Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

by David Mathers🔸
1 min read 5

-3

CommunityBuilding effective altruismCriticism of effective altruismCriticism of effective altruist organizations
Frontpage
This is a linkpost for https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/race-science-inc/?utm_source=main_website&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=hub_page

Last year, the evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman wrote a forum post that attracted a lot of (mostly measured, nuanced) comment, defending eugenics: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PTCw5CJT7cE6Kx9ZR/most-people-endorse-some-form-of-eugenics
 

Recently, Fleischman has made a minor appearance in a long investigation by a British anti-fascist* organization. Apparently she hosts the podcast for a magazine run by far-right activists that seeks to promote ideas about race that appeal to far-right wing political parties, people interested in deporting non-white citizens of Western democracies and so forth.: " Diana Fleischman, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, has a part-time role hosting Aporia’s podcast, and is the author of an article on the website headlined: “You’re probably a eugenicist.”" EDIT: To be clear, this is the same article by Fleischmann that was discussed on the forum. 

I thought people should be warned about this, since Aporia's tactic appears to be to pretend to be much more moderate on issues around race than they actually are. Note that I am NOT saying, this means that people have to reject anything Diana Fleischman has ever said, or even that I personally disagree with everything in her original forum article. Insofar as it argues just that liberal democracies usually permit some eugenic practices, and people are confused and hypocritical about this, I probably agree with a lot of it. And I think I am probably cautiously in favour of genetic enhancement in the long-term, though I am very unsure about this. But I do think that the walls between "a bit edgy, but well-intentioned high decoupler" and "neo-Nazi activist"** seem to get very thin when it comes to people actively involved in trying to push genetic enhancement, in a way that makes me very nervous of the whole area. 

*I mean that term just as "they campaign against far-right", I don't think it necessarily has much to do with anti-fa in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)#:~:text=Antifa%20(%2F%C3%A6n%CB%88t,movement%20in%20the%20United%20States.

**My understanding is Fleischmann is Jewish, so it's unlikely she is literally a Nazi. But obviously someone could be Jewish and still support other forms of white nationalism on which Jews are classed as white. Though I am not saying she 100% definitely is a white nationalist herself either. 

-3

0
0
2

Reactions

0
0
2
Comments5


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
Jeff Kaufman 🔸19
4
0

Diana Fleischman, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, has a part-time role hosting Aporia’s podcast, and is the author of an article on the website headlined: “You’re probably a eugenicist.”"

That article (Aporia: You're probably a eugenicist) seems to be the same article she has on her Substack (Dissentient: You're probably a eugenicist) and that you refer to above (EA Forum: Most people endorse some form of 'eugenics'), which was also initially titled the same.

Which is to say: don't double-count, and don't treat the non-linked "You're probably a eugenicist" as if it has worse content than the linked "Most people endorse some form of 'eugenics'".

Reply
David Mathers🔸5
0
0

Ok, I'll change to indicate it was the same article. Though note that writing an article for them was not her only connection. 

Reply
More from David Mathers🔸
42
Beware popular discussions of AI "sentience"
David Mathers🔸
· · 10m read
6
6
36
Governments Might Prefer Bringing Resources Back to the Solar System Rather than Space Settlement in Order to Maintain Control, Given that Governing Interstellar Settlements Looks Almost Impossible
David Mathers🔸
· · 6m read
4
4
31
[Link Post] Interesting shallow round-up of reasons to be skeptical that transformative AI or explosive economic growth are coming soon
David Mathers🔸
· · 21m read
8
8
View more
Curated and popular this week
Paul Present
 ·  · 28m read
 · 
Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way. Summary While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise: 1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015. 2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010. 3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.  I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.  Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.  Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.  Introduction In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000: Giving What We Can said that > The reduction in malaria has be
LintzA
 ·  · 15m read
 · 
Cross-posted to Lesswrong Introduction Several developments over the past few months should cause you to re-evaluate what you are doing. These include: 1. Updates toward short timelines 2. The Trump presidency 3. The o1 (inference-time compute scaling) paradigm 4. Deepseek 5. Stargate/AI datacenter spending 6. Increased internal deployment 7. Absence of AI x-risk/safety considerations in mainstream AI discourse Taken together, these are enough to render many existing AI governance strategies obsolete (and probably some technical safety strategies too). There's a good chance we're entering crunch time and that should absolutely affect your theory of change and what you plan to work on. In this piece I try to give a quick summary of these developments and think through the broader implications these have for AI safety. At the end of the piece I give some quick initial thoughts on how these developments affect what safety-concerned folks should be prioritizing. These are early days and I expect many of my takes will shift, look forward to discussing in the comments!  Implications of recent developments Updates toward short timelines There’s general agreement that timelines are likely to be far shorter than most expected. Both Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have recently said they expect AGI within the next 3 years. Anecdotally, nearly everyone I know or have heard of who was expecting longer timelines has updated significantly toward short timelines (<5 years). E.g. Ajeya’s median estimate is that 99% of fully-remote jobs will be automatable in roughly 6-8 years, 5+ years earlier than her 2023 estimate. On a quick look, prediction markets seem to have shifted to short timelines (e.g. Metaculus[1] & Manifold appear to have roughly 2030 median timelines to AGI, though haven’t moved dramatically in recent months). We’ve consistently seen performance on benchmarks far exceed what most predicted. Most recently, Epoch was surprised to see OpenAI’s o3 model achi
Rory Fenton
 ·  · 6m read
 · 
Cross-posted from my blog. Contrary to my carefully crafted brand as a weak nerd, I go to a local CrossFit gym a few times a week. Every year, the gym raises funds for a scholarship for teens from lower-income families to attend their summer camp program. I don’t know how many Crossfit-interested low-income teens there are in my small town, but I’ll guess there are perhaps 2 of them who would benefit from the scholarship. After all, CrossFit is pretty niche, and the town is small. Helping youngsters get swole in the Pacific Northwest is not exactly as cost-effective as preventing malaria in Malawi. But I notice I feel drawn to supporting the scholarship anyway. Every time it pops in my head I think, “My money could fully solve this problem”. The camp only costs a few hundred dollars per kid and if there are just 2 kids who need support, I could give $500 and there would no longer be teenagers in my town who want to go to a CrossFit summer camp but can’t. Thanks to me, the hero, this problem would be entirely solved. 100%. That is not how most nonprofit work feels to me. You are only ever making small dents in important problems I want to work on big problems. Global poverty. Malaria. Everyone not suddenly dying. But if I’m honest, what I really want is to solve those problems. Me, personally, solve them. This is a continued source of frustration and sadness because I absolutely cannot solve those problems. Consider what else my $500 CrossFit scholarship might do: * I want to save lives, and USAID suddenly stops giving $7 billion a year to PEPFAR. So I give $500 to the Rapid Response Fund. My donation solves 0.000001% of the problem and I feel like I have failed. * I want to solve climate change, and getting to net zero will require stopping or removing emissions of 1,500 billion tons of carbon dioxide. I give $500 to a policy nonprofit that reduces emissions, in expectation, by 50 tons. My donation solves 0.000000003% of the problem and I feel like I have f
Recent opportunities in Building effective altruism
32
Introducing Effective Accountability: Project and Job Search Accountability Groups
2 authors
· · 2m read
1
1
15
Applications to EAGxCDMX close in a week!
cescorza
· · 2m read
0
0
23
Last week to apply for the Futurekind AI Fellowship! (deadline: April 1)
Jay Luong
· · 1m read
0
0
View more