Phil Torres on Against Longtermism
→ 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧:
Effective Altruism Denmark is absolutely delighted to invite you to a presentation with Phil Torres on Against Longtermism!
Phil Torres argues that the ideas of Nick Bostrom and fellow longtermists pose a bigger threat to humanity than the existential risks they trade on.
Longtermism is defined by 80,000 Hours as the idea that one of our biggest priorities should be ensuring the future goes well (https://80000hours.org/articles/future-generations/). However, Torres criticises longtermism and argues that the underlying commitments of longtermism are one of the reasons why humanity faces so many unprecedented risks to its survival in the first place. Torres believes that particularly risky ideas are transhumanism, space expansionism, and total utilitarianism.
→ 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫?
Phil Torres is currently a PhD candidate at Leibniz Universität Hannover. He earned his master’s degree in Neuroscience from Brandeis University and has a background in the Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Science.
Over the past decade, his work has centred around eschatology—the study of the ultimate destiny of humankind—and recently, he has been focused on the nature and causes of human extinction. He has written books about eschatology and existential risks, and is currently writing about the history of human extinction. He has published in scholarly journals and in popular media, and he has given talks at the Future of Humanity Institute, at Princeton University, among others.
→ 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐞:
It will take place online the 10th of February 2022.
17:00 − 17:45: Presentation
17:45 − 18:30: Q&A
→ 𝐈𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭:
- Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill “The Case for Strong Longtermism” (2021) https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/.../The-Case-for...
- Phil Torres “Against Longtermism” (Aeon, October 2021) https://aeon.co/.../why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most...
- EA forum post by CarlaZoeC “Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics.”
- Carla Zoe Cremer & Luke Kemp “Democratising Risk: In Search of a Methodology to Study Existential Risk” (SSRN, 2021) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3995225
We are looking forward to seeing you!
I would hope that an event inviting someone with as controversial a record as Phil Torres would at least recommend some readings responding to his claims.
More generally, I think Torres’s recent engagement with longtermism (particularly around spurious claims of white supremacy, but not only that) crosses the line from valuable criticism into toxic personal attack, and I’m sad to see EA groups inviting him as a speaker.
I think we would be happy to add some recommended readings which are critical of Phil , although the reading list is getting pretty long by this point (ha!)
I am pretty confident that events with speakers critical of EA are a net positive. I am surprised by those that think otherwise. Judging from those that have listed “going” on our Facebook event, the attendees will not be a group of people who are unexposed to the strongest arguments for long-termism (quite the opposite!). In order to make an impact inside longtermism, you likely need to be highly engaged, and highly engaged longtermists should be able to deal with rigorous debate.
I expect that one of the reason critical speakers are not often platformed by EA-Orgs is due to the critique (real or expected) from doing so. In a risk averse community, it’s hard to find the people with the confidence to run events like these. Which I think this is a shame because there’s huge value to be gained from it. I hope in the future we can start to move towards congratulating those who share criticism of EA or common ideas inside EA.
Regarding particular arguments Phil has made, I think the bar for “writing someone off” as no-longer worthy of being platformed should be extremely high. From speaking with Phil, it’s clear he feels disappointed and perhaps even hurt from early attempts to silence him. I would love to say my experience from hosting this event has been quite the opposite.
I am, in general, in favour of inviting critical-of-EA speakers, even those whose critiques I think are unfair or ill-founded (and I agree that “of course we’re favour of critiques as long as they’re true” is not a viable policy). I think if you gave me a list of prominent EA critics I’d be in favour of most of them being invited as speakers.
But Phil Torres has repeatedly crossed lines that I think should not be crossed. It is not okay to accuse EAs of being white supremacists without credible evidence, or to repeatedly and knowingly misrepresent your opponents in order to gain rhetorical advantage. I can’t speak directly to his personal behaviour towards members of this community, but it’s my impression that there are some quite problematic patterns there, too.
The world contains bad actors. We should be careful about labelling those who disagree with us as such, mindful of how hard it is to account for our biases when doing so. But when we do have strong evidence that someone is such, ignoring it isn’t virtuous, it’s irresponsible.
(And yes, I appreciate that very similar arguments to mine could be – and are – made in contexts where I would find their use abhorrent. I think this is just an unfortunate feature of the way the world is.)
Sounds right to me. Also sounds right that, in the modern world, repeatedly accusing a movement of being tainted with white supremacy using extremely flimsy evidence, in a manner that clearly seems to be about wielding a useful rhetorical weapon rather than anything connected to truth-seeking, is above that bar.
Reflecting on the above, I think I sound more confident about my take here than I actually am. I do lean in the direction I describe here, but I can see why some reasonable people would disagree with me that what we’ve seen from Torres is sufficient to push him past the “actively engaging with critical arguments is good” and into “this is a bad actor we should just avoid associating with”.
But I do think that in cases like this, where there’s a credible (if not ironclad) case that someone is a bad actor, it’s especially important that you provide opportunities for pushback in the form of counter-critical reading, debate partners, et cetera.
I hope some interesting discussion comes out of this. I am mostly here to shamelessly promote my recent essay on the subject !