Current Affairs15 Nov 2023

Where "Effective Altruism" and "Longtermism" Go Wrong (w/ Émile Torres)

Émile P. Torres is an intellectual historian who has recently become a prominent public critic of the ideologies of "effective altruism" and "longtermism," each of which is highly influential in Silicon Valley and which Émile argues contain worrying dystopian tendencies. In this conversation, Émile joins to explain what these ideas are, why the people who subscribe to them think they can change the world in very positive ways, and why Émile has come to be so strongly critical of them. Émile discusses why philosophies that emphasize voluntary charity over redistributing political power have such appeal to plutocrats, and the danger of ideologies that promise "astronomical future value" to rationalize morally dubious near-term actions.

"A lot this is about working within systems. There's really no serious though within EA, at least that I've seen, about the origins of a lot of problems around the world, those origins being in systems of power, structures that have [caused] individuals in the Global South to end up destitute. There's no discussion of the legacies of colonialism... It's pretty appalling the extent to which these other considerations about colonialism, capitalism, [etc.] are just not even on the radar of a lot of EAs." — Émile Torres

Émile's Current Affairs article on longtermism is here. Nathan's article on effective altruism is here. Émile's forthcoming book is Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation.

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