Epistemic Status: Personal view about longtermism and its critics.
Recently, there have been a series of attacks on longtermism. These largely focus on the (indisputable) fact that avoiding X-risks can be tied to racist or eugenic historical precedents. This should be worrying; a largely white. educated, western, and male group talking about how to fix everything should raise flags. And neglecting to address the roots of futurism is worrying - though I suspect that highlighting them and attempting apologetics would have been an even larger red flag to many critics.
At the same time, attacks on new ideas like longtermism are inevitable. New ideas, whether good or bad, are usually controversial. Moreover, any approaches or solutions that are proposed will have drawbacks, and when they are compared to the typical alternative (of ignoring the problem) they will inevitably be worse in some ways. Nonetheless, some portions of the attacks have merit.
In 2017, Scott Alexander wrote a post defending the ideas of the Lesswrong community, Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls. He says, in part, "the rationalist movement hasn’t missed the concerns that everybody who thinks of the idea of a 'rationalist movement' for five seconds has come up with. If you have this sort of concern, and you want to accuse us of it, please do a quick Google search to make sure that everybody hasn’t been condemning it and promising not to do it since the beginning."
Similarly, there is a real concern about the dangers of various longtermist approaches, but it is one which at least the majority of those who engage with longtermist ideas understand. These attacks looked at some roots of longtermism, but ignore the actual practice and the motives, repeated assertions that we are still uncertain, and the clear evidence that we are and will continue to be interested in engaging with those who disagree.
As the Effective Altruism forum should make abundantly clear, the motivations for the part of the community which embraces longtermism still includes Peter Singer's embrace of practical ethics and effective altruist ideas like the Giving Pledge, which are cornerstones of the community's behavior. Far from carrying on the racist roots of many past utopians, we are trying to address them. "What greater racism is there than the horrifically uneven distribution of resources between people all because of an accident of their birth?," as Sanjay noted. Still, defending existential risk mitigation and longtermism, by noting its proximity and roots in global health and other effective altruist causes is obviously less than a full response.
And in both areas, despite the best of intentions, there are risks that we cause harm, we increase disparities in health and happiness, we promote ideas which are flawed and dangerous, or we otherwise fail to live up to our ideals. Yes, we see the skulls. And yes, some of the proposals that have been put forward have glaring drawbacks which need to be discussed and addressed. I cannot speak for others, though if there is one thing longtermism cannot be accused of, it's insufficient attention to risk.
So I remain wary of the risks - not just the farcical claim that transhumanism is the same as eugenics, or the more reasonable one that some proposed paths towards stability and safety have the potential to worsen inequalities rather than address them, but also immediate issues like gender and racial imbalance within the movement, and the problem of seeing effective altruism as a white man's burden. The community has a history of engaging with critics, and we should continue to take their concerns seriously.
But all the risks of failure aren't a reason to abandon the project of protecting and improving the future - they are a reason to make sure we continue discussing and planning. I hope that those who disagree with us are willing to join in productive conversation about how we can ensure our future avoids the pitfalls they see. If we do so, there is a real chance that our path forward will not just be paved with good intentions, but lead us towards a better and safer future for everyone.
It seems pretty bizarre to me to say that these historical examples are not at all relevant for evaluating present day social movements. I think it's incredibly important that socialists, for example, reflect on why various historical folks and states acting in the name of socialism caused mass death and suffering, and likewise for any social movement look at it's past mistakes, harms, etc., and try to reevaluate their goals in light of that.
To me, the examples you give just emphasize the post's point — I think it would be hard to find someone who did a lot of thinking on socialist topics who thought that there were no lessons or belief changes should happen after human rights abuses in the Soviet Union were revealed. And if someone didn't think there were lessons there for how to approach making the world better today, that it would seem completely unreasonable.
I also don't think the original post was asking longtermist orgs to make blog posts calling for action on diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think it was doing something more like asking longtermists to genuinely reflect on whether or not unsavory aspects of the intellectual movement's history are shaping the space today, etc.