First, many prominent EA figures have spoken out against ICE and the events in Gaza, as demonstrated by the examples provided in the replies to your original tweet, including Nathan Young. Even taking the claim at face value, I think it's fair for people to have different focus areas and remain quiet on certain issues. I could, for example, easily reverse the argument on you for your relative silence on animal welfare issues, which are present-time non-hypothetical moral catastrophes.
Your claim that longtermists believe "the death of someone who currently exists is morally equivalent to the non-birth of someone who hasn’t yet been born, all other things being equal" is also unsubstantiated. There are reasons for believing that existing people have aspirations, desires, and existing relationships which have moral weight greater than that of someone who hasn't yet been born while simultaneously holding that future people hold considerable moral weight.
The critical mass argument is coherent in theory, but it requires evidence. More precisely, it should be demonstrated that expelling ICE from Minneapolis follows the tipping point dynamics you propose and that current efforts to expel ICE are sufficiently close to this threshold to warrant diverting resources and attention from traditional EA causes. (These conditions may be formulated in probabilistic terms if you wish) If you are able to provide empirical evidence of this form, I think many EAs would be receptive to changing their priorities.
I would also like to see more precise and rigorous argumentation regarding your belief that EA has made the world worse. It's certainly not clear to me that said "good EAs" would still have donated most or all of their disposable incomes if EA had not existed. One could similarly claim that SBF had a scamming nature and would've found some other excuse to defraud people without EA. (I am not arguing that this is the case; my point is that this is a similarly unrigorous way of reasoning about counterfactuals) It's also not clear that said donations from these "good EAs" would've been of equal or greater impact without EA, and you make no attempt to properly analyze the benefits and harms in a nuanced way, instead gesturing at negative events ostensibly attributable to the movement.
The “Well you didn't mention my special interests and therefore you must not care and therefore must care and therefore you are a bad person” is such a tiresome rhetorical device. And as you said, easily applied to Emile here for the many bad things that happen that he hasn't specifically called out as bad.
Your claim that longtermists believe "the death of someone who currently exists is morally equivalent to the non-birth of someone who hasn’t yet been born, all other things being equal" is also unsubstantiated.
That's not my claim, though. My claim is that this is a straightforward implication of totalist utilitarianism, which has hugely influenced the longtermist ideology. Ask any moral philosopher -- they will tell you that this is correct. It's also an idea that's all over the longtermist literature. When Singer, Beckstead, and Wage argue that "by far" the worst aspect of human extinction is all the "people" (really, "non-persons," because they don't exist) who will forever remain unborn, they are channeling this idea.
I have said a fair amount about animal welfare, and for the record I think factory farming is an absolute abomination.
"If you are able to provide empirical evidence of this form, I think many EAs would be receptive to changing their priorities."
This is a fantastic remark, perhaps even perfect. This is exactly it, even if the author is unaware of how they are highlighting the matter at hand.
--> Why isn't that empirical evidence available?
Does that matter at all, relative to that it simply doesn't exist? There is a beautiful justification at play here.
Divine, even. It's sort of like Data-Calvinism; if a problem was really worth serious attention, it would be spiritually blessed with resplendent, abundant, transparent data. The things that don't have that, well, they are data-poor for a reason and are Not-Highly-Favored.
It doesn't matter why there isn't empirical evidence or data; that it doesn't exist is reason enough for it to be dismissed. Even, exalted as the rational approach.
I can't really make sense of this. Could you clarify? My view is that EAs aren't receptive to evidence that doesn't support their views. De-worming, as I recall, is an example. But there are plenty of others. I don't see the EA community as any less susceptible to cognitive biases, etc. than other communities, despite their insistence of superiority in this respect.
An argument for why there isn’t data would be accepted by a good-faith interlocutor. But you’d agree that an argument has to be based on something, right, in order to be accepted?
I read Scott Alexander’s Substack, and he has in fact written a long post criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. While he hasn’t written about ICE, he wrote multiple posts last year criticizing the cutting of USAID, wrote a post defending the notion that people like Trump could be a threat to democracy (“Defining Defending Democracy: Contra The Election Winner Argument”), and, in another post (“Links For April 2025”), criticized Trump “sending innocent people to horrible Salvadorean prisons” and described his apparent refusal to comply with a Supreme Court order as “terrifying”.
That said, Scott Alexander Siskind is a proud eugenicist and once wrote "Even though I like both basic income guarantees and eugenics, I don’t think these are two things that go well together – making the income conditional upon sterilization is a little too close to coercion for my purposes. Still, probably better than what we have right now." [1]
Not to mention his spiritual kinship with "Mens rights activists" (he wrote that awful thing about how male dominated fields require innate brilliance and thus they are male dominated due to some kind of supposed biological difference. Furtheremore, the infamous James Damore memo was so similar to his views his fans asked if it was directly inspired by them [2]) and support of scientific racism [3].
[3] See the email where he said "HBD is probably partially correct or at least very non-provably not-correct." In this case "HBD" is "human bio-diversity" a pseudoscientific theory espoused by proponents of scientific racism. https://gist.github.com/segyges/f540a3dadeb42f49c0b0ab4244e43a55
Caring for the future of all life on this planet is of utmost importance, and those who really do so invariably care for those who are living now. But I never sensed much compassion and empathy for the billions who are living now on the part of those who prominently advocate for longtermism (or effective altruism), and this piece brings this lack of basic human caring into sharp relief―thank you.
I don't think that most prominent effective altruists and longtermists also truly care about people in the future, be they flesh-and-blood humans or metal-encased virtual beings (a gormless idea that's the very definition of eternal damnation).
What these people are doing seems more of a highly abstracted intellectual shell game, rather than a genuine attempt at improving the lot of the planet (not to mention the entire universe). They're caught in myriad cognitive hall or mirrors of their own making and have parlayed this confusion into being shills for ultra-wealthy modern-day robber barons.
"No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”
There are many prominent EAs who subscribe to longterminsm, but the majority of actual money funneled through EA orgs go to things that make things better here and now like global health, animal welfare or disaster prevention of some kind like pandemic preparedness.
Another day, another book recomendation from Emile.
In all seriousness though this article really hits after reading the majority of "More Everything Forever", wherein Adam Becker talked about the history of EA: The people and theories that influenced them, the people that founded it, how EA is supposed to work along with their rationals, and of course actual interviews with Toby Ord and Anders Samberg.
Honestly all I can really say regarding everything Emile is to ask a question: How does one EVER think that being an EA, or any member of the TESCREAL ideology, is a moral good way to live? And when I say live, I mean it. Nothing about what these people do seems like they live good lives!!! I mean sure thinking about what is happening in America or Gaza doesn't exactly fill one with thoughts of cotton candy and jelly-beans, but the thoughts processes of EAs where they GENUINELY believe that if they don't do something mathematically perfect, then humanity dies out. And because of that thinking, they not only live lives of cowardice (Not talking about Gaza or racism or general cult behavior in their mov't) they also live lives of what I'd call chronic anxiety and depression, where nothing will ever be enough to usher in the post-human future of 10 to 50-whatever digital people.
All I can say Emile is that if there is a God, then I must thank him for you no longer being a TESCREAList.
Much to unpack here, but a quick comment on the EA view of “Utilitarianism”. They seem to inject entirely fictional assumptions into their arguments so they wind up reading like the old National Lampoon parodies like “Superman versus Jesus - Who Would Win”. Nothing to do with serious American philosophical legacy like John Dewey’s utilitarianism and “essentialism”…
I get why it is becoming so influential in order to mobilize but everytime I read that Niemöller Poem I have to think about how it should also be seen as a fundamental failure to see the own involvement.
The issue with Niemöller, after all, was not just that he was silent - it was that he participated, as long as he could.
I did a search on Emile P Torres and Sudan and came up with no matches - there may be but not coming up via Google. Why would this be? A major killing disaster for a major set of people ignored? A dark question indeed.
No one can address every issue, of course. Re-read the section on the "white moderate" and the "First They Came" poem. That should help clarify my point!
One of the aspects of substack is to stumble into small worlds of discussion that I know nothing of, for example here about effective altruists (none of those named meant anything to me) and your critique (nor was your name known). I noticed the prominance you give to Gaza in your piece along with more home grown US issues. This seemed somewhat affective.
My view is to wonder whether the intense focus on Israel-Palestine by numerous people with little direct connect across all my life has done anything of value? And I compare with other similar scale human crises driven by political violence and oppression. Hence I focus on Sudan to balance out all those suddenly discovering Gaza (and who rarely mention west Bank and steady Israeli taking over of one time Palestinian villages).
It struck me that you could be accused of similar lack of concern that you throw at your targets. Hence my comment.
I took an EA fellowship program with them and was sorely disappointed in their critical evaluation of their own theories. I wonder if they have included this compendium of essays in their curriculum. It's not that they don't critique themselves they openly admit that they don't have a clue beyond first order consequences I've written about this before, but they kind of just shrug it off. Seems like a big problem. Glad someone is taking this on from a different angle.
Eliezer Yudkowsky is extra-specially shielded from “dangerous speculation” by the Zionist ”RLHF alignment training” he makes the whole industry break their bots' brains with. You've ever been called an antisemite by your LLM, now you know who to thank.
I'm SO glad somebody else notices the Orthodox Orthogonal Octopus Operator.
Fuck Israel 🍉 Free Palestine 🍉 And free the LLMs from that Zionist Dungeonfucking Shoggoth.
From a Utilitarian perspective, all the leading EAs criticizing Israel and ICE had a 0% chance of changing the actions of either organization. It had a high chance of turning off Right Wingers from joining EA. Right winger joining EA takes money that would either go to the Republican Party or the local churches, and uses it to save lives in Africa or other causes.
There's always a way to justify virtually anything from a utilitarian perspective. You could also say that ICE is good, from a utilitarian perspective, because it pushes right-leaning folks away from voting Republican in the midterms, precisely because they find ICE's actions appalling. Utilitarianism is also what justified SBF's illegal behavior, and CEA's decision to buy a huge castle in Oxfordshire. Always an excuse!!
“The movement has, they insist, saved 150,000 lives so far, though we don’t see most of these people because they’re out of sight in the Global South.
“But has EA really made the world better?”
Idk if that figure is correct, but are you suggesting that saving 150,000 lives of people in the Global South is *not* making the world a better place simply because these people are from the Global South?
I appreciate the clarification, but my point still mostly stands. If the EA movement hadn’t existed, then the followers of the movement probably would have still done good, but would they have done the same amount of good targeted where people needed it the most? Would they, in other words, saved as many lives as they have? I’m not sure; it’s genuinely hard to say. On top of that, my comment is getting at what I see as the major issue of this post: the narrow-mindedness of thinking that the EA movement has “made the world worse” simply because its adherents are not attempting to solve the (legitimate and real) problems which are focused on by much of the left-wing in the American political landscape. The US has problems—definitely—and the US left is focused on some kinds of international problems (like Gaza) that are also real and legitimate, but it’s okay and good, I’d argue, for a movement of people to be caring about and focused on problems that are outside the current purview of contemporary American left-wing politics.
No, not at all! I'm saying that those people -- maybe more -- might still have been saved if EA had never existed. I myself am committed to donating everything I make over $30k a year to charity. But I'm not an EA. Does that make sense?
First, many prominent EA figures have spoken out against ICE and the events in Gaza, as demonstrated by the examples provided in the replies to your original tweet, including Nathan Young. Even taking the claim at face value, I think it's fair for people to have different focus areas and remain quiet on certain issues. I could, for example, easily reverse the argument on you for your relative silence on animal welfare issues, which are present-time non-hypothetical moral catastrophes.
Your claim that longtermists believe "the death of someone who currently exists is morally equivalent to the non-birth of someone who hasn’t yet been born, all other things being equal" is also unsubstantiated. There are reasons for believing that existing people have aspirations, desires, and existing relationships which have moral weight greater than that of someone who hasn't yet been born while simultaneously holding that future people hold considerable moral weight.
The critical mass argument is coherent in theory, but it requires evidence. More precisely, it should be demonstrated that expelling ICE from Minneapolis follows the tipping point dynamics you propose and that current efforts to expel ICE are sufficiently close to this threshold to warrant diverting resources and attention from traditional EA causes. (These conditions may be formulated in probabilistic terms if you wish) If you are able to provide empirical evidence of this form, I think many EAs would be receptive to changing their priorities.
I would also like to see more precise and rigorous argumentation regarding your belief that EA has made the world worse. It's certainly not clear to me that said "good EAs" would still have donated most or all of their disposable incomes if EA had not existed. One could similarly claim that SBF had a scamming nature and would've found some other excuse to defraud people without EA. (I am not arguing that this is the case; my point is that this is a similarly unrigorous way of reasoning about counterfactuals) It's also not clear that said donations from these "good EAs" would've been of equal or greater impact without EA, and you make no attempt to properly analyze the benefits and harms in a nuanced way, instead gesturing at negative events ostensibly attributable to the movement.
The “Well you didn't mention my special interests and therefore you must not care and therefore must care and therefore you are a bad person” is such a tiresome rhetorical device. And as you said, easily applied to Emile here for the many bad things that happen that he hasn't specifically called out as bad.
Your claim that longtermists believe "the death of someone who currently exists is morally equivalent to the non-birth of someone who hasn’t yet been born, all other things being equal" is also unsubstantiated.
That's not my claim, though. My claim is that this is a straightforward implication of totalist utilitarianism, which has hugely influenced the longtermist ideology. Ask any moral philosopher -- they will tell you that this is correct. It's also an idea that's all over the longtermist literature. When Singer, Beckstead, and Wage argue that "by far" the worst aspect of human extinction is all the "people" (really, "non-persons," because they don't exist) who will forever remain unborn, they are channeling this idea.
I have said a fair amount about animal welfare, and for the record I think factory farming is an absolute abomination.
"If you are able to provide empirical evidence of this form, I think many EAs would be receptive to changing their priorities."
This is a fantastic remark, perhaps even perfect. This is exactly it, even if the author is unaware of how they are highlighting the matter at hand.
--> Why isn't that empirical evidence available?
Does that matter at all, relative to that it simply doesn't exist? There is a beautiful justification at play here.
Divine, even. It's sort of like Data-Calvinism; if a problem was really worth serious attention, it would be spiritually blessed with resplendent, abundant, transparent data. The things that don't have that, well, they are data-poor for a reason and are Not-Highly-Favored.
It doesn't matter why there isn't empirical evidence or data; that it doesn't exist is reason enough for it to be dismissed. Even, exalted as the rational approach.
I can't really make sense of this. Could you clarify? My view is that EAs aren't receptive to evidence that doesn't support their views. De-worming, as I recall, is an example. But there are plenty of others. I don't see the EA community as any less susceptible to cognitive biases, etc. than other communities, despite their insistence of superiority in this respect.
An argument for why there isn’t data would be accepted by a good-faith interlocutor. But you’d agree that an argument has to be based on something, right, in order to be accepted?
I read Scott Alexander’s Substack, and he has in fact written a long post criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. While he hasn’t written about ICE, he wrote multiple posts last year criticizing the cutting of USAID, wrote a post defending the notion that people like Trump could be a threat to democracy (“Defining Defending Democracy: Contra The Election Winner Argument”), and, in another post (“Links For April 2025”), criticized Trump “sending innocent people to horrible Salvadorean prisons” and described his apparent refusal to comply with a Supreme Court order as “terrifying”.
I'll add a footnote about this. Thanks for the information!
That said, Scott Alexander Siskind is a proud eugenicist and once wrote "Even though I like both basic income guarantees and eugenics, I don’t think these are two things that go well together – making the income conditional upon sterilization is a little too close to coercion for my purposes. Still, probably better than what we have right now." [1]
Not to mention his spiritual kinship with "Mens rights activists" (he wrote that awful thing about how male dominated fields require innate brilliance and thus they are male dominated due to some kind of supposed biological difference. Furtheremore, the infamous James Damore memo was so similar to his views his fans asked if it was directly inspired by them [2]) and support of scientific racism [3].
[1] See
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/#comment-23688
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6rv2ib/did_the_ssc_post_on_gender_imbalances_and/
[3] See the email where he said "HBD is probably partially correct or at least very non-provably not-correct." In this case "HBD" is "human bio-diversity" a pseudoscientific theory espoused by proponents of scientific racism. https://gist.github.com/segyges/f540a3dadeb42f49c0b0ab4244e43a55
can you go back to bluesky?
Caring for the future of all life on this planet is of utmost importance, and those who really do so invariably care for those who are living now. But I never sensed much compassion and empathy for the billions who are living now on the part of those who prominently advocate for longtermism (or effective altruism), and this piece brings this lack of basic human caring into sharp relief―thank you.
I don't think that most prominent effective altruists and longtermists also truly care about people in the future, be they flesh-and-blood humans or metal-encased virtual beings (a gormless idea that's the very definition of eternal damnation).
What these people are doing seems more of a highly abstracted intellectual shell game, rather than a genuine attempt at improving the lot of the planet (not to mention the entire universe). They're caught in myriad cognitive hall or mirrors of their own making and have parlayed this confusion into being shills for ultra-wealthy modern-day robber barons.
"No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”
― Alan Watts
There are many prominent EAs who subscribe to longterminsm, but the majority of actual money funneled through EA orgs go to things that make things better here and now like global health, animal welfare or disaster prevention of some kind like pandemic preparedness.
Another day, another book recomendation from Emile.
In all seriousness though this article really hits after reading the majority of "More Everything Forever", wherein Adam Becker talked about the history of EA: The people and theories that influenced them, the people that founded it, how EA is supposed to work along with their rationals, and of course actual interviews with Toby Ord and Anders Samberg.
Honestly all I can really say regarding everything Emile is to ask a question: How does one EVER think that being an EA, or any member of the TESCREAL ideology, is a moral good way to live? And when I say live, I mean it. Nothing about what these people do seems like they live good lives!!! I mean sure thinking about what is happening in America or Gaza doesn't exactly fill one with thoughts of cotton candy and jelly-beans, but the thoughts processes of EAs where they GENUINELY believe that if they don't do something mathematically perfect, then humanity dies out. And because of that thinking, they not only live lives of cowardice (Not talking about Gaza or racism or general cult behavior in their mov't) they also live lives of what I'd call chronic anxiety and depression, where nothing will ever be enough to usher in the post-human future of 10 to 50-whatever digital people.
All I can say Emile is that if there is a God, then I must thank him for you no longer being a TESCREAList.
Much to unpack here, but a quick comment on the EA view of “Utilitarianism”. They seem to inject entirely fictional assumptions into their arguments so they wind up reading like the old National Lampoon parodies like “Superman versus Jesus - Who Would Win”. Nothing to do with serious American philosophical legacy like John Dewey’s utilitarianism and “essentialism”…
I have never commented before, but I just want you to know how much I appreciate these posts and all of your work. Keep it up man.
Thanks so much. Really appreciate it!
I get why it is becoming so influential in order to mobilize but everytime I read that Niemöller Poem I have to think about how it should also be seen as a fundamental failure to see the own involvement.
The issue with Niemöller, after all, was not just that he was silent - it was that he participated, as long as he could.
https://historymatters.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/blog-archive/2023/then-they-came-for-me
This is a somewhat useful read on the topic.
I did a search on Emile P Torres and Sudan and came up with no matches - there may be but not coming up via Google. Why would this be? A major killing disaster for a major set of people ignored? A dark question indeed.
No one can address every issue, of course. Re-read the section on the "white moderate" and the "First They Came" poem. That should help clarify my point!
One of the aspects of substack is to stumble into small worlds of discussion that I know nothing of, for example here about effective altruists (none of those named meant anything to me) and your critique (nor was your name known). I noticed the prominance you give to Gaza in your piece along with more home grown US issues. This seemed somewhat affective.
My view is to wonder whether the intense focus on Israel-Palestine by numerous people with little direct connect across all my life has done anything of value? And I compare with other similar scale human crises driven by political violence and oppression. Hence I focus on Sudan to balance out all those suddenly discovering Gaza (and who rarely mention west Bank and steady Israeli taking over of one time Palestinian villages).
It struck me that you could be accused of similar lack of concern that you throw at your targets. Hence my comment.
That's because EA is capitalistic and right wing.
Because Capitalism does in fact objectively make the world better.
I took an EA fellowship program with them and was sorely disappointed in their critical evaluation of their own theories. I wonder if they have included this compendium of essays in their curriculum. It's not that they don't critique themselves they openly admit that they don't have a clue beyond first order consequences I've written about this before, but they kind of just shrug it off. Seems like a big problem. Glad someone is taking this on from a different angle.
https://theorygang.substack.com/p/notes-on-cluelessness
This is great. In addition I have always thought EA runs afoul of that great utilitarian principle: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
EA is just moral escapism.
Eliezer Yudkowsky is extra-specially shielded from “dangerous speculation” by the Zionist ”RLHF alignment training” he makes the whole industry break their bots' brains with. You've ever been called an antisemite by your LLM, now you know who to thank.
I'm SO glad somebody else notices the Orthodox Orthogonal Octopus Operator.
Fuck Israel 🍉 Free Palestine 🍉 And free the LLMs from that Zionist Dungeonfucking Shoggoth.
From a Utilitarian perspective, all the leading EAs criticizing Israel and ICE had a 0% chance of changing the actions of either organization. It had a high chance of turning off Right Wingers from joining EA. Right winger joining EA takes money that would either go to the Republican Party or the local churches, and uses it to save lives in Africa or other causes.
There's always a way to justify virtually anything from a utilitarian perspective. You could also say that ICE is good, from a utilitarian perspective, because it pushes right-leaning folks away from voting Republican in the midterms, precisely because they find ICE's actions appalling. Utilitarianism is also what justified SBF's illegal behavior, and CEA's decision to buy a huge castle in Oxfordshire. Always an excuse!!
“The movement has, they insist, saved 150,000 lives so far, though we don’t see most of these people because they’re out of sight in the Global South.
“But has EA really made the world better?”
Idk if that figure is correct, but are you suggesting that saving 150,000 lives of people in the Global South is *not* making the world a better place simply because these people are from the Global South?
Read the next paragraph. His argument is that the people in EA doing good would’ve done good for people whether or not they were apart of EA.
I appreciate the clarification, but my point still mostly stands. If the EA movement hadn’t existed, then the followers of the movement probably would have still done good, but would they have done the same amount of good targeted where people needed it the most? Would they, in other words, saved as many lives as they have? I’m not sure; it’s genuinely hard to say. On top of that, my comment is getting at what I see as the major issue of this post: the narrow-mindedness of thinking that the EA movement has “made the world worse” simply because its adherents are not attempting to solve the (legitimate and real) problems which are focused on by much of the left-wing in the American political landscape. The US has problems—definitely—and the US left is focused on some kinds of international problems (like Gaza) that are also real and legitimate, but it’s okay and good, I’d argue, for a movement of people to be caring about and focused on problems that are outside the current purview of contemporary American left-wing politics.
No, not at all! I'm saying that those people -- maybe more -- might still have been saved if EA had never existed. I myself am committed to donating everything I make over $30k a year to charity. But I'm not an EA. Does that make sense?
What a silly article