I don’t plan to engage deeply with this post, but I wanted to leave a comment pushing back on the unsubtle currents of genetic determinism (“individuals from those families with sociological profiles amenable to movements like effective altruism, progressivism, or broad Western Civilisational values are being selected out of the gene pool”), homophobia (“cultures that accept gay people on average have lower birth rates and are ultimately outnumbered by neighboring homophobic cultures”, in a piece that is all about how low birth rates are a key problem of our time) , and ethnonationalism (“based in developed countries that will be badly hit by the results of these skewed demographics”) running through this piece.
I believe that genetics influence individual personality, but am very skeptical of claims of strong genetic determinism, especially on a societal level. Moreover, it seems to me that one of the core values of effective altruism is that of impartiality― giving equal moral weight to people who are distant from me in space and/or time. The kind of essentialist and elitist rhetoric common among people who concern themselves with demographic collapse seems in direct opposition to that value; if you think a key priority of our time is ensuring the right people have children, especially if your definition of “the right people” focuses on elite and wealthy people in Western countries, I doubt that we have compatible notions of what it means to do the most good.
Many pieces that criticize effective altruism quote this paragraph from Nick Beckstead’s2013 thesis:
To take another example, saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive. By ordinary standards, at least by ordinary enlightened humanitarian standards, saving and improving lives in rich countries is about equally as important as saving and improving lives in poor countries, provided lives are improved by roughly comparable amounts. But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal.
I would like our community to be unequivocal that all other things are not equal, and would distance myself from a community/movement that embraced an idea that lives in rich countries are more important than lives in poor countries. This seems, as I said, in direct opposition to the core values that attracted me to effective altruism.
Thanks Tessa, I strongly endorse and appreciate this comment. It’s also worth noting here that the Collinses were very recently featured in an article, which has already associated EA/longtermism with these views, and also hinted at a plan or opportunistic power grab:
[Collins] also weighed in on the stunning implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX, which represented one of the largest financial hubs for the effective-altruism movement. The Collinses, who never directly associated with the top Democratic donor Bankman-Fried, spied an opportunity in his demise.
“This means our faction (more conservative, pronatalist, long-termist-civilization-building-focused, likely to self fund) is now 100X more likely to become a real, dominant faction in the EA space,” Simone wrote in a text message on November 12.
I was worried that this could potentially represent a risk to EA and linkposted that article, though I do not believe the article itself is worthy of engagement given the above comment-I am just leaving it here for public record in case other people come across this post later.
I worry that EA is becoming overly focused on performative progressivism (in which no feelings can be hurt) and not genuine progressivism. The opportunity we cited was one for the community to re-focus on genuinely impactful issues, even if they involve less virtue signaling.
“homophobia (“cultures that accept gay people on average have lower birth rates and are ultimately outnumbered by neighboring homophobic cultures”, in a piece that is all about how low birth rates are a key problem of our time)”
How on earth is the homophobia? A core concern of this piece is that there will be increase in the rate of homophobia as a result of this trend. Are you arguing with the trend, do you want statics? Here is a study that dives into this trend.
From 2004 to 2018, differential fertility (more conservative people having more kids) increased the number of U.S. adults opposed to same-sex marriage by 17%, from 46.9 million to 54.8 million. Vogl, T. S., & Freese, J. (2020). Differential fertility makes society more conservative on family values. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(14), 7696-7701.
Also, how is this “ethnonationalism (“based in developed countries that will be badly hit by the results of these skewed demographics”)” ethnonationalism?
This point is brought up in the context of most of EA funding and activity happening in developed countries. It is just a fact that developed countries will be hit harder by demographic collapse. Are you arguing the most EA funding does not come from developed countries or that developed countries are not disproportionately effected by demographic collapse? Or that both things are happening and we shouldn’t care because more EA money will come from developing countries in the future?
“I believe that genetics influence individual personality, but am very skeptical of claims of strong genetic determinism, especially on a societal level.” That’s not how genetics works. At an individual level genetics will always be less predictive than it is at the population level (e.g., if I know a certain persons polygenic risk score my ability to predict how they will vote will intrinsically be lower than my ability to predict how a large population will vote if I know all their polygenic risk scores).
Think of it like this. If I know an individual card has a 60% probability of having a blue dot on it that represents a vote for a specific political candidate that is all I know. However, if I know that is true for 100K cards then I can predict with near certainty what the overall “vote” will be. We are not genetic determinists at all (we even wrote an entire book on cultural determinism). However! We are also not science deniers. At the population level you can make predictions based on genetics and one of those predictions is voting patterns.
I feel like you’re not reading this in good faith, or perhaps you just skimmed it (re: “I don’t plan to engage deeply with this post”).
To your concerns: 1. *Genetic determinism:* We’re simply pointing out traits are heritable and humanity benefits from a future in which a diverse array of traits exists. 2. *Homophobia:* We think a future humanity that supports LGBT rights is more prosocial and a hard landing on demographic collapse isn’t likely to produce a society that supports LGBT rights. 3. *Ethnonationalism:* We are arguing about the importance of demographic collapse as a cause area in the hopes that humanity’s long-term future enjoys a diverse array of ethnicities, cultures, races, mindsets, lifestyles, etc. Is the issue that you do not recognize this or that you don’t share that hope for the future?
We are not genetic determinists. We also don’t ignore that heritable traits can have influence. We think the evidence speaks for itself with regard to the amplitude of the effects on society.
We aren’t working to ensure “the right” people have kids; we’re working to ensure that cultures, ethnicities, etc. don’t go extinct. We want to preserve plurality and diversity. If concerted action is not taken, we’re positioned to lose a TON of diversity.
This post is our best attempt to highlight the hazards of an uncontrolled landing on demographic collapse, which range from major economic issues to crumbling infrastructure and the loss of various cultures/worldviews/ethnicities. Hoped that was clear.
I don’t plan to engage deeply with this post, but I wanted to leave a comment pushing back on the unsubtle currents of genetic determinism (“individuals from those families with sociological profiles amenable to movements like effective altruism, progressivism, or broad Western Civilisational values are being selected out of the gene pool”), homophobia (“cultures that accept gay people on average have lower birth rates and are ultimately outnumbered by neighboring homophobic cultures”, in a piece that is all about how low birth rates are a key problem of our time) , and ethnonationalism (“based in developed countries that will be badly hit by the results of these skewed demographics”) running through this piece.
I believe that genetics influence individual personality, but am very skeptical of claims of strong genetic determinism, especially on a societal level. Moreover, it seems to me that one of the core values of effective altruism is that of impartiality― giving equal moral weight to people who are distant from me in space and/or time. The kind of essentialist and elitist rhetoric common among people who concern themselves with demographic collapse seems in direct opposition to that value; if you think a key priority of our time is ensuring the right people have children, especially if your definition of “the right people” focuses on elite and wealthy people in Western countries, I doubt that we have compatible notions of what it means to do the most good.
Many pieces that criticize effective altruism quote this paragraph from Nick Beckstead’s2013 thesis:
I would like our community to be unequivocal that all other things are not equal, and would distance myself from a community/movement that embraced an idea that lives in rich countries are more important than lives in poor countries. This seems, as I said, in direct opposition to the core values that attracted me to effective altruism.
Thanks Tessa, I strongly endorse and appreciate this comment. It’s also worth noting here that the Collinses were very recently featured in an article, which has already associated EA/longtermism with these views, and also hinted at a plan or opportunistic power grab:
I was worried that this could potentially represent a risk to EA and linkposted that article, though I do not believe the article itself is worthy of engagement given the above comment-I am just leaving it here for public record in case other people come across this post later.
I worry that EA is becoming overly focused on performative progressivism (in which no feelings can be hurt) and not genuine progressivism. The opportunity we cited was one for the community to re-focus on genuinely impactful issues, even if they involve less virtue signaling.
“homophobia (“cultures that accept gay people on average have lower birth rates and are ultimately outnumbered by neighboring homophobic cultures”, in a piece that is all about how low birth rates are a key problem of our time)”
How on earth is the homophobia? A core concern of this piece is that there will be increase in the rate of homophobia as a result of this trend. Are you arguing with the trend, do you want statics? Here is a study that dives into this trend.
From 2004 to 2018, differential fertility (more conservative people having more kids) increased the number of U.S. adults opposed to same-sex marriage by 17%, from 46.9 million to 54.8 million.
Vogl, T. S., & Freese, J. (2020). Differential fertility makes society more conservative on family values. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(14), 7696-7701.
Also, how is this “ethnonationalism (“based in developed countries that will be badly hit by the results of these skewed demographics”)” ethnonationalism?
This point is brought up in the context of most of EA funding and activity happening in developed countries. It is just a fact that developed countries will be hit harder by demographic collapse. Are you arguing the most EA funding does not come from developed countries or that developed countries are not disproportionately effected by demographic collapse? Or that both things are happening and we shouldn’t care because more EA money will come from developing countries in the future?
“I believe that genetics influence individual personality, but am very skeptical of claims of strong genetic determinism, especially on a societal level.” That’s not how genetics works. At an individual level genetics will always be less predictive than it is at the population level (e.g., if I know a certain persons polygenic risk score my ability to predict how they will vote will intrinsically be lower than my ability to predict how a large population will vote if I know all their polygenic risk scores).
Think of it like this. If I know an individual card has a 60% probability of having a blue dot on it that represents a vote for a specific political candidate that is all I know. However, if I know that is true for 100K cards then I can predict with near certainty what the overall “vote” will be.
We are not genetic determinists at all (we even wrote an entire book on cultural determinism). However! We are also not science deniers. At the population level you can make predictions based on genetics and one of those predictions is voting patterns.
I feel like you’re not reading this in good faith, or perhaps you just skimmed it (re: “I don’t plan to engage deeply with this post”).
To your concerns:
1. *Genetic determinism:* We’re simply pointing out traits are heritable and humanity benefits from a future in which a diverse array of traits exists.
2. *Homophobia:* We think a future humanity that supports LGBT rights is more prosocial and a hard landing on demographic collapse isn’t likely to produce a society that supports LGBT rights.
3. *Ethnonationalism:* We are arguing about the importance of demographic collapse as a cause area in the hopes that humanity’s long-term future enjoys a diverse array of ethnicities, cultures, races, mindsets, lifestyles, etc. Is the issue that you do not recognize this or that you don’t share that hope for the future?
We are not genetic determinists. We also don’t ignore that heritable traits can have influence. We think the evidence speaks for itself with regard to the amplitude of the effects on society.
We aren’t working to ensure “the right” people have kids; we’re working to ensure that cultures, ethnicities, etc. don’t go extinct. We want to preserve plurality and diversity. If concerted action is not taken, we’re positioned to lose a TON of diversity.
True, and the real question is what’s going on with this post.
This post is our best attempt to highlight the hazards of an uncontrolled landing on demographic collapse, which range from major economic issues to crumbling infrastructure and the loss of various cultures/worldviews/ethnicities. Hoped that was clear.