BookWyrm

Cory Doctorow replied to Cory Doctorow's status

Won't someone think of the sims?

https://doctorow.medium.com/rich-peoples-gain-is-worth-less-than-poor-people-s-pain-6c3631292841

Like “realism,” utilitarianism is often code for “being a selfish jerk.” Think of “longtermism,” which concerns itself with a hypothetical future containing trillions of synthetic, simulated humans living inside computers. Making each of those synthetic people very slightly happier will produce a gigantic aggregate benefit.

Even a very small amount of additional happiness multiplied by trillions of imaginary people adds up to more happiness than all of the people currently alive can ever experience. By that reasoning, there’s no amount of misery one could inflict on today’s living people that would outweigh even the chance of bringing a dollop of joy to those far-future sims.

For the selfish, utilitarianism works best when it provides a justification for making themselves better off at others’ expense. At first blush, longtermism militates for everyone to don hairshirts in support of the happiness of those trillions of future sims.

But longtermism is an offshoot of “effective altruism” (whose leading spokescriminal and financier was Sam Bankman-Fried), which offers an ingenious solution to this problem: earning to give.

“Earning to give” is the utilitarian, effective altruist notion that one should take the highest-paying job one can get, even if that job involves inflicting untold misery through pollution, inequality and exploitation — provided that you eventually give all the gains away to good causes that outweigh the harm you did while earning them.

Paris Marx

After accumulating wealth and power, tech billionaires are spreading a series of ideologies to make us believe they deserve it.

On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke with Julia Black about Elon Musk’s embrace of pronatalism, Sam Altman’s vision for an AI future, and how it’s all part of a rationalist project to remake society and protect their privileged positions.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1004689/12864777-pronatalism-and-silicon-valley-s-right-wing-turn-w-julia-black

#tech #elonmusk #ai #longtermism #tescreal

popcrimes

great piece by @parismarx

"Through #effectivealtruism, #longtermism, and #pronatalism, they’re trying to have us believe that they should remain in charge and we should let them set the course of our collective future. The idea is that since they’ve built large tech companies and accumulated sizeable bank balances that they’re best placed to set societal priorities. Yet nothing could be further from the truth — and more people are recognizing it."

#TESCREAL #Musk

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/why-silicon-valley-is-bringing-eugenics

FeralRobots

Any story about #TruthGPT should at least mention that if it ever gets past the usual Elon bullshit-hype stage, it's gonna be taught about "truth" by a guy who thinks a few trillion hypothetical distant-future computer simulations of humans are more important than the 8 billion people now living.
#EffectiveAltruism #Longtermism

Tim @toolbear@ Taylor

> Altruism stops for a child crossing the road.
>
> Effective Altruism keeps going so as not to
> delay the hundreds of people in traffic behind.
>
> "Longtermism" swerves to hit the child so no
> one will ever again be delayed by them or
> their descendants.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> — Rúnar @runarorama@twitter.com, Sep 2022

#EA #EffectiveAltruism
#Longtermism
#TESCREAL

screenshot: the tweet I quoted in the post

Pauline von Hellermann

#ClimateDiary Today joint reading session with son at school; he chose this book. Made me quite emotional (also because of his world and mine merging, all too rarely) as it again brought home the idiocy of #Longtermism and reminded me of this wonderful essay by two (female) astrophysicists; on how there truly is #NoPlanetB - we evolved together with our earth

https://aeon.co/essays/we-will-never-be-able-to-live-on-another-planet-heres-why