Would an effective altruist movement in the 1920s U.S. have been eugenicist? If we think we would have embraced a pseudoscientific and deeply harmful movement like the sterilization campaigns of the Progressive era, what habits of mind and thought would have prevented us from doing that, and are we actively employing them?
This is a good question and itās disconcertingly relevant given the very bizarre and very baffling apparent sympathy toward or at least tolerance of eugenics and scientific racism on the EA Forum and in EA-related spaces.
I agree with the point that we should expand the moral circle to wild animals and see if thereās anything we can do to alleviate wild animal suffering, or at least take the preliminary steps of trying to understand it better so maybe one day we can.
I just also think thereās a gentle, sad irony when people bring up historical social justice examples or historical examples of racism and sexism to frame conversations about expanding the moral circle or advancing radical ideas, and yet the receptiveness of a lot of people in EA to social justice arguments or concerns relating to racism and sexism seems disconcertingly mixed.
For context, there is an excellent catalogue of incidents related to racism, scientific racism, and eugenics on the EA Forum in this post on David Thorstadās Reflective Altruism blog. I donāt really know how to understand people on the EA Forum who want to defend a post that cites Mankind Quarterly, an explicitly racist journal, widely described by journalists as white supremacist, whose co-founder and former editor had connections to both the German Nazi Party and the American Nazi Party. Some people defended the post on the object level, others defended it against the notion that it should be deleted by the EA Forumās moderators, but both seem extremely wrong to me, and I really donāt understand this perspective.
This is a good question and itās disconcertingly relevant given the very bizarre and very baffling apparent sympathy toward or at least tolerance of eugenics and scientific racism on the EA Forum and in EA-related spaces.
I agree with the point that we should expand the moral circle to wild animals and see if thereās anything we can do to alleviate wild animal suffering, or at least take the preliminary steps of trying to understand it better so maybe one day we can.
I just also think thereās a gentle, sad irony when people bring up historical social justice examples or historical examples of racism and sexism to frame conversations about expanding the moral circle or advancing radical ideas, and yet the receptiveness of a lot of people in EA to social justice arguments or concerns relating to racism and sexism seems disconcertingly mixed.
For context, there is an excellent catalogue of incidents related to racism, scientific racism, and eugenics on the EA Forum in this post on David Thorstadās Reflective Altruism blog. I donāt really know how to understand people on the EA Forum who want to defend a post that cites Mankind Quarterly, an explicitly racist journal, widely described by journalists as white supremacist, whose co-founder and former editor had connections to both the German Nazi Party and the American Nazi Party. Some people defended the post on the object level, others defended it against the notion that it should be deleted by the EA Forumās moderators, but both seem extremely wrong to me, and I really donāt understand this perspective.