The analysis of issues around white-supremacism seem like a bit of a strawman to me. Are there people making serious objections to long-termist views on the grounds that it will maybe favor the wealthy, and since the globally wealthy are predominantly of European descent, this implies a kind of de facto white supremacism? This seems like a kind of vague, guilty-by-correlation argument we need not take seriously, but you devote a lot of space to it so I take it you have some reason to believe many people, including those on this forum, honestly believe it.
There seems to be, like, 1 serious person who believes it.
Guilt by correlation arguments in the basic sense are silly, but can actually be valid worries about the unintended consequences of sharing an idea. I’m not strawmanning, I actually tried to steelman.
I excluded the original source because it shouldn’t be taken seriously as you say, but I still discussed the issue in the interest of fairness.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to discuss the matter privately with the main author of the white supremacy critique, as I felt the claim was v unfair in a variety of ways and know the writer personally. I do not believe I have succeeded in bringing them round. I think it’s likely that there will be a journal article making this case at some point in the coming year.
At that point a decision will need to be made by thinkers in the longtermist community re: whether it is appropriate to respond or not. (It won’t be me; I don’t see myself as someone who ‘speaks’ for EA or longtermism; rather someone whose work fits within a broad longtermist/EA frame).
What makes this a little complicated, in my view, is that there are (significantly) weaker versions of these critiques—e.g. relating to the diversity, inclusiveness, founder effects and some of the strategies within EA—that are more defensible (although I think EA has made good strides in relation to most of these critiques) and these may get tangled up with this more extreme claim among those who consider those weaker critiques valid.
While I am unsure about the appropriate strategy for the extreme claim, if and when it is publicly presented, it seems good to me to steelman and engage with the less unreasonable claims.
It seems weird that the longtermism is being accused of white supremacy given that population growth is disproportionately happening in countries that aren’t traditionally considered white? As you can see from the map on this page, population growth is concentrated in places like Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It appears to me that it’s neartermist views of population ethics (“only those currently alive are morally relevant”) that place greater moral weight on white folks? I wonder how a grandmother from one of those places, proud of her many grandchildren, would react if a childless white guy told her that future generations weren’t morally relevant… It also seems weird to position climate change as a neartermist cause.
Those grandchildren already exist; no one’s saying they don’t matter. Are you saying these grandmothers want to have more and more grandchildren? I’m not sure people in these countries are having as many children as they would prefer; I’d expect them to prefer to have fewer, if more informed or if conditions were better for them. Child brides and other forms of coercion, worse access to contraceptives, abortion and other family planning services, worse access to information, more restrictive gender roles and fewer options for making a living generally, higher infant mortality rates, etc..
Was a claim made that future generations aren’t morally relevant? I think the objections were more specifically against the total view (and the astronomical waste argument), which treats people like mere vessels for holding value. Longtermism, in practice, seems to mostly mean the total view. There are many other person-affecting views besides presentism (“only those currently alive are morally relevant”), some of which could be called longtermist, too. So-called “wide” person-affecting views solve the non-identity problem, and there’s the procreation asymmetry, too.
Thanks for the context. My initial reaction to seeing that case included was “surely this is all made up”, so surprised to learn there’s someone making this as a serious critique on the level of publishing a journal article about it, and not just random Tweets aiming to score points with particular groups who see EA in general and long-termism specifically as clustering closer to their enemies than their allies.
The analysis of issues around white-supremacism seem like a bit of a strawman to me. Are there people making serious objections to long-termist views on the grounds that it will maybe favor the wealthy, and since the globally wealthy are predominantly of European descent, this implies a kind of de facto white supremacism? This seems like a kind of vague, guilty-by-correlation argument we need not take seriously, but you devote a lot of space to it so I take it you have some reason to believe many people, including those on this forum, honestly believe it.
There seems to be, like, 1 serious person who believes it.
Guilt by correlation arguments in the basic sense are silly, but can actually be valid worries about the unintended consequences of sharing an idea. I’m not strawmanning, I actually tried to steelman.
I excluded the original source because it shouldn’t be taken seriously as you say, but I still discussed the issue in the interest of fairness.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to discuss the matter privately with the main author of the white supremacy critique, as I felt the claim was v unfair in a variety of ways and know the writer personally. I do not believe I have succeeded in bringing them round. I think it’s likely that there will be a journal article making this case at some point in the coming year.
At that point a decision will need to be made by thinkers in the longtermist community re: whether it is appropriate to respond or not. (It won’t be me; I don’t see myself as someone who ‘speaks’ for EA or longtermism; rather someone whose work fits within a broad longtermist/EA frame).
What makes this a little complicated, in my view, is that there are (significantly) weaker versions of these critiques—e.g. relating to the diversity, inclusiveness, founder effects and some of the strategies within EA—that are more defensible (although I think EA has made good strides in relation to most of these critiques) and these may get tangled up with this more extreme claim among those who consider those weaker critiques valid.
While I am unsure about the appropriate strategy for the extreme claim, if and when it is publicly presented, it seems good to me to steelman and engage with the less unreasonable claims.
It seems weird that the longtermism is being accused of white supremacy given that population growth is disproportionately happening in countries that aren’t traditionally considered white? As you can see from the map on this page, population growth is concentrated in places like Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It appears to me that it’s neartermist views of population ethics (“only those currently alive are morally relevant”) that place greater moral weight on white folks? I wonder how a grandmother from one of those places, proud of her many grandchildren, would react if a childless white guy told her that future generations weren’t morally relevant… It also seems weird to position climate change as a neartermist cause.
Those grandchildren already exist; no one’s saying they don’t matter. Are you saying these grandmothers want to have more and more grandchildren? I’m not sure people in these countries are having as many children as they would prefer; I’d expect them to prefer to have fewer, if more informed or if conditions were better for them. Child brides and other forms of coercion, worse access to contraceptives, abortion and other family planning services, worse access to information, more restrictive gender roles and fewer options for making a living generally, higher infant mortality rates, etc..
Was a claim made that future generations aren’t morally relevant? I think the objections were more specifically against the total view (and the astronomical waste argument), which treats people like mere vessels for holding value. Longtermism, in practice, seems to mostly mean the total view. There are many other person-affecting views besides presentism (“only those currently alive are morally relevant”), some of which could be called longtermist, too. So-called “wide” person-affecting views solve the non-identity problem, and there’s the procreation asymmetry, too.
Thanks for the context. My initial reaction to seeing that case included was “surely this is all made up”, so surprised to learn there’s someone making this as a serious critique on the level of publishing a journal article about it, and not just random Tweets aiming to score points with particular groups who see EA in general and long-termism specifically as clustering closer to their enemies than their allies.