It certainly reads better as satire than intellectual history. A valid criticism of the idea of “TESCREALISM” is that bundling together a long list of niche ideas just because they involve overlapping people hanging out on overlapping niche corners of the web (and in California) to debate related ideas about the future and their own cleverness doesn’t actually make it a coherent *thing*, given that lots of the individual representatives of those groups have strong disagreements with the others and the average EA probably doesn’t know what cosmism is.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to take seriously the idea that secular intellectuals who find the Singularity and some of its loudest advocates a bit silly and some of the related ideas pushed a bit sus are covertly defending a particular side of a centuries old debate in Christian theology...
“On the other hand, it’s difficult to take seriously the idea that secular intellectuals who find the Singularity and some of its loudest advocates a bit silly and some of the related ideas pushed a bit sus are covertly defending a particular side of a centuries old debate in Christian theology”
I think the implicit claim is more “they have absorbed a lot of contestable ideas from a particular intellectual tradition that began with certain parts of Christian theology [and remember theology was politics in early modern Europe to a quite high degree], which now just seem commonsense to them, but are in fact highly contestable, and which now seem what being “left-wing” is to them, but which in fact historically have in many cases been associated with the right for hundreds of years”. But I agree it probably does function better as a bit of a sophisticated troll, interesting as the historical claims are.
To be clear here I am not trying to suggest that all people who find the singularity a bit silly—I would include myself in this category—share some sort of underlying religious assumption, only that most vocal technology critics like Gebru and Torres who both oppose things like singulatarianism and accuse it of being deeply, intrinsically connected to the entire ideology of “progress” and “technology” as a whole are mostly drawing on previous thought which was based on such religious assumptions, even if they themselves are not aware of it.
But Gebru and Torres don’t object to “the entire ideology of progress and technology” so much as accuse a certain [loosely-defined] group of making nebulous fantasy arguments about progress and technology to support their own ends, suggest they’re bypassing a load of lower level debates about how actual progress and technology is distributed and accuse them of being racist. It’s a subset of the “TESCREALs” who want AI development stopped altogether, and I don’t think they’re subliminally influenced by ancient debates on divine purpose either.
It’s something of an understatement to suggest that it’s not just Catholics and Anglicans opposed to ideas they disagree with gaining too much power and influence,[1] and it would be even more tendentious to argue that secular TESCREALs’ interest in shaping the future and consequentialism is aligned in any way with Calvinist predestination.
If Calvin were to encounter any part of the EA movement he’d be far more scathing than Gebru and Torres or people writing essays about how utilitarianism is bunk.[2] Maybe TESCREALism is just anti-Calvinism ;) …
Calvin was opposed to them too, although he believed heretics should suffer the death penalty rather than merely being invited to read thousand word blogs and papers about how they were bad people.
It certainly reads better as satire than intellectual history. A valid criticism of the idea of “TESCREALISM” is that bundling together a long list of niche ideas just because they involve overlapping people hanging out on overlapping niche corners of the web (and in California) to debate related ideas about the future and their own cleverness doesn’t actually make it a coherent *thing*, given that lots of the individual representatives of those groups have strong disagreements with the others and the average EA probably doesn’t know what cosmism is.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to take seriously the idea that secular intellectuals who find the Singularity and some of its loudest advocates a bit silly and some of the related ideas pushed a bit sus are covertly defending a particular side of a centuries old debate in Christian theology...
“On the other hand, it’s difficult to take seriously the idea that secular intellectuals who find the Singularity and some of its loudest advocates a bit silly and some of the related ideas pushed a bit sus are covertly defending a particular side of a centuries old debate in Christian theology”
I think the implicit claim is more “they have absorbed a lot of contestable ideas from a particular intellectual tradition that began with certain parts of Christian theology [and remember theology was politics in early modern Europe to a quite high degree], which now just seem commonsense to them, but are in fact highly contestable, and which now seem what being “left-wing” is to them, but which in fact historically have in many cases been associated with the right for hundreds of years”. But I agree it probably does function better as a bit of a sophisticated troll, interesting as the historical claims are.
To be clear here I am not trying to suggest that all people who find the singularity a bit silly—I would include myself in this category—share some sort of underlying religious assumption, only that most vocal technology critics like Gebru and Torres who both oppose things like singulatarianism and accuse it of being deeply, intrinsically connected to the entire ideology of “progress” and “technology” as a whole are mostly drawing on previous thought which was based on such religious assumptions, even if they themselves are not aware of it.
But Gebru and Torres don’t object to “the entire ideology of progress and technology” so much as accuse a certain [loosely-defined] group of making nebulous fantasy arguments about progress and technology to support their own ends, suggest they’re bypassing a load of lower level debates about how actual progress and technology is distributed and accuse them of being racist. It’s a subset of the “TESCREALs” who want AI development stopped altogether, and I don’t think they’re subliminally influenced by ancient debates on divine purpose either.
It’s something of an understatement to suggest that it’s not just Catholics and Anglicans opposed to ideas they disagree with gaining too much power and influence,[1] and it would be even more tendentious to argue that secular TESCREALs’ interest in shaping the future and consequentialism is aligned in any way with Calvinist predestination.
If Calvin were to encounter any part of the EA movement he’d be far more scathing than Gebru and Torres or people writing essays about how utilitarianism is bunk.[2] Maybe TESCREALism is just anti-Calvinism ;) …
Calvin was opposed to them too, although he believed heretics should suffer the death penalty rather than merely being invited to read thousand word blogs and papers about how they were bad people.
and be equally convinced that the e-accelerationists and Timnit and Emile were condemned to eternal damnation.