I looked into evidence for the quote you posted for one hour. While I think the phrasing is inaccurate, I’d say the gist of the quote is true. For example, it’s pretty understandable that people jump from “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead supports white supremacy” to “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead is a white supremacist”.
White Supremacy: In a public facebook post you link to this public google doc where you call a quote from Nick Beckstead “unambiguously white-supremacist”.
Genocide: On another facebook post you agree with Olle Häggström [note: Häggström actually strongly disagrees with this characterization of their position] that Bostrom’s idea of transhumanism and utilitarianism in Letters from Utopia “is a recipe for moral disaster—for genocide, white supremacy, and so on.”
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.
I looked into evidence for the quote you posted for one hour. While I think the phrasing is inaccurate, I’d say the gist of the quote is true. For example, it’s pretty understandable that people jump from “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead supports white supremacy” to “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead is a white supremacist”.
White Supremacy:
In a public facebook post you link to this public google doc where you call a quote from Nick Beckstead “unambiguously white-supremacist”.
You reinforce that view in a later tweet:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1509948468571381762
You claim that the writing of Bostrom, Beckstead, Ord, Greaves, etc. is “very much about the preservation of white Western civilization”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1527250704313856000
You also tweeted about a criticism of Hilary Greaves in which you “see white supremacy all over it”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1229107714015604736
Genocide:
On another facebook post you agree with Olle Häggström [note: Häggström actually strongly disagrees with this characterization of their position] that Bostrom’s idea of transhumanism and utilitarianism in Letters from Utopia “is a recipe for moral disaster—for genocide, white supremacy, and so on.”
Eugenics:
In your Salon article you call some of Bostrom’s ideas “straight out of the handbook of eugenics”.
https://www.salon.com/2022/08/20/understanding-longtermism-why-this-suddenly-influential-philosophy-is-so/
You reinforce this view in the following tweet:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1562003541539037186
You also say that “Longtermism is deeply rooted in the ideology of eugenics”.
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1557338332702572545
Racism:
You called Sam Harris “quite racist”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1384425549091774466
In this tweet you strongly imply that some of Bostrom’s views are indistinguishable from scientific racism:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1569365203049140224
There’s also this tweet that describes the EA community as welcoming to misogynists, neoreactionaries, and racists:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1510708370285776902
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.