[vundercind]

Oh wow, I forgot about that! What a wild read. It was such a mess.

I loved it. Something about a famous rich person putting that much effort into something so amateurish and clumsy, while apparently being so confident, in an eager-college-freshman sort of way… I dunno, call it endearing, maybe.

I mean it’s either that or it’s horrifying. I choose to pretend it’s endearing because there’s too much horrifying already.

[dools]

It's horrifying because it's not an isolated wild rich man seizure, it's the same shit that Musk, Dorsey et al believe. The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism.

[margalabargala]

> The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism.

This is basically what "longtermism" is. It's "we will amass huge amounts of capital to rule you now, because we know best, and we promise that as a result your (great-great-...)grandkids will have it better than if we hadn't".

It's just getting rich and playing with toys but with an ethical justification for it.

It reminds me of how back in the day there was all sorts of Creative Bible scholarship around it being "easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven". Like they were all "actually the 'eye of the needle's is the name of this big gate in Jerusalem. It's super easy to get a camel through it!"

EA has done some neat stuff in the here and now in terms of looking at charities et al. But anything claiming to benefit the unborn trillions of the far, far future is just someone making excuses for themselves.

[fire_lake]

- I know what is good through utilitarian principles and my deep knowledge of science and Bayesian statistics

- AI safety is an imminent threat and the best solution is to form an AI company and sell large amounts of stock to big tech

- I’m super smart so I need to be the one to work on this

- I need to earn loads of money so that I have the resources and focus to save humanity

[acdha]

The comparison to the false theology is really apt. That goes back to at least the 11th century and it’s part of an even older tradition[0] trying to tell rich people that they can ignore a pretty clear biblical injunction. It’s been interesting seeing how as atheism becomes more popular there’s been a rise of secular thinkers selling an almost identical message that it’s okay to be basically as selfish as you want as for your entire life as long as you end with a grand philanthropic act to balance it out.

0. 2nd century softening: https://www.academia.edu/40130012/Widening_the_Eye_of_the_Ne...