Tobias, I think you are absolutely correct. But I will note that this is a well-worn pattern:
Given a long list of tweets and articles that make it quite obvious that Torres is deliberately and repeatedly construing everything ever written or said by longtermists in order to make them appear maximally sinister and dangerous and racist, Torres protests that they have never actually written the sentence “Toby Ord is a white supremacist”.
Rather, Torres is using the scholarly definition of white supremacy, not the every day definition. In this way there’s always plausible deniability that Torres is waging a relentless campaign to portray (e.g.) the founders of Giving What We Can as racists. It’s a classic motte-and-bailey.
Tobias, I think you are absolutely correct. But I will note that this is a well-worn pattern:
Given a long list of tweets and articles that make it quite obvious that Torres is deliberately and repeatedly construing everything ever written or said by longtermists in order to make them appear maximally sinister and dangerous and racist, Torres protests that they have never actually written the sentence “Toby Ord is a white supremacist”.
Rather, Torres is using the scholarly definition of white supremacy, not the every day definition. In this way there’s always plausible deniability that Torres is waging a relentless campaign to portray (e.g.) the founders of Giving What We Can as racists. It’s a classic motte-and-bailey.