Theoretical Computer Science Msc student at the University of [Redacted] in the United Kingdom.
I’m an aspiring alignment theorist; my research vibes are descriptive formal theories of intelligent systems (and their safety properties) with a bias towards constructive theories.
I think it’s important that our theories of intelligent systems remain rooted in the characteristics of real world intelligent systems; we cannot develop adequate theory from the null string as input.
𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆
Karma: 2,241
OP does not speak for all of us, or really anyone except for himself.
This is very true, thanks for speaking up.
(I never intended to speak for all black EAs.)
For what it’s worth, my parents still think I’m Christian.
Eugenics was not an unrelated tangent.
Bostrom has been accused of being a eugenicist, and Bostrom has defended views that could be characterised as eugenics.
Probably the people trying to cancel him would have attempted to cancel him for eugenics.
It was very much in topic.
I agree (strongly upvoted), but I think iterated embryo selection is likely to become feasible before mind uploading in the mainline. It may not be all that relevant to humanity’s longterm future (genetics bases human enhancement changes need decades to cause significant societal wide changes) except under long timelines, but long timelines are feasible, especially for mind uploading technology.
In the year of our Lord 2023, we still cannot upload C. Elegans.
I’ve updated the title.
Very strong disagree here.
Bostrom endorses positive selection for beneficial traits (via e.g. iterated embryo selection), he doesn’t support negative selection (i.e. preventing people who have less of the beneficial trait from reproducing).
I think positive selection for beneficial traits/human enhancement more generally is good.
I really don’t like this post.
Factually, I think it removes critical context and is sorely lacking in nuance.
Crucial context that was missing:
It was sent 25+ years ago when Bostrom was a student
It was sent as part of a conversation about offensive communication styles
Bostrom apologised for it at the time within 24 hours
Bostrom apologised again for the email now
Beyond the lack of nuance, this feels like it’s optimised for PR management and not honest communication or representation of your fully considered beliefs. I find that disappointing. I greatly preferred Habiba’s statement on this issue despite it largely expressing similar sentiments because it did feel like honest communication/representation of her beliefs (I’ve strongly downvoted this post and strongly upvoted that one, despite largely disagreeing with the sentiment expressed).
And I don’t really like the obsession with PR management in the community. I think it’s bad for epistemic integrity, and it’s bad for expected impact of the effective altruism community on a brighter world.
Emotionally, this made me feel disappointed and a bit bitter.
Fair enough. The damage has already been done, so I’ll leave the title of the post as is.
This post was written in part because a tribal narrative of opposing Bostrom seemed to be dominating the forum zeitgeist.
I am not clear to the extent to which his email actually harmed people.
I agree that he did not optimise for mitigating the harm caused, but I don’t grant much weight to that because it’s very ambiguous to me to what extent harm was caused.
I want EA to be a movement about ambitiously working towards a brighter future for humanity.
To that end, it’s a feature not a bug that some EAs are rich/powerful and that EA attracts some of those kinds of people.
Bostrom’s email did not actually cause any harm (as far as we know) as at the time it was written.
Does Bostrom actually have a cult of personality/is elevated to ridiculous heights?
He doesn’t have a Twitter account (or any other social media presence as far as I’m aware), doesn’t participate on EA (or EA adjacent) forums, doesn’t blog frequently and doesn’t do media tours to promote himself.
Is this necessarily an EA optics problem?
The Times article on the controversy mentions “Oxford don”, in the headline, and there was no mention of “effective altruism” in the body of the article.
I expect the mainstream zeitgeist on this article to be more about Bostrom’s Oxford connection than his effective altruism connection.
I’m unconvinced that:EA has a Bostrom specific optics problem
Bostrom has a cult of personality within EA
I strongly disagree with this.
This is not an accurate representation of Bostrom’s apology
Bostrom is a transhumanist philosopher, and has written on human enhancement; it is important to defend human enhancement as a noble pursuit and distinct from the historical eugenics movement
If Bostrom believes that there may be racial differences in intelligence, I don’t want him to lie about it.
Maintaining epistemic integrity is important as individuals, but it’s especially important for our intellectuals thinking about the long term future of humanity.
A scenario where the public statements of our intellectuals can’t be trusted because they’re optimising for social acceptability is a very bad situation. I think the aggregate harm from eroding such epistemic trust is likely much worse than the harm from Bostrom’s offensive remarks.
Bostrom could have written a better apology, but I think that may have required dishonesty about his beliefs, and I think such dishonesty would have been really bad.
What even is this comment?
I don’t really like this thing where you speak on behalf of black EAs.
I think you should let black EAs speak for themselves or not comment on it.
In my experience, there seems to be distortionary epistemic effects when someone speaks on behalf of a minority group. Often, the person so speaking assigns them harms, injustices or offenses that the relevant members of those groups may not actually endorse.
When it’s done on my behalf, I find it pretty patronising, and it’s annoying/icky?
I don’t want to speak for black EAs but it’s not clear to me that the “hurt” you mention is actually real.
Valid!
It’s definitely valid to lower your opinion of Bostrom’s character because of this.
I was merely presenting my own opinion because I was persuaded it needed to be heard.
I guess I prioritise somewhat different things from you.
I think your consequentialist analysis is likely wrong and misguided. I think you’re overstating the effects of the harms Bostrom perpetuated?
I think a movement where our leading intellectuals felt pressured to distort their views for social acceptability is a movement that does a worse job of making the world a better place.
Bostrom’s original email was bad and he disavowed it. The actual apology he presented was fine IMO; he shouldn’t have pretended to believe that there are definitely no racial differences in intelligence.
Strongly upvoted.
I endorse basically everything here.
In general, I’m very unconvinced that raising EA bureaucracy and more democratically driven funding/impact decisions would be net positive.