"... said Luke Kemp... an 'EA-adjacent' critic of effective altruism... 'The things they push tend to be things that Silicon Valley likes,' Kemp said. They’re the kinds of speculative, futurist ideas that tech billionaires find intellectually exciting. 'And they almost always focus on technological fixes' to human problems 'rather than political or social ones.' There are other objections. For one thing, lavishly expensive, experimental bioengineering would be accessible, especially initially, to 'only a tiny sliver of humanity,' Kemp said; it could bring about a future caste system in which inequality is not only economic, but biological.... Kemp argued that effective altruism and longtermism often seem to be working toward a kind of regulatory capture. 'The long-term strategy is getting EAs and EA ideas into places like the Pentagon, the White House, the British government and the UN' to influence public policy, he said...."
From "Power-hungry robots, space colonization, cyborgs: inside the bizarre world of ‘longtermism’" (The Guardian)(which begins "Sam Bankman-Fried said his billions would save the world – but his philanthropic ideas ranged from the worthy to the severely outlandish").
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lavishly expensive, experimental bioengineering would be accessible, especially initially, to 'only a tiny sliver of humanity,' Kemp said; it could bring about a future caste system in which inequality is not only economic, but biological....
Thirty minutes. Worth the time. Go. I thought I was up on things, but this left me gobsmacked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAiTgbnXl9Q&ab_channel=ThePortalClips
It's too early to embed clips. You know what to do.
Fix the public schools first.
Luke Kemp must have read Judyth Vary Baker's "Letters to the Cyborgs - As Humans Become 51% Machines, or More, Who Will Inherit the Earth". The "future caste system in which inequality is not only economic, but biological" is definitely portrayed in the few short stories I've read so far. Interesting thing she does is footnote reference links that are to articles or experiments that bolster the science that she inserts into her stories. She published in 2016 and yet many of the references to such things as glowing animals, vaccination by eating foods, and creating animals that are part human actually were reality 5+ years ago. Just imagine how far "the science" has advanced.
One of the more interesting links she provided was to www.lifeboat.com. Now that site is a trip.
Oh, and Vary Baker is quite interesting herself. She includes an original short story by Lee Harvey Oswald. It seems Oswald was a great lover of science fiction. And Judyth knew him well enough to know not only that but a great many other things about the man. As the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination approaches, I thought this little tidbit would be intriguing.
"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro
accessible, especially initially, to 'only a tiny sliver of humanity',
But, isn't The Plan? for there Only to BE a 'only a tiny sliver of humanity' ?
Isn't The Plan? to replace most of us with robots?
“Ev'rybody's talking 'bout
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m”
Slightly off topic, but if you want to see a really terrific BBC thriller about where this might go (or maybe already is already going) check out The Capture season 2 on Peacock.
I'm sticking with Ineffective Altruism! World Bank, Care Packages, Guaranteed Income for Trans People of Color, "Care Not Cash" . . .
Once the left hand knows what the right hand's doing it's no longer altruism.
Everyone loves to tell the rich how they should spend their money. By that, I mean they want the rich to give money to themselves and their pet causes. It isn’t their money, but they want some of it. Envy and greed are powerful things.
Such peak-of-cycle phenomena. The Future Fund's endowment came from an apparent crypto fraud who couldn't wear long pants?
While they fantasize what they can do with billions of dollars to change the world, rearrange the world, history tells us priorities are likely to change. That what humanity will actually be coping with is how to handle life when trillions of dollars worth of wealth disappear in the bear market that follows a bull market -- a big, long bull market in this country.
It should be instructive to future policy makers to see how the wealth engineered through Federal Reserve money creation holds up when reality bites. It could be a valuable lesson; but probably not going to be fun. It is much more likely that this kind of speculative futurist noodling by people who've never done a productive thing in their lives will fade to black under more immediate financial pressures.
Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex is an advocate for EA. What I know about EA is from reading his excellent site. The people are quirky, but my impression of the group is positive. Importantly, their commitment to EA isn't readily aligned with any political parties. These are people who will genuinely reduce their personal consumption in order to try to make things better for others.
This Bankman-Fried character is a fraud, through and through, but let's not practice guilt by association.
Anything that doesn’t involve a person to person I-Thou relationship is somewhat sketchy in my eyes.
"expensive, experimental bioengineering would be accessible, especially initially, to 'only a tiny sliver of humanity,'"
Then again, lots of "expensive, experimental" innovations are initially "accessible" to a few and later to many. If they are worthy, the market will tell--provided progs don't get in the way or try to steer the system.
"Kemp argued that effective altruism and longtermism often seem to be working toward a kind of regulatory capture."
Of course. But so does ordinary prog activism. Power is the effect they are after.
washing Post reports that the LDS church in Salt Lake has $100B in reserve and investment assets and the vibe is that somehow that’s a scandal, despite the decades of their steadiness in caring for individuals and families in need, at the local congregation level. SBF garners billions in 2 years or so and is hailed as a first class philanthropist. What’s the difference?
One difference is that the LDS church isn’t throwing around a lot of money in Washington DC and to the in-crowd gravy-train “non-profits”.
Think about it. If you had $1M, who would you trust more to handle it for you? The LDS Church or SBF?
But the tone of these our civic-square stories get set by the self-anointed culture and reality narrators.
The narrative is deceptive. You’re being blinded - toyed with.
Effective altruism is once again just a cover the Rich and Powerful elite class to justify the corrupt policies that benefit them and destroy poor people under them.
It is easy to support Democrats and GOPe traitors from a 30 million dollar mansion in the Bahamas.
Billions of Poor people all over the world are going to starve and freeze this winter and thousands will die because of the Global Warmist Cult.
Altruism is an easily played scam upon humanity. I hate sound all 'Randian', but "the basic principle of altruism is that a man or woman has no right to exist for his or her own sake. That service to others is their justification for existence, and self sacrifice is the highest moral duty, virtue, and value. Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will, or respect for the rights of others."
In my opinion, only individuals can offer up their time, energy, monies to help others, or in service of others. Organizations, corporations, and particularly non-profits, are anything but altruistic, effective or otherwise. They are preening about, suggesting the moral superiority of their actions. Just the very clamoring of an entire generation to work for a 'non-profit' as if that marks them with a purity not seen in the otherwise lowly marketplace of self-interest, shows the level of almost religious belief in appearing to be 'altruistic'.
I would suggest that this fantasy of 'effective altruism' is entirely a play on people. These are people with a plan, and in some cases, enough money to put that plan in motion. How it ends up is another story and no one will know how any of them evolve and end up affecting the lives of people. But you can be sure, it will not be in the service of humanity, it will be to produce wealth, power, and fame for those initiating it. Such is the way of humans and has been forever. Actual helpful people don't need to advertise their goodwill. They do it out of an individual nature, means, and ability. They don't do it to be part of a movement. The movement will, in the end, roll over the very people it professes to serve.
Quayle said...
One difference is that the LDS church isn’t throwing around a lot of money in Washington DC and to the in-crowd gravy-train “non-profits”.
And they will continue to get bad press until they start donating.
Just like SBF and FTX had favorable status with the SEC.
The Regime in DC didn't take out the mob because they were murderous crooks.
They took them out because they were competition.
Eloi and >Merlocks...children regurgitating
True, oligarchs don't want a world without oligarchy, but Luke Kemp sounds like a would-be rival cult leader. Stalinists, Trotskyists, Bukharinites, Zinovievites.
“And they will continue to get bad press until they start donating”
That’s the point. Even the discussions were induced to have - the framing and the very topics and issues themselves that are highlighted - are set by a very interested cabal.
Dave Begley said...Fix the public schools first.
Schools are fine but for a concerted effort in certain influential quarters to ruin them. Fixing it will take less time and money, not more.
Kemp sounds like a typical anti-humanist. “Fix the earth first” is uselessly vague and open ended. What he really wants to do is stop progress because that’s how he fuels his self-importance.
Re: SBF
A crook is crooked. It doesn't matter what he says. He is a crook.
I'm not sure I believe Judyth Vary Baker.
About Oswald.
She's probably right about the cyborgs.
Watching JFK too many times sends people through the looking glass, people.
Fake Effective Altruism infects many current American institutions and the public. It's the kind of altruism that keeps you comfortable emotionally and financially. It doesn't do shit for the recipients of the altruism. It's polluted a lot of churches since someone first passed the hat.
It's a cloak... FTX and the Democrats just proved that.
The real effective altruist we are watching in real time is Elon Musk.
Space-x is good for mankind. So is Tesla, right? And Starlink is pretty cool...certainly helped Ukraine at the right time. NATO didn't like that? They did. They just don't want to pay for it. Musk should donate it for free!!! Forever!!!
Buying Twitter isn't about making money for him. Looks like he's having fun. I'd imagine at least half the 400 million users are too.
Musk isn't fucking with your life like Bill Gates is with this bug eating "farming solutions" and "pandemic expertise".
And Musk not using the disguise of "Altruism" to launder money through a fake crypto shell company and a warzone to fund his own political ambitions. Neither is Donald J. Trump.
Another way of looking at how "lavishly expensive, experimental bioengineering would be accessible, especially initially, to 'only a tiny sliver of humanity,'" is that the rich would be used as guinea pigs for medical R&D, which more or less is how it always has been, but I guess that doesn't align with the narrative.
Temujin said..."I hate sound all 'Randian'"
As a side note, I remember being perplexed by the virulent, irrational reaction against any mention of Rand when I was a college kid. In retrospect, it foreshadowed the way the Left seems to push anything it disagrees with in 2022 beyond the pale.
Empathy and altruism used to have meaning.
what about 'affective' altruism == virtue signaling / preening?
Musk isn't fucking with your life like Bill Gates is with this bug eating "farming solutions" and "pandemic expertise".
Gates was at peak intelligence at age 13. Paul Allan built Microsoft.
Effective Altruism apparently means stealing money from millions of people in order to buy the Senate for the Democrats. McConnell got his cut, and each of the Republicans who voted for impeachment got small amounts, but the Democrats got enough money to fund their “ground game” (ballot harvesting) in all of the swing states.
'And they almost always focus on technological fixes' to human problems 'rather than political or social ones.'
Yes, because technological changes actually work. Attempts at political and social reforms don't.
(The British officially abolished slavery on August 1, 1834. The result of this great social reform was that replacement labor was acquired from India, by a mixture of lying to people, kidnapping people, and preying on the starving and indebted. These "coolies" died at a rate of one-in-six on the trip across the ocean, and then at an annual rate of one-in-eight while laboring under conditions indistinguishable from those of the slaves of the previous decade. Human misery as the result of the production of sugarcane in the British West Indies was indistinguishable in 1840 from what it was in 1830, despite a major social reform celebrated to this day.)
EA sounds like Sci Fi wrapped in young adult cliquish moral preening.
And —almost forgot— a boatload of other people’s money.
Has someone started writing the Netflix series?
"Sam Bankman-Fried said his billions would save the world..."
So we were gonna all be saved but he blew it on that ditzy girlfriend instead?
This future caste system where inequality is biological sounds horrible compared to the present day system where people inherit traits from their parents through DNA that tend to determine their life outcomes.
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