Technology

59672 readers

3732 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

102

‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruism

I hadn't heard of any controversies around EA, it always seemed like a positive thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism

So what I'm getting is that the philosophies aren't the problem, but rather it's members of the community doing unethical things in the name of the movement

Sam Bankman-Fried
Bay Area Misogyny

In a 2023 Time magazine article, seven women reported misconduct and controversy in the effective altruism movement. They accused men within the movement, typically in the Bay Area, of using their power to groom younger women for polyamorous sexual relationships.[147] The accusers argued that the majority male demographic and the polyamorous subculture combined to create an environment where sexual misconduct was tolerated, excused or rationalized away.

Still bad and needs calling out

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Philosophy Tube have a great video about Effective Altruism. It was some time ago that I watched, but iirc, EA is just "let us do unregulated capitalism at our own benefit, because in the future trillions and trillions of humans are going to benefit from it. Don't mind the planet being destroyed now, and the billions of humans suffering now, everything would be cool in future. Trust me bro."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

God they just rebranded trickle-down-economics

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Philosophy Tube

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

That's only "longtermism". EA as introduced by Peter Singer in "the life you can save" is an incredibly sincere and well founded philosophy of charity.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The EA movement, based on what I know of it, seems as though it’s complete hogwash, just a veneer of ‘mathematically proven’ benevolence hiding privileged people who are really only endeavoring to further enrich themselves. It looks and smells like bullshit to me. I’m sure some good things have been done by people who call themselves EAs but it’s still really reminiscent to trickle down economics from my perspective

Check out the original episodes Behind the Bastards did on Bankman-Fried for a more in depth and entertaining breakdown of why they suck

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

I must have had a very surface level understanding of what it was. The parts I saw previously were about finding which charities to donate to and career development.

I've got more to read about for sure

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Sam Bankman-Fried

To be fair they seem to admit that promoting him as a positive example was a mistake.

https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/#doing-harm