I think this article deploys accusations of “conspiracy theorists” in a bad faith manner. Besides “cosmism”, which I agree is a stretch, there are very obvious links and overlaps between transhumanists, extropians, singularitans, rationalists and effective altruists. All of these labels would apply to Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom, for example. Is it a conspiracy theory to loosely categorise people in an unflattering manner?
The only evidence for “conspiracy” in this article is that people are claiming an association between TESCREAL and support for eugenics. But there is a lot of support for what could be described as “liberal eugenics” among these communities. There’s a whole chapter in superintelligence on human intelligence enhancement via selective breeding genetic selection (edit: I misremembered this, thanks for the comments pointing this out). or see this upvoted post on this very forum defending liberal eugenics.
You might think they are exaggerating the harms, or being unfair in their categorisations (not distinguishing between liberal eugenics and the more violent eugenics that comes to mind with the term), but it’s not conspiracy theorizing. This is just the standard sort of word twisting and political point scoring done by every political movement on the planet.
There’s a whole chapter in superintelligence on human intelligence enhancement via selective breeding
This is false and should be corrected. There is a section (not a whole chapter) on biological enhancement, within which there is a single paragraph on selective breeding:
A third path to greater-than-current-human intelligence is to enhance the functioning of biological brains. In principle, this could be achieved without technology, through selective breeding. Any attempt to initiate a classical large-scale eugenics program, however, would confront major political and moral hurdles. Moreover, unless the selection were extremely strong, many generations would be required to produce substantial results. Long before such an initiative would bear fruit, advances in biotechnology will allow much more direct control of human genetics and neurobiology, rendering otiose any human breeding program. We will therefore focus on methods that hold the potential to deliver results faster, on the timescale of a few generations or less.
I’m puzzled by this reply. You acknowledge that you misremembered, but in your edited comment you continue to state that “here’s a whole chapter in superintelligence on human intelligence enhancement via genetic selection”.
The chapter in question is called “Paths to superintelligence”, and is divided into five sections, followed by a summary. The sections are called “Artificial intelligence”, “Whole brain emulation”, “Biological cognition”, “Brain–computer interfaces” and “Networks and organizations”. It is evident that the whole chapter is not devoted to human intelligence enhancement via genetic selection.
Separately, you make this statement immediately after claimimg that “there is a lot of support for what could be described as ‘liberal eugenics’ among these communities”, and you offer this claim as evidence of such support. Yet, as it should again be clear even from casual inspection of the abstract with which the chapter begins, Bostrom’s aim here is to discuss how superintelligence might be developed, not to argue that we should develop superintelligence, let alone argue that we should develop superintelligence via genetic selection. (Insofar as Bostrom has expressed views about the desirability rather than the probability of cognitive enhancement in general and genetic enhancement specifically—later in the book and elsewhere in his writings—, his views are nuanced and complex.)
I think this article deploys accusations of “conspiracy theorists” in a bad faith manner. Besides “cosmism”, which I agree is a stretch, there are very obvious links and overlaps between transhumanists, extropians, singularitans, rationalists and effective altruists. All of these labels would apply to Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom, for example. Is it a conspiracy theory to loosely categorise people in an unflattering manner?
The only evidence for “conspiracy” in this article is that people are claiming an association between TESCREAL and support for eugenics. But there is a lot of support for what could be described as “liberal eugenics” among these communities. There’s a whole chapter in superintelligence on human intelligence enhancement via
selective breedinggenetic selection (edit: I misremembered this, thanks for the comments pointing this out). or see this upvoted post on this very forum defending liberal eugenics.You might think they are exaggerating the harms, or being unfair in their categorisations (not distinguishing between liberal eugenics and the more violent eugenics that comes to mind with the term), but it’s not conspiracy theorizing. This is just the standard sort of word twisting and political point scoring done by every political movement on the planet.
This is false and should be corrected. There is a section (not a whole chapter) on biological enhancement, within which there is a single paragraph on selective breeding:
Yep, I misremembered the chapter, he was referring to genetic selection, not selective breeding. I’m editing the comment now.
I’m puzzled by this reply. You acknowledge that you misremembered, but in your edited comment you continue to state that “here’s a whole chapter in superintelligence on human intelligence enhancement via genetic selection”.
The chapter in question is called “Paths to superintelligence”, and is divided into five sections, followed by a summary. The sections are called “Artificial intelligence”, “Whole brain emulation”, “Biological cognition”, “Brain–computer interfaces” and “Networks and organizations”. It is evident that the whole chapter is not devoted to human intelligence enhancement via genetic selection.
Separately, you make this statement immediately after claimimg that “there is a lot of support for what could be described as ‘liberal eugenics’ among these communities”, and you offer this claim as evidence of such support. Yet, as it should again be clear even from casual inspection of the abstract with which the chapter begins, Bostrom’s aim here is to discuss how superintelligence might be developed, not to argue that we should develop superintelligence, let alone argue that we should develop superintelligence via genetic selection. (Insofar as Bostrom has expressed views about the desirability rather than the probability of cognitive enhancement in general and genetic enhancement specifically—later in the book and elsewhere in his writings—, his views are nuanced and complex.)
Small point, but not a chapter, a section of a chapter.
yes TESCREAL is definitely a real thing. It’s just (mostly) good and nearly always based.