The "effective altruism" and "effective accelerationism" ideologies that have been cropping up in AI debates are just a thin veneer over the typical blend of Silicon Valley techno-utopianism, inflated egos, and greed. Let's try something else. newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/effective-... - ThreadSky

molly.wiki • 504 days ago

The "effective altruism" and "effective accelerationism" ideologies that have been cropping up in AI debates are just a thin veneer over the typical blend of Silicon Valley techno-utopianism, inflated egos, and greed. Let's try something else.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/effective-obfuscation

Comments

orangejay.bsky.social•504 days ago

It's a good piece, you mention effective altruism's flirtation with eugenics but the proponents of effective accelerationism are even more explicit about their eugenic ideas.

Andreessen regards Nick Land and Neven Sesardic as patron saints of E/acc.

msgeek.bsky.social•504 days ago

Tech Bros gonna Bro.

natedub.bsky.social•503 days ago

@gilmorejon.bsky.social I just listened to the recent What's Left of Philosophy episode on effective altruism (thank you for that lovely evisceration of this "philosophy"), and found Molly's essay here an appropriate companion piece dissecting the motivated reasoning behind the ideology.

hadespuppy.bsky.social•503 days ago

Every time people start talking about Effective Altruism, I think back to the Worm Wars episode of Maintenance Phase and how in practice, EA seems to be running on a wholly different definition of "effective."

redsonja.bsky.social•503 days ago

And am now reading the Current Affairs dialogue your excellent article linked to. And the bit about eugenics as a theme in EA, etc., reminds me of an advanced genetics class I took in college (very short thread follows.)

redsonja.bsky.social•503 days ago

The professor at one point said that advances in genetics would mean that soon, every infant would be born "perfect." To which my classmates, of all beliefs and non-beliefs, of all ages and backgrounds, said to a man & woman: I wouldn't want that.

redsonja.bsky.social•503 days ago

The professor was astonished. But my classmates said, though they hoped that science could heal some of the havoc genetics could wreak, they didn't want a world in which everyone was the same and so-called perfect.

ratioclub.bsky.social•504 days ago

Good piece! I've met some of the big EA philosophers personally and have strong criticisms of their conclusions but it's clear these tech people don't even really understand the ideas, they've just recognised it as something that can be twisted to their own ends

brainwormsensei.bsky.social•503 days ago

I miss when the ideological foundations supporting capitalism were just Evangelical predestination doctrine giving the wealthy divine right. As society and its justifications have secularised it’s just all this goofy bullshit no one believes about imagining a robot king.

adefwebserver.com•504 days ago

The core problem for me with the EA set is: "Seriously you think you are God and can actually know *truth* and what will happen in the future?? (all their arguments are based on knowing their present actions on a future event)" - A bit of Humility would do a bit of good in my humble opinion :)

bgrove777.bsky.social•504 days ago

Read your article this morning via newsletter ... great take on this mumbo jumbo.

cullenskink.bsky.social•504 days ago

Thank you for the excellent article. It reminded me strongly of the themes in a short podcast series from the BBC, The Immortals, about the self-same people pushing for anti-ageing (again, e/acc).

thelasttheorist.bsky.social•502 days ago

Even the basic rules of hype suggest that we should be suspicious of something with "effective" in the name.

spider.florist•504 days ago

A friend started working for the CEA out of college and while she was trying to explain EA’s weighing of need to me I said “this sounds like it could be used to justify prioritizing a distant existential threat over a current major one” and realized for her that was a feature, not a bug. Bleak.

molly.wiki•504 days ago

Both effective altruism and effective accelerationism embrace as a given the idea of a super-powerful artificial general intelligence being just around the corner, an assumption that leaves little room for discussion of the many ways that AI is harming real people today.

molly.wiki•504 days ago

Effective accelerationism has found an ally in Marc Andreessen, but his recent manifesto exposes that he just wants to go back to the old days when tech founders were uncritically revered, and when obstacles between him and staggering profits were nearly nonexistent.

rribbitt.bsky.social•504 days ago

These tech people think their gadgets and gizmos should be the centerpiece of, instead of supplement to, the human experience.

carlabean.bsky.social•504 days ago

Andreessen has always been a terrible person.

timpanogosslim.bsky.social•504 days ago

Accelerationism is a fallacy with absolutely zero supporting evidence, and all of its proponents should be condemned as bad actors.

djcentos7.bsky.social•504 days ago

The real risks of AI are already here.

threnody.bsky.social•504 days ago

gave a work presentation about why we shouldn’t touch AI with a 10ft pole, centered around that anorexia hotline that fired its experts for AI, found the tech wanting/harmful, couldn’t hire the experts back, had to shut down. the response was just “uh-oh…someone’s worried about skynet!”

pharos.bsky.social•504 days ago

Bit sad EA has been co-opted by these "longtermists" (a term you never used in your article?)

I always thought EA was a pretty simple philosophy that was extremely demanding of its practitioners. If your coffee could buy a mosquito net that could save a life, is it wrong to buy that coffee?

pharos.bsky.social•504 days ago

Of course that's an extreme example, and the more common example might be donating to a local charity vs one in a poor region where it has 50-1000x the impact

lids.bsky.social•504 days ago

It’s just bullshit thrown about to excuse unchecked greed.

hellhoundofkrim.bsky.social•504 days ago

dropped this article in the work's group chat, now putting flight mode on

horen.bsky.social•503 days ago

Right!

tyrotcm.bsky.social•504 days ago

And misused terminology. Buzzwords are a menace to clear communication.

goldavelez.org•504 days ago

I would like to point out to the hoi polloi here that Molly has a "subscriber chat" if you buy her newsletter and that is where all the really important people are. Furthermore you can "gift" yourself 1 month if you don't want a recurring subscription just yet. This message brought to you by me.

molly.wiki•504 days ago

ooh i didn't realize you could do that with gift subscriptions, that's good to know!

nemzes.net•504 days ago

So many of these topics were sounding familiar, and then I recalled that the mindset has been around for at least a century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

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