a painless form of death, and apply it by surprise, that would be okay?
An oft explored theme in SF. One story I remember had to to with a race that came here, took excellent care of each and every one of us, provided for our every need outside of procreation, then took over the planet when we were gone.
My feeling is that life is a good thing, and thus providing that opportunity to significantly more people is significantly good.
I think where the EA people in the article are getting lost is that they are not considering all the possible resources that could be brought to bear on the problem they are trying to solve. The greatest resource available to solve human problems are humans. But people living in poverty are a much less valuable resource than those same people, well fed, well educated, and productive.
A million dollars spent on effective poverty reduction will probably do more to prevent extinction than a million dollars spent on gourmet food and snacks for AI researchers.
As for what's going to end it all, the answer is volcanism...
...or when Chicxulub's little brother pays us a visit. Check you Mayan calendars.
Read the article. Surprisingly good for Vox, which by normal standards it probably ranks above average.
The author does do a good job of popping the balloon of hypothetical risk. It is guessing, often with a bias towards the avenue that interests the guesser. And, yes, the EA guys have definitely watched too much science fiction, which is both a good and bad thing. The risks of a meteor/comet hit or a massive volcanic eruption or a widespread plague or an out of control AI are real concerns that should be seriously addressed. However, ignoring poverty reduction in the process is foolish. It is crass to focus on a theoretical concern - the lottery ticket of doom if you will - while some guy is starving to death because you decided his life did not matter.
Of course, being Vox it has its usual crap. The "white privilege" garbage is a theme throughout, which is just acceptable racism for hipsters. And then when they get to the animals - hey, I thought we were concerned about humanity here! - there is lots of nice analysis of how much it would cost to reduce the suffering of animals without even a whisper of what the impact on humanity would be. If you are going to put numbers on giving, you need to put numbers on EVERYTHING. Maybe they did and it was not reported, but if not this is just unintended consequences to three decimal places. The smartest folks in the room are often also the dumbest folks in the room.
Time to develop an FTL drive and go exploring. Surprised a room full of nerds didn't consider that.
Ignorance is Bliss said...
My feeling is that life is a good thing, and thus providing that opportunity to significantly more people is significantly good.
I think where the EA people in the article are getting lost is that they are not considering all the possible resources that could be brought to bear on the problem they are trying to solve. The greatest resource available to solve human problems are humans. But people living in poverty are a much less valuable resource than those same people, well fed, well educated, and productive.
A million dollars spent on effective poverty reduction will probably do more to prevent extinction than a million dollars spent on gourmet food and snacks for AI researchers.
8/13/15, 11:04 AM"
What is effective poverty reduction other than a wish? And what definition of poverty are we going to use that is commonly accepted? We have spent trillions on income redistribution and other poverty elimination programs since 1965 with not that much to show for it. Essentially according the recent stats we are pretty much where we were in 1965 in terms of poverty levels although not in absolute terms.
What is effective poverty reduction other than a wish? And what definition of poverty are we going to use that is commonly accepted?
How about a dirt poor colonial backwater like South Korea circa 1953? Versus what it looks like now? With the mother-of-all-control groups over the DMZ.
Or how about India before the Green Revolution or China just after Mao?
tim in vermont: An oft explored theme in SF. One story I remember had to to with a race that came here, took excellent care of each and every one of us, provided for our every need outside of procreation, then took over the planet when we were gone.
Planned Parenthood?
cubanbob said...
We have spent trillions on income redistribution and other poverty elimination programs since 1965 with not that much to show for it. Essentially according the recent stats we are pretty much where we were in 1965 in terms of poverty levels although not in absolute terms.
8/13/15, 11:21 AM
The biggest problem with the "poverty reduction / elimination" efforts is that they are all government run. There is no real reason to actually succeed. There is no real issue with not succeeding. They will not get shut down due to being a failure, they will actually get more money, more resources, and more power to continue the "good fight". Their programs have (in real terms) subject more people to "poverty" with the caveat that GENERALLY speaking (notice I said generally, not specifically) someone living in [government declared] poverty is far better off today than 40 years ago. Most people living in poverty in America are better off and living more comfortably than at least 50% of the rest of the world.
The other main reason that we still have "poverty" is liberals. They are opposed to all actual activities that could reduce poverty. They are against capitalism. They are against democracy. They are against decentralization. They are against free trade.
All of those things would spread wealth around more easily, efficiently, and with the least amount of loss to those that are already not poor but most liberals think those ways are (to borrow from another post) "yucky" and result in too many people doing what they want verses what liberals think that they should be doing and so there we are...
An oft explored theme in SF. One story I remember had to to with a race that came here, took excellent care of each and every one of us, provided for our every need outside of procreation, then took over the planet when we were gone.
They did a couple of episodes on that theme on Stargate:SG1.
Of course the race was humans that had been taken from Earth several thousand years previously and had advanced to a higher technical level than Earth had.
But the story line was the same. They came as allies, provided lots of advanced tech that cured all diseases, eliminated hunger and want, and made live on Earth just peachy for everyone.
They also secretly introduced a chemical that reduced human reproductive capacity so that after 100 - 200 years the natives would die off. It was there standard manner of expanding to other planets.
Virtually all potential humans will never be born and there's nothing we can do about it.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...There's no easy way back once a person accommodates the idea that genes are making us do their bidding.
Men and women are eggs' and sperm's way of making more eggs and sperm.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
They also secretly introduced a chemical that reduced human reproductive capacity so that after 100 - 200 years the natives would die off. It was there standard manner of expanding to other planets.
8/13/15, 11:35 AM
That raises an interesting question. Which is more important? Your "race" (i.e. genes) or your culture? Which would you rather have survive? If the "human" culture spread across the galaxy (a la Star Trek ~ sort of) and the entire galaxy was "human culture" like, even if they did not share the same genes, would that be better than if humanity managed to eke out survival on one or two backwater worlds? Would you rather your culture service or your race?
Essentially according the recent stats we are pretty much where we were in 1965 in terms of poverty levels although not in absolute terms.
The reason why we still have poverty is that the government continuously changes the definition of poverty. Literally.
If we focused on standard of living instead, then the war on poverty has been an overwhelming success. The biggest problem "poor" people have today is obesity.
Interesting. The long, cold perspective gives me that chilling feeling of an impersonal God that gives not one fuck about the pain actual people are going through because it all "is redeemed in the end."
How does this argument apply to vegetarians and vegans? Wouldn't most farm animals go extinct if they no longer were useful to people?
I have often argues that if you really want to prevent animals like pandas from going extinct, you need to come up with some tasty recipes for them.
Gahrie said... [hush][hide comment]
How does this argument apply to vegetarians and vegans? Wouldn't most farm animals go extinct if they no longer were useful to people?
I have often argues that if you really want to prevent animals like pandas from going extinct, you need to come up with some tasty recipes for them.
8/13/15, 11:44 AM
Tender strips of Panda filet over baby bamboo shoots with a peanut/ginger sauce. Yummmm...
If you thought possible extinction was (or should be) humanity's most pressing concern and you were a Silicon Valley zillionaire, shouldn't you be supporting efforts to build self-sustaining colonies on Mars (or the Moon, or Lagrangian point habitats, or something)?
Many of them are. Elon Musk is perhaps the best example.
Time to develop an FTL drive and go exploring. Surprised a room full of nerds didn't consider that.
That's because we are science nerds and FTL is element of the fantasy genre.
Which is more important? Your "race" (i.e. genes) or your culture?
I'd say "culture". An outward-looking, technophilic culture would do plenty to carry the genes with it.
They also secretly introduced a chemical that reduced human reproductive capacity so that...
"It's the PAX...the people here stopped fighting, and then they stopped everything else."
"They were using a future span of 50 million years in their projections."
I don't think these guys grock "million".
Do you think these AI folks, who tend to be very progressive in select aspects of their politics, give a rats ass about the SJW wing?
We already know that the SJW wing despises the Google Bus crowd.
So goes the growing culture clash between those progs who supply money and those progs who supply votes.
By that standard, birth control is genocide,
grock
It's grok, no "c".
By the way, I believe grok is the first word of an extraterrestrial language to be adopted by the English language.
I blame auto-correct. Yeah, that's it.
these nerds never heard of "present value"?
For those who ways it's time to go to the stars; it doesn't matter. The universe WILL end and become uninhabitable long before then. Regardless, spending money to forestall events millions of years into the future is inane.
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