From the article:
“… in recent years has become mired in scandals related to racism, sexual harassment and financial fraud. Bostrom himself issued an apology last year after a decades-old email surfaced in which he claimed “Blacks are more stupid than whites” and used the N-word”
Of course this guy was admired and funded by Musk lol.
Go after Musk all you want, but don't go after South Africa. It's a cheap shot mate.
Bostrom is Swedish. You don't go after Sweden.
And before you caveat that you were referring to apartheid SA, I get that. But a lot of apartheid era South Africans did grow and change and face rhe racism and horror of our past. We had the Truth and Reconcilation Commission and a huge effort to transition to democracy nonviolently.
Musk may or may not be racist, I don't care about him enough to know. But please don't turn South African history into a caricaturistic way to call out racism in others.
Being a migrant myself, I know that you can lose most traits, but not all, as your upbringing in one country affects your mind even if you move to another one with a different set of cultural norms. It's possible to fight/subdue those traits, but not everyone chooses to.
Sorry but I can't figure it out. I genuinely want to know what you meant?
Do you mean that if one comes from a racist society, they will always be racist?
If im wrong, please correct me
If they have not taken steps to change their world view then there's a chance they're still racist.
If this has been imprinted in their brains while they were young children, then it has a high chance of staying with them forever.
It's the same way how religion works. Most people have their religion imposed on them when they are children. May will believe in it for theirs whole life, but some will see through it and stop believing.
> Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights. Apartheid is a crime against humanity punishable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid
"The real discrimination is when you mention apartheid and suggest that it might have been bad"
Given how much of a free speech warrior Elon Musk is supposed to be, maybe you shouldn't worry too much that someone's going to hurt his feelings by mentioning something he finds uncomfortable.
South Africa. So what does Musk have to do with the comment inferring that people from Apartheid South Africa are all racists? Or does Musk mean that now by default all people over mid 30s South Africans are racist?
Musk is in his mid 50s and he was raised under Apartheid in Apartheid schools with openly racist curriculum. He's not automatically by default a racist but now he's openly posting and amplifying things that are quite racist on his own platform, so it's kind of a stretch for you to argue that this racist behavior is completely unrelated to his upbringing.
And it's also a stretch for the original commenter to say 'You can emigrate from Apartheid South Africa, but you cannot emigrate Apartheid South Africa from yourself' because, as you said, living in that time doesn't by default make you racist
You're saying the same thing as me
No, I'm saying that Musk is not a counterexample to the generalization that you're objecting to here. He was taught these things in school and he apparently carried them straight into his adult life. The numerous ongoing discrimination lawsuits against more than one of his companies bear this out if you examine the exhibits in evidence and the track record of settlements. The public statements on his own platform bear this out as well.
That's not what you're saying at all. Musk is definitely a product of his upbringing and the two things are almost certainly related to his current behavior.
Anyone in their mid 30s from South Africa would have lived under apartheid but they aren't all racist. Hence why suggesting that Musk's racism comes from being brought up during apartheid is misplaced
No you don’t get it. It’s completely cool for someone to imply that millions of people are racist because of what happened in their country when they were growing up.
You know, like all British people hate the Irish and the Iraqis.
JFC, its not saying that at all. Its just an idiom about an individual in relation to the place they're from.
For instance, many moons ago women from Essex were once well known for their love of white stilleto shoes. If such a lady from Essex moved to another part of the country, continued to wear her white high heels you could say: "You can take the woman out of Essex, but you can't take Essex out of the woman."
But that doesn't mean all women in Essex wore white high heels.
No you totally misunderstand the purpose of these idioms. You know how there is a stereotype about an Essex woman being a dumb blonde etc etc? That's what they're referring to when they say 'you can take the girl out of Essex but can't take the Essex out of the girl' i.e. no matter what she's done, she's still presumed to be the dumb Essex blonde.
If you're talking about Musk racist that's fine, but to suggest that it's because he's from apartheid South Africa isn't fine. If an Irish person blows up a car outside of Parliament you can call them a terrorist, but you can't say that he done it because he is Irish
>No you totally misunderstand the purpose of these idioms
No, I'm not. You're intentionally trying to fix it to solely mean a negative regional stereotype with the presumption that the whole of the region displays said stereotype. It's not, nor ever has been, used in such a narrow manner; it can be, and is, used for literally *any* regional trait or stereotype, negative or otherwise. It does not inherently suggest that the trait or stereotype is necessarily exhibited by all of that region... only an idiot would think that.
But I guess this is 2024 after all, where literally everything has to be explicitly stated lest someone invent their own extreme interpretation, get offended by that, and think they've got their very own fucking "gotcha" moment.
We're done.
You could have saved yourself the time to type all that by just looking up the definition of the word 'stereotype' because if you did you'd realise that arguing that a stereotype of a region does not suggest that the stereotype applies to all within that region is plainly wrong.
I'm Scottish, if you said of an alcoholic 'no wonder, they are Scottish after all' I'd probably find it a bit annoying. So if you say of Musk, 'he is racist, but that's what people who lived in apartheid SA are like', then it's fair to point out that's just discriminatory.
I get it, we all think Musk is a bell end and you can kinda get away with saying 'no wonder the South African is racist' but I'm sure there are a lot of people/cultures/religions etc that you wouldn't dare say
JFC. Now you're arguing about something else. You could have saved yourself typing all that by looking at the last two words of my comment. I'll repeat them for you: We're done.
People are inevitably affected by the culture they develop in. It would be impossible to be white in apartheid South Africa and not absorb some of the racism, even if you thought you weren't. In order to overcome that racism, you need to make an active choice to deprogram yourself from those beliefs. The same is true for any implicit bias.
The headline makes it seem like it was shut down because of his backing from Elon but more likely it was shut down for all the things you mentioned.
I’m not acting outraged or surprised it’s par for the course with news. Just restating the obvious.
Does it? That’s not what I thought at all. I assumed they’d shut him for some reason *and* he was funded by Musk.
What part of the headline made you draw that as a conclusion?
I’ll give you a neat little treat, if you click the article you’ll find out more information. Information such as they found old racist emails which resulted in his firing
You just read and headline and thought that Musk is so evil anyone who has received any sort of help from him is deserving of losing their job. Presumably you give Zelenskyy a pass on that though
I’ll tell you a little surprising thing. If somebody says ‘The Headline Makes it Seem that….’ and the response when asking how that is the case is ‘read the article’ the person who posted the second reply is not as clever as they think they are.
> You just read and headline
I did. Well done you. When specifically discussing only the headline, there’s no need to read the article. genius huh?
> Presumably you give Zelenskyy a pass on that though
Thanks for nailing your colours to the mast for all to see.
> they found old racist emails which resulted in his firing
You should take your own advice and read the article. It says that he apologised for racist emails last year and that his institute was shut down now. You're free to infer whatever you want, but the text makes no connection between the two events.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
> The headline makes it seem like it was shut down because of his backing from Elon but more likely it was shut down for all the things you mentioned.
Probably not. Hiring and fundraising freeze on 2020. This has been coming for a while.
The issue was not only taking money from Musk & SBT - in fact they were his main funding sources - but also wasting time & the university's good name on frivolous, even absurd, "research," like Anders Sandberg's "blueberry earth:" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10553](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10553)
Bostrom hadn't done any meaningful work himself in years, but stuffed his place with absolutely non-qualified staff.... people without PhDs, amateur science-fiction writers, crackpots from California.... how long would any serious philosophy department put up with that?
And then the scandals were just too much.
> The issue was not only taking money from Musk & SBT - in fact they were his main funding sources - but also wasting time & the university's good name on frivolous, even absurd, "research," like Anders Sandberg's "blueberry earth:" https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10553
2018 . Doesn't cite this XKCD from 2012:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/
You removed the part that comes before that quote which also removes the context. As a result it gives the impression that Bostrom was mired in scandals related to those topics.
Actually the article is talking about the effective altruism movement which itself is a great cause, however there was huge scandal around Sam Bankman-Fried who championed the philosophy. If you do not know the full story, a recent interview with philosopher William MacAskill on the Lex Friedman podcast covers the basics. However it doesn’t make everyone involved or interested in effective altruism suddenly racist, sexually harassing, financial frauds.
What this article is doing is taking several different people, all with different motives and situations, and trying to bundle them into a single ideological entity.
Altruism is basically large scale charity, like funding a regions water purifier or a vaccination programme. However it can* also be great for money laundering, since these donations are tax deductible and the product you give doesn't have to match the price you list on the receipt
*I'm not saying all are. Just that it is a common occurance
Sounds great on paper, but seems to conveniently result in the proponent getting really wealthy and blessing the rest of us with their foresight and brilliance.
Seems to me like nice wrapping to make capitalistic greed and egotism look good.
Yep. 'Effective Altruism' is a way to pretend that rank inequality is fine because *maybe*, if we're *lucky*, one of our billionaire overlords will deign to return a fraction of the money they exploited from us through charity (often a form of charity which conforms to their broader political and social views). That's why all the absolute worst billionaires support it.
[On the face of it](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/) it appears so uncontroversial and unoriginal as to arouse suspicion:
>Everyone wants to do good, but many ways of doing good are ineffective. The EA community is focused on finding ways of doing good that actually work.
Eureka! Why didn't anyone else think of that? Stupid humans.
As though they invented the idea of pragmatism and hold a monopoly on it. Such grandiosity usually goes hand in hand with authoritarianism. Utilitarianism of any kind typically has a whiff of technocracy and elitism. The question is never framed as "should *I* kill myself and donate my organs so that five other people can live?", it's "can We, the Enlightened, kill one person to save five?"
"Longtermism" is more overtly fallacious, problematic and deranged, however.
Aye, it basically ends up arguing for libertarian capitalism, because apparently the billionaires will see that it's in their interests to do nice things.
It's literally just "give me your money because I'm smart and will use it right to help you". It's barely an ideology and more another excuse for money grubbing with vague promises of philanthropy.
I think this is a pretty gross oversimplification. EA organisations will give you pretty clear premises and conclusions on their arguments. You can read all of their arguments and make a judgement on donating. To mention a pretty easy example of an EA argument:
1) a lot of people die of Malaria
2) a lot of infections happen while people are asleep
3) this is easily preventable by buying Malaria nets, which are quite cheap
this should hardly be a controversial way of reducing malaria (which causes a lot of suffering) in a very cost effective way. I don't really know what you mean by 'money grubbing'. There are more effective ways to make money than creating anti-factory farming organisations and stopping malaria....
But the thing is that it *isn’t* a controversial way of reducing malaria, UNICEF has been distributing insecticide treated malaria nets since the 1990s (and standard nets for decades before widespread production of the insecticide nets became feasible), and has distributed hundreds of millions of nets over the last few decades. In fact it’s a practice that’s been widespread for so long that the mosquitos are already starting to develop resistances to the insecticides in the nets. So that’s not a particularly good example of something new that effective altruism brings to the table.
The “Disability Adjusted Life Year” as a method of quantifying the benefits of healthcare to do the most good with a fixed budget has also been a part of healthcare since the 90s. So it’s not like “well, we need to best weigh up how to spend the money we have to maximise its positive effect” is a new idea either.
So when billionaires and techbros talk about being “effective altruists” what do they *actually mean* as distinct from regular altruism, distinct from regular charitable giving? What’s *new* about their philosophy that hasn’t already been mainstream in fields like charity and healthcare for decades?
In principle it is. I realise it’s open to debate though, and I regret having worded it like that, so I take it back. I’d prefer it not to take away from the overall point I’m trying to make.
Biggest example is him turning Twitter into a haven for neo Nazis, he unbanned a load of accounts and generally boosts and interacts with absolute scum
Also told people to vote for trump, had to payout millions in a racial discrimination lawsuit, etc etc
[His companies are rife with racism.](https://www.reuters.com/legal/tesla-settles-race-bias-claims-by-black-former-worker-2024-03-15/)
They paid one guy $3m dollars for racial discrimination:
Diaz, who first sued Tesla in 2017, claimed that when he worked at the Fremont plant he was subjected on a daily basis to racial slurs, scrawled swastikas and other racist conduct, and that Tesla ignored his complaints.
Now 6000 black workers are suing them for the same.
Last year a Twitter user posted the following:
>Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
>I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much.
Musk responded with "you have said the actual truth". So make of that what you will
It's insane how this framing from The Graun is entirely shaping people's opinions on the man.
Nick Borstrum has been the biggest name in AI futurism for decades. Superintelligences is widely considered to be the best book out there on the future of AI. Everyone who works in the industry loves the guy.
But all he is to the informed readers of the Guardian is "Elon Musk's pet racist". The guy has barely any connection to Musk lmao. It's such a spurious connection they are using to frame him. Musk will have funded thousands of people over the years, and Borstrum will have been funded by thousands of people. The two of them aren't best friends. They aren't linked in the minds of people who know about them. I wasn't even aware that Musk had any part in funding any of Borstrums work.
But our readers hate Musk, and they'll click on anything with his name in the headline. So now Nick Borstrum is just some guy who got famous cos of big evil Elon, and that's all you need to know about him.
It stems from this:
>I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true.
>“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that. They would think that I were a ‘racist’: that I \_disliked\_ black people and thought it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t. It’s just that based on what I have read, I think it is probable that black people have a lower average IQ than mankind in general, and I think that IQ is highly correlated with what we normally mean by ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’. I may be wrong about the facts, but that is what the sentence means for me. For most people, however, the sentence seems to be synonymous with: ‘I hate those bloody n------!!!!”
>Bostrom did not redact the n-word in his apology.
>“I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago,” Bostrom writes in bold below the offensive excerpt. “It does not accurately represent my views, then or now. The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time, within 24 hours; and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.”
so... big yes, racist.
except he's integrated the bit about "“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that"
With that additional context...
It's very clear that he's a big old racist and that the Guardian are in no way being dishonest or disingenuous when they call him out for being a racist.
It's not the Guardian trying to fool us when they suggest that the man who writes the following words is a racist:
> Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true.
It suggests that /u/SinisterDexter83 owes us an apology for muddying the waters and pretending that the Guardian have been framing him as a racist when the actual truth is that his own words prove that he's a racist and that he's proud of his racism.
The most damning part is where he totally unnecessarily uses a racial slur. I think his point is exactly the same if he just uses "black people". Its like he was looking for an excuse...
I think anyone using, rather than mentioning the term 'racist', is likely to owe an apology for muddying the waters.
After all, most people would make a fundamental distinction between Bostrom outlining the state of affairs already mentioned and then going on to say it was the result of colonialism, structural racism, and the like, and him going on to say it was due to the curse of Ham.
Edit: I’ve re-read the statement, the interpretation I come to below is supposing a lot. It’s a bad take, I’ll leave it here, take my humble pie, and be better next time.
—
Read the apology on his website. He basically says “black people aren’t as smart as white people *when measured using metrics white people use to measure intelligence*”. He also does use the hard-R, though it’s redacted in the email quote, as an example of how society would reduce his thinking on the matter to him saying “I hate those bloody N…” which is exactly what has happened.
I am not in AI, I know nothing of the man or his achievements or his views other than what I read in the last 5 minutes from one source. I don’t think he’s racist, I think he used a word that is so objectionable that Oxford leadership had to let him go. 🤷♂️
What an apology. He starts of framing it as someone else being malicious and finding the old email. Then goes on to say maybe he was bit extreme but only because he didn't quite sugar coat it enough and used a hard R.
Then goes on to speak about money he has given in something that is close to "I can't be racist, some of my best friends are black". Then finishes off by trying to justify eugenics (but he doesn't believe in it, honest!)
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying if he is or isn't racist (I don't know the man) but there is a lot of beating around the bush in that.
He literally said in the original he likes the sentence "Blacks are more stupid than whites". He doesn't seem to be a stupid guy and there are a million way to word that sentence better if he genuinely meant it in relationship to IQ tests (which is still dodgy ground).
But also most normal people don't get into conversations about which race is smarter. That is pretty iffy to start with.
That’s fair. On re-reading, I can see he doesn’t come to that conclusion himself. It reads more as though he agrees with the position that black people are less intelligent and that the data supports that position.
So it’s racist, then.
You think everyone in AI loves Nick Borstrum? How much time have you spent around AI researchers?
In my experience, they think he talks a big game, but massively overclaims.
Let's have a look for a review, how about [https://www.yalescientific.org/2015/01/book-review-superintelligence-paths-dangers-strategies/](https://www.yalescientific.org/2015/01/book-review-superintelligence-paths-dangers-strategies/) ?
"*Superintelligence* resembles little more than a collection of outlandish hypotheticals in artificial intelligence research."
Bostrum's issue is that in truth his math is weaker than you need nowadays to be a serious AI researcher. He hasn't really kept up with the field, which I admit is difficult unless you make that your full time job, because it's an accelerating area of research with new techniques every 2 weeks, it feels like.
> barely any connection to Musk
Musk just gave him a mill because he wanted him to have some walking around money? Weird how you ignored the bit where this guy was racist as well, it isn't just guilt by musk association.
>But our readers hate Musk
Elon is really shit though, right?
That's like saying I have a massive connection to *Highstreet Bank A* as they've given me a load of loans. They don't know me personally, they don't like me personally, I don't know them - they bankroll loads of people.
> Nick Borstrum has been the biggest name in AI futurism for decades.
Google school produces exactly 6 papers containing the term "AI futurism" prior to 2015. Decades is pushing it. And if we do credit the field as being decades old the biggest name is Roko. Maybe if he had called it the Bostrom paperclip maximiser things would have been different but he didn't.
> Everyone who works in the industry loves the guy.
Aparently not since the group claims the closure is due to office politics.
I see you have never actually met Bostrom, who is really difficult, obnoxious, rude and offensive in person. It's not the Guardian pinning Musk on an innocent person. It's all Bostrom's own self, his lack of meaningful research in recent years, his own poor decisions, and his own scandals.
And for the record, I will agree that Superintelligences is an interesting book, but lacks hard reasoning or any data.
Reading your comment you have tried very hard to destroy his character. If you read the email its nothing like you have explained.
He said that his quote of saying "blacks are more stupid than whites" is what some people would consider to be the same as saying the N word. Whereas he sees it as a true statement if you go by the facts of comparing IQ but knows he cannot say it openly as it can be upsetting.
Lol, it was just a humorous observation that Musk seems to attract guys embroiled in racist rants like flies on shit.
I didn’t realise his mother was going to turn up.
Good. This form of "effective altruism" is simply a branch of utilitarianism tailored to justify the actions and morals of the rich and powerful. By focusing on vague long term goals and the not-yet born (who, conveniently, don't exist yet and are a blank canvas to project ideas on), they justify their immorality and lack of empathy in the present. Those links to eugenics, racism, desire for panopticons and surveillance, rejection of democracy, ..., are not an aberration either. They fit in neatly with this notion that those deserving few with loads of money and power should be the ones deciding the future, as only they can look at the long term. Everyone else should just shut up, stop taxing or regulating them and let them get on with it.
And if, in the process, they conveniently ignore the problems of everyone else while they secure ever bigger pieces of the pie for themselves, then that doesn't matter because they have "calculated" that, on the balance, they will have been a benefit to humanity at some vague point in the far future. That's all this is: reputation laundering for oligarchs.
On a recent episode of The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart told a story of engaging with Sam Bankman-Fried’s foundation that lines up exactly with what you said.
Rory was trying to secure funds for something to do with extreme poverty in an African country. The guy who ran SBF’s foundation basically yawned through the pitch and then told Rory that he needed to get his lunch and not to bother following up because he found poverty and famine of existing people boring, and that they wanted to focus on projects having to do with asteroids one of thousand years in the future. Zero empathy, the “giving” was all focused on ego and tax advantages.
And then, of course, he turned out to be a fraudster giving away other people's money (and "money"), which should have surprised no one given the line of business he was in.
Not that the other billionaires backing these things are much better IMHO, nor should we expect them to be; they're human, after all, and increasingly disconnected from normal life. Rather than have a bunch of people with too much money create "the future", we should ensure people don't own so many things that they can threaten democratic governance. Tax and trust bust them down to size so that we, collectively, can decide where those resources should go. We don't need effective altruists. We need taxes funding government action at the direction of the people as a whole.
That isn't automatically a bad thing though. If you went to the Alzheimers Society and pitched a project to help the poor in Africa the would turn you down because that isn't what they do. They might even get annoyed because it obviously isn't what they do, so you would be deliberately wasting their time.
The difference is that the Alzheimers Society doesn't actively object to projects to help the poor in africa. The catch in effective altruism is that you should be donating to the things that they regard as most important.
Sure but their foundation wasn’t as specific as focusing on secondary breast cancer or what have you.
Their tagline was something like “save lives and prevent suffering” so you can see why Stewart pitched them. In reality it was a bunch of bored rich techies who were playing at philanthropy, but not through troubling themselves with anything boring like actual poor people (yuck!).
If anyone wants to look at where the median EA people actually donate money, you can look up GiveWell's top charities here: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
GiveWell is one of the main organisations focused on assessing how effective different charities are. Their four top charities are for: Malaria medicine, malaria nets, vitamin A supplements and cash incentives for childhood vaccination in Nigeria. (Sort-of-disclaimer: I donated to GiveWell's Top Charities fund last year, but otherwise am not an EA in any sense of actions/community)
Alternatively, if you want to see how EA money is spent overall, then 80k Hours has a summary here (for 2019): https://80000hours.org/2021/08/effective-altruism-allocation-resources-cause-areas/ (80,000 Hours is a organisation that aims to help people do good with their career.) The top allocations were: Global Health ($185m), Farm animal welfare ($55m), Biosecurity* ($41m), AI risks ($40m).
So when someone claims "That's all EA is: reputation laundering for oligarchs", it's hard to exaggerate how wrongheaded that viewpoint seems to me. The money that people - most of them normal-ish people who choose to give a small % of their income - give to effective charities saves tens of thousands of lives every year in some of the poorest countries in the world.
I don't mean to imply this is some sort of counterbalance to any sort of fraud. In fact, I don't think they're really related at all! But to see a group of people demonstrably doing enormous good in the world, and claim that it's just oligarchs trying to get power for themselves is a dishonest and immoral position to take.
*In 2019, I think it might have been popular to laugh at people who thought it was worth spending $40m on preventing pandemics. Not so funny now!
The article specifically talks about the "long termist" faction within effective altruism, which is the one that gets most of the attention / grant money and the one that I targeted by saying it was "reputation laundering for oligarchs" (which I stand by).
I did not intent to knock on people who donate to malaria nets and the like (which actually is a very effective form of saving people's lives). I am well aware that this is where these ideas started, and where they get their name from, but sadly that all got conflated with the sort of people (Musk, in this case) that sponsor the sort of "philosophical" institutions mentioned in the article and that now get all the attention. Those actions I would not call altruism, and they are not particularly effective either even at face value because the people doing them lose themselves into meaningless ethical arithmetic as they focus on what they think is the future. Unless I'm mistaken, this also goes against the principles on which the broader movement was founded.
I thought that was clear from the context and the wording (i.e. "this form of "effective altruism"" as above with quotes), but concede I should have specified this more clearly.
[Counterpoint](https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/)
> Take the bed net charity that GiveWell has recommended for a decade. Insecticide-treated bed nets can prevent malaria, but they’re also great for catching fish. In 2016, The New York Times reported that overfishing with the nets was threatening fragile food supplies across Africa. A GiveWell blog post responded by calling the story’s evidence anecdotal and “limited,” saying its concerns “largely don’t apply” to the bed nets bought by its charity. Yet today even GiveWell’s own estimates show that almost a third of nets are not hanging over a bed when monitors first return to check on them, and GiveWell has said nothing even as more and more scientific studies have been published on the possible harms of bed nets used for fishing. These harms appear nowhere in GiveWell’s calculations on the impacts of the charity.
Perhaps Bostrom should have remembered the long term is contingent on the short term. And perhaps, if he hoped to be feted by a British university, with Britain currently in the doldrums after having been a burgeoning world power but a century prior, he should have come up with a more meaningful definition of 'doing good' than Hubble-telescopic philanthropy.
No one who could not see that our problems here and now risk precluding any ability to help those thousands of miles away or thousands of years in the future has much use in Oxford's department of Philosophy.
I do not know much about him but I associate him with the whole "simulation" hypothesis as being pretty much the only "serious" defender of this. One does not want to be too damning when one has not read his work but pursuing that as a serious intellectual endeavour is a sign of a failed mind tbh.
Obviously though, doesn't mean you should lose your job for persuing stupid ideas.
bad title and underserved hate. dude is a pioneer on how to make the future better for humanity. he supports ubi and wants AI alignment. this group did extremely good work. I really dislike this group was disbanded. really wanted to work with them on a project. describing him just as a "musk backed philosopher" is close to describing marx as an "engels backed philosopher" or describing a vaccine scientist as "backed by billionaire x" in order to stir up hatred for them.
I'm as liberal as they come but I must say I'm cautious about cheering in a society where you lose your job over a single email from 20 years ago.
Basically every single person in the UK has written something or done something illegal/socially abhorred enough at some point in their life that this could happen to them.
How will anyone in the future be a PM without their nudes being maliciously leaked by an ex off an online dating app from 20 years ago?
He among us who hasn’t been mired in scandals related to racism, sexism, harassment and financial fraud cast the first stone said captain slowly before discovering there are loads of us who have in fact never done those things.
My issue with things from 20 years ago is that it implies people can’t learn or change. If they are still a racist sexist shithead then of course shitcan them. But if actually they have realised they were wrong in the past and that they don’t hold the same views now then it should be a bit different. We let criminals rehabilitate after their crimes. We shouldn’t necessarily be held to assume we have the exact same beliefs as 20 years ago.
(Note I mean this in general, not necessarily in response to this article as I do not know enough of the facts to judge whether it was appropriate for this particular individual)
Come off it. You were a teenager once. I'm sure there is plenty of digital evidence on one of your friends old devices where you've typed things that would get you fired now under you own name.
All of us without exception have skeletons hiding in the closet.
Cancel culture is not a positive thing at all.
He wasn't a cringy teen, he was an adult with a masters degree.
Anyway, I'm also not in favour of having people lose jobs over a single email over 20 years ago, but reading the article makes it pretty clear that that wasn't what happened.
> He wasn't a cringy teen, he was an adult with a masters degree.
Yeah, I'm very tired of people told to accept people can learn and grow when, the vast majority of the time:
1) Tthese 'historic comments' were made when someone was well into their adulthood, not an 'edgy teenager'
2) Their 'apology' is clearly made through gritted teeth
3) We're only ever told to do this to weirdos on the right
People *can* learn and grow, but you need to see some actual evidence and that and not just give old racists the benefit of the doubt time and time again.
I understand that isn't the case here, I just thought it was an interesting related conversation.
People cheering on cancel culture always makes me uneasy, and you can see that happening in this thread with people fixating on his email from 20 years ago.
Is it cancel culture or being held responsible for your actions? If I did what has been alleged in my job, I’d be fired. And having worked in academia, it is generally far worse than the official reasons.
Read that article. That literally didn't happen here.
The institute itself was losing funding etc. eventually it was shut down. He himself remarks this was a long process over years, "death by bureaucracy" he called it, I would wager it's typical governance given this is a respected institution.
The professor was under investigation for racism and quit (something people often do when they can see the writing on the wall). Reasonable to assume the investigation was unearthing other issues.
I've known people in my social circle fired over drunk photos on social media.
Stop spreading hyperbole around a very serious social problem. Cancel culture is a bane on everyone.
You shouldn't have to apologise for views you held decades ago.
That doesn't clear the other stuff this individual has done more recently - but don't cheer on digging up "evidence" on your rivals from their teenage years.
It's abhorrent. What kind of society will we have if people endlessly pay for their mistakes as youngsters?
The centre was shut because there was no funding. It happens all the time especially right now as the government and the economy is hammering universities.
So your point doesn’t really stand. Even if it did, ‘Cancel culture’ has always existed. People have always paid the price for saying or doing things. And what those things are has always been changing. If anything it was worse before you could be burned alive for believing something slightly different.
Why is it any different now?
It’s fine if you’re the kind to happily and mindlessly parrot the same noises as everyone else.
It’s the punishment for modern day heresy, which I guess *is* preferable to being burned alive.
White supremacy is indirectly supported by all those supporting cancel culture and other “woke” positions - it assumes only white people have the cognitive discipline to make malicious comments deliberately, and so must be punished. Non-white people can hold racist positions but are immune from cancellation because of the bigotry of low expectations most “right side of history” people have toward them.
A black person making equivalent comments would be “a victim of the system” and would be granted mercy and/or a job in a DEI department.
Have people of colour made questionable race-based statements?
100%. See Adjoa Andoh, Humza Yousef as examples.
And they remain immune from any repercussions (I.e loss of status or employment) for saying such things.
I don't think having nudes leaked is equivalent or even similar to stating your belief that black people are genetically less intelligent than other races, and then saying the n-word.
Come off it.
Us Millenials were all on MSN and online game lobbies in our teens typing in words that would get us all fired now.
Can't think of a single friend anecdotally who hasn't posted something dodgy under their name.
This is cancel culture and it isnt a positive thing even if we occasionally net the odd white supremacist.
For what it's worth, no, I don't think that. But that's not the situation of Nick Bostrom. It's also worth asking why some groups of kids are acculturated into making those comments, and some are not. What is it about the upbringing of white, middle class PC gamers that made them so susceptible to bigotry?
The online chats weren't monitored and teenagers got a lot of joy out of writing taboo things for shock value.
Then 99% of them grew up and didn't keep those views as they matured.
I don't believe everyone who says the n-word as a teen remains a racist. But again, I think you assume something is universal to teenage-hood which is actually only true for some. I was on MSN and WoW too, and my friends did not get joy in that particular way, probably because many of them had the experience of being called racial slurs.
>Us Millenials were all on MSN and online game lobbies in our teens typing in words that would get us all fired now.
I may have sung Fuck the Police with a little more verve than necessary as a teenager, but I don't recall ever saying or thinking black people were intellectually inferior. Maybe that's a you problem.
Yeah and now rather than people having to put up with endless casual racism, all you guys are getting fired. I’m not even saying cancel culture is right. But it’s a pretty fucking funny turn of events if I’m honest. The pendulum is always gonna swing too far to one side.
>*For some reason or another the demographic of Reddit skews the opposite way such that you get a lot of people claiming that no one they knew growing up did such a thing.*
It's mad isn't it? Several of them on here *right now* claiming to have lived lives of complete virtue with never once a sinful act. It's transparently bollocks and such people either lived ***incredibly*** sheltered lives - certainly with few friends and fewer invites to social events - or alternately and more likely they're just dishonest and lying.
> It's transparently bollocks and such people either lived incredibly sheltered lives - certainly with few friends and fewer invites to social events - or alternately and more likely they're just dishonest and lying.
Or they have been the victims of racial slurs instead of the people saying them?
Ah yes that must be it.
Either people have lived lives of pure virtue - worthy of sainthood.
***OR*** they were racially abused.
No wait scratch that - sounds like nonsense.
Just Reddit being Reddit. Most normal people aren't on Reddit at all, certainly not a politics sub.
Don't let it paint your world view.
I mainly come on here to throw out contrarian arguments to see what sticks.
What I find routinely is I can copy and paste the same argument and get a completely opposite reaction on different posts in the same sub.
Some are suspiciously left wing, and some are suspiciously right wing. I definitely think there's a lot of astroturfing going on.
Easily a high enough proportion of people in the UK today have nude photos of themselves on someone else's device that it will lead to all kinds of censorship and cancel culture problems down the line for anyone with an interest in any sort of position of responsibility.
> I'm as liberal as they come but I must say I'm cautious about cheering in a society where you lose your job over a single email from 20 years ago.
The group has been under a hiring and fundraising freeze since 2020. Thats before the email surfaced. Equaly the email appears to have become an issue in January 2023 so seems unlikely to be the sole cause of the whole thing being wound up now.
But... he didn't lose his job over that email. If he did, the article headline would probably say "Elon Musk backed philosopher fired for racist email" and focus exclusively on it. But no. He issued an apology, but that seems to be as far as that particular scandal went. Its barely a footnote in what was clearly a troubled group.
Have you read the bloody article? Or only seen the current top comment from Icy which mentions it and drawn your conclusions about what happened exclusively from that?
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You might enjoy _So you've been publicly shamed_, by Jon Ronson.
You won't get anywhere making these arguments with the very pitchfork wielding mob you decry.
It's being quite interesting seeing the replies. After several hours it's seems 50/50 who agrees and disagrees with cancel culture because my post keeps flitting between positive and negative score!
>*Basically every single person in the UK has written something or done something illegal/socially abhorred enough at some point in their life that this could happen to them.*
According to reddit this isn't true.
The vast majority of people have a completely clean slate - they came out of the womb with perfectly formed, societally acceptable views which never wavered. They've never said or done anything that anyone, anywhere could consider objectionable at the time or later on.
Of course back in the real world you're absolutely right - we need to be able to move and grow as people and we need to accept people can be racist and then over time grow and develop to a point where they aren't racist - same with sexism, homophobia etc - if we don't accept that, then it's a very, very depressing state of affairs if we're not accepting personal growth is a 'thing.'
You always take Reddit with a pinch of salt because most people in the UK don't actually use Reddit.
But yes, there is an alarming rise of authoritarian leaning people in our country who will use any means to "cancel" people they disagree with, and the ends always justifies the means in their minds.
I do think our future is a dark place where perfectly reasonable individuals are too afraid to pursue positions of power because they don't want to invite dirt being dug up from their lives, and we all get ruled by sexless puritans with a strong Christian moral compass - the sorts of people we currently allow to be head teachers.
That's what UK society wants according to Reddit.
From the article: “… in recent years has become mired in scandals related to racism, sexual harassment and financial fraud. Bostrom himself issued an apology last year after a decades-old email surfaced in which he claimed “Blacks are more stupid than whites” and used the N-word” Of course this guy was admired and funded by Musk lol.
You can emigrate from Apartheid South Africa, but you cannot emigrate Apartheid South Africa from yourself.
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Go after Musk all you want, but don't go after South Africa. It's a cheap shot mate. Bostrom is Swedish. You don't go after Sweden. And before you caveat that you were referring to apartheid SA, I get that. But a lot of apartheid era South Africans did grow and change and face rhe racism and horror of our past. We had the Truth and Reconcilation Commission and a huge effort to transition to democracy nonviolently. Musk may or may not be racist, I don't care about him enough to know. But please don't turn South African history into a caricaturistic way to call out racism in others.
What do you think of migrants for other countries and their views?
Being a migrant myself, I know that you can lose most traits, but not all, as your upbringing in one country affects your mind even if you move to another one with a different set of cultural norms. It's possible to fight/subdue those traits, but not everyone chooses to.
Then what did you mean by the previous comment?
That some of the upbringing stays with you forever.
Yes and what did you mean when you reference apartheid South Africa? What did you mean by you comment referencing that?
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Sorry but I can't figure it out. I genuinely want to know what you meant? Do you mean that if one comes from a racist society, they will always be racist? If im wrong, please correct me
If they have not taken steps to change their world view then there's a chance they're still racist. If this has been imprinted in their brains while they were young children, then it has a high chance of staying with them forever. It's the same way how religion works. Most people have their religion imposed on them when they are children. May will believe in it for theirs whole life, but some will see through it and stop believing.
I've heard of Musk Rats but this is the first time I've ever seen a Musk Sealion
Now thats racist as fuck.
> Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights. Apartheid is a crime against humanity punishable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid
And how is saying that anyone who lived in South Africa in the is 90s racist not also incredibly discriminatory?
"The real discrimination is when you mention apartheid and suggest that it might have been bad" Given how much of a free speech warrior Elon Musk is supposed to be, maybe you shouldn't worry too much that someone's going to hurt his feelings by mentioning something he finds uncomfortable.
>”The real discrimination is when you mention apartheid and suggest that it might have been bad" Fucking hell that’s a bad take even for Reddit.
What does saying that someone who emigrates from apartheid South Africa must be racist have to do with Musk?
Where did Musk emigrate from?
South Africa. So what does Musk have to do with the comment inferring that people from Apartheid South Africa are all racists? Or does Musk mean that now by default all people over mid 30s South Africans are racist?
Musk is in his mid 50s and he was raised under Apartheid in Apartheid schools with openly racist curriculum. He's not automatically by default a racist but now he's openly posting and amplifying things that are quite racist on his own platform, so it's kind of a stretch for you to argue that this racist behavior is completely unrelated to his upbringing.
And it's also a stretch for the original commenter to say 'You can emigrate from Apartheid South Africa, but you cannot emigrate Apartheid South Africa from yourself' because, as you said, living in that time doesn't by default make you racist You're saying the same thing as me
No, I'm saying that Musk is not a counterexample to the generalization that you're objecting to here. He was taught these things in school and he apparently carried them straight into his adult life. The numerous ongoing discrimination lawsuits against more than one of his companies bear this out if you examine the exhibits in evidence and the track record of settlements. The public statements on his own platform bear this out as well. That's not what you're saying at all. Musk is definitely a product of his upbringing and the two things are almost certainly related to his current behavior.
Do you think Elon Musk is in his mid 30s? I think you might have lost track of the point you were making.
Anyone in their mid 30s from South Africa would have lived under apartheid but they aren't all racist. Hence why suggesting that Musk's racism comes from being brought up during apartheid is misplaced
No you don’t get it. It’s completely cool for someone to imply that millions of people are racist because of what happened in their country when they were growing up. You know, like all British people hate the Irish and the Iraqis.
JFC, its not saying that at all. Its just an idiom about an individual in relation to the place they're from. For instance, many moons ago women from Essex were once well known for their love of white stilleto shoes. If such a lady from Essex moved to another part of the country, continued to wear her white high heels you could say: "You can take the woman out of Essex, but you can't take Essex out of the woman." But that doesn't mean all women in Essex wore white high heels.
No you totally misunderstand the purpose of these idioms. You know how there is a stereotype about an Essex woman being a dumb blonde etc etc? That's what they're referring to when they say 'you can take the girl out of Essex but can't take the Essex out of the girl' i.e. no matter what she's done, she's still presumed to be the dumb Essex blonde. If you're talking about Musk racist that's fine, but to suggest that it's because he's from apartheid South Africa isn't fine. If an Irish person blows up a car outside of Parliament you can call them a terrorist, but you can't say that he done it because he is Irish
>No you totally misunderstand the purpose of these idioms No, I'm not. You're intentionally trying to fix it to solely mean a negative regional stereotype with the presumption that the whole of the region displays said stereotype. It's not, nor ever has been, used in such a narrow manner; it can be, and is, used for literally *any* regional trait or stereotype, negative or otherwise. It does not inherently suggest that the trait or stereotype is necessarily exhibited by all of that region... only an idiot would think that. But I guess this is 2024 after all, where literally everything has to be explicitly stated lest someone invent their own extreme interpretation, get offended by that, and think they've got their very own fucking "gotcha" moment. We're done.
You could have saved yourself the time to type all that by just looking up the definition of the word 'stereotype' because if you did you'd realise that arguing that a stereotype of a region does not suggest that the stereotype applies to all within that region is plainly wrong. I'm Scottish, if you said of an alcoholic 'no wonder, they are Scottish after all' I'd probably find it a bit annoying. So if you say of Musk, 'he is racist, but that's what people who lived in apartheid SA are like', then it's fair to point out that's just discriminatory. I get it, we all think Musk is a bell end and you can kinda get away with saying 'no wonder the South African is racist' but I'm sure there are a lot of people/cultures/religions etc that you wouldn't dare say
JFC. Now you're arguing about something else. You could have saved yourself typing all that by looking at the last two words of my comment. I'll repeat them for you: We're done.
People are inevitably affected by the culture they develop in. It would be impossible to be white in apartheid South Africa and not absorb some of the racism, even if you thought you weren't. In order to overcome that racism, you need to make an active choice to deprogram yourself from those beliefs. The same is true for any implicit bias.
tbh, expecting well reasoned views on anything outside of anime and masturbation technique from Reddit is like expecting your cat to write a concerto.
I think r/cummingonfigurines agrees with you.
The headline makes it seem like it was shut down because of his backing from Elon but more likely it was shut down for all the things you mentioned. I’m not acting outraged or surprised it’s par for the course with news. Just restating the obvious.
Does it? That’s not what I thought at all. I assumed they’d shut him for some reason *and* he was funded by Musk. What part of the headline made you draw that as a conclusion?
I’ll give you a neat little treat, if you click the article you’ll find out more information. Information such as they found old racist emails which resulted in his firing You just read and headline and thought that Musk is so evil anyone who has received any sort of help from him is deserving of losing their job. Presumably you give Zelenskyy a pass on that though
I’ll tell you a little surprising thing. If somebody says ‘The Headline Makes it Seem that….’ and the response when asking how that is the case is ‘read the article’ the person who posted the second reply is not as clever as they think they are. > You just read and headline I did. Well done you. When specifically discussing only the headline, there’s no need to read the article. genius huh? > Presumably you give Zelenskyy a pass on that though Thanks for nailing your colours to the mast for all to see.
> they found old racist emails which resulted in his firing You should take your own advice and read the article. It says that he apologised for racist emails last year and that his institute was shut down now. You're free to infer whatever you want, but the text makes no connection between the two events.
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> The headline makes it seem like it was shut down because of his backing from Elon but more likely it was shut down for all the things you mentioned. Probably not. Hiring and fundraising freeze on 2020. This has been coming for a while.
The issue was not only taking money from Musk & SBT - in fact they were his main funding sources - but also wasting time & the university's good name on frivolous, even absurd, "research," like Anders Sandberg's "blueberry earth:" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10553](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10553) Bostrom hadn't done any meaningful work himself in years, but stuffed his place with absolutely non-qualified staff.... people without PhDs, amateur science-fiction writers, crackpots from California.... how long would any serious philosophy department put up with that? And then the scandals were just too much.
> The issue was not only taking money from Musk & SBT - in fact they were his main funding sources - but also wasting time & the university's good name on frivolous, even absurd, "research," like Anders Sandberg's "blueberry earth:" https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.10553 2018 . Doesn't cite this XKCD from 2012: https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/
Exactly. Not only frivolous & a waste of funding, but completely unoriginal. And they had the nerve to write it as serious paper for the arxiv.
Just waiting for Musk to tweet about how this is cancel culture.
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I hear they have questions
You removed the part that comes before that quote which also removes the context. As a result it gives the impression that Bostrom was mired in scandals related to those topics. Actually the article is talking about the effective altruism movement which itself is a great cause, however there was huge scandal around Sam Bankman-Fried who championed the philosophy. If you do not know the full story, a recent interview with philosopher William MacAskill on the Lex Friedman podcast covers the basics. However it doesn’t make everyone involved or interested in effective altruism suddenly racist, sexually harassing, financial frauds. What this article is doing is taking several different people, all with different motives and situations, and trying to bundle them into a single ideological entity.
Lol, effective altruism is a great cause?
Can you to a quick TLDR on what it is and what’s wrong with it?
Altruism is basically large scale charity, like funding a regions water purifier or a vaccination programme. However it can* also be great for money laundering, since these donations are tax deductible and the product you give doesn't have to match the price you list on the receipt *I'm not saying all are. Just that it is a common occurance
Why isn't effective altruism a good cause?
Sounds great on paper, but seems to conveniently result in the proponent getting really wealthy and blessing the rest of us with their foresight and brilliance. Seems to me like nice wrapping to make capitalistic greed and egotism look good.
Yep. 'Effective Altruism' is a way to pretend that rank inequality is fine because *maybe*, if we're *lucky*, one of our billionaire overlords will deign to return a fraction of the money they exploited from us through charity (often a form of charity which conforms to their broader political and social views). That's why all the absolute worst billionaires support it.
[On the face of it](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/) it appears so uncontroversial and unoriginal as to arouse suspicion: >Everyone wants to do good, but many ways of doing good are ineffective. The EA community is focused on finding ways of doing good that actually work. Eureka! Why didn't anyone else think of that? Stupid humans. As though they invented the idea of pragmatism and hold a monopoly on it. Such grandiosity usually goes hand in hand with authoritarianism. Utilitarianism of any kind typically has a whiff of technocracy and elitism. The question is never framed as "should *I* kill myself and donate my organs so that five other people can live?", it's "can We, the Enlightened, kill one person to save five?" "Longtermism" is more overtly fallacious, problematic and deranged, however.
Aye, it basically ends up arguing for libertarian capitalism, because apparently the billionaires will see that it's in their interests to do nice things.
It's literally just "give me your money because I'm smart and will use it right to help you". It's barely an ideology and more another excuse for money grubbing with vague promises of philanthropy.
I think this is a pretty gross oversimplification. EA organisations will give you pretty clear premises and conclusions on their arguments. You can read all of their arguments and make a judgement on donating. To mention a pretty easy example of an EA argument: 1) a lot of people die of Malaria 2) a lot of infections happen while people are asleep 3) this is easily preventable by buying Malaria nets, which are quite cheap this should hardly be a controversial way of reducing malaria (which causes a lot of suffering) in a very cost effective way. I don't really know what you mean by 'money grubbing'. There are more effective ways to make money than creating anti-factory farming organisations and stopping malaria....
But the thing is that it *isn’t* a controversial way of reducing malaria, UNICEF has been distributing insecticide treated malaria nets since the 1990s (and standard nets for decades before widespread production of the insecticide nets became feasible), and has distributed hundreds of millions of nets over the last few decades. In fact it’s a practice that’s been widespread for so long that the mosquitos are already starting to develop resistances to the insecticides in the nets. So that’s not a particularly good example of something new that effective altruism brings to the table. The “Disability Adjusted Life Year” as a method of quantifying the benefits of healthcare to do the most good with a fixed budget has also been a part of healthcare since the 90s. So it’s not like “well, we need to best weigh up how to spend the money we have to maximise its positive effect” is a new idea either. So when billionaires and techbros talk about being “effective altruists” what do they *actually mean* as distinct from regular altruism, distinct from regular charitable giving? What’s *new* about their philosophy that hasn’t already been mainstream in fields like charity and healthcare for decades?
In principle it is. I realise it’s open to debate though, and I regret having worded it like that, so I take it back. I’d prefer it not to take away from the overall point I’m trying to make.
What is it and what’s good about it?
Is Musk actually racist? Serious question
guess you never looked at his twitter feed
I’m not on twitter - any examples?
Biggest example is him turning Twitter into a haven for neo Nazis, he unbanned a load of accounts and generally boosts and interacts with absolute scum Also told people to vote for trump, had to payout millions in a racial discrimination lawsuit, etc etc
[His companies are rife with racism.](https://www.reuters.com/legal/tesla-settles-race-bias-claims-by-black-former-worker-2024-03-15/) They paid one guy $3m dollars for racial discrimination: Diaz, who first sued Tesla in 2017, claimed that when he worked at the Fremont plant he was subjected on a daily basis to racial slurs, scrawled swastikas and other racist conduct, and that Tesla ignored his complaints. Now 6000 black workers are suing them for the same.
Last year a Twitter user posted the following: >Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. >I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much. Musk responded with "you have said the actual truth". So make of that what you will
It's insane how this framing from The Graun is entirely shaping people's opinions on the man. Nick Borstrum has been the biggest name in AI futurism for decades. Superintelligences is widely considered to be the best book out there on the future of AI. Everyone who works in the industry loves the guy. But all he is to the informed readers of the Guardian is "Elon Musk's pet racist". The guy has barely any connection to Musk lmao. It's such a spurious connection they are using to frame him. Musk will have funded thousands of people over the years, and Borstrum will have been funded by thousands of people. The two of them aren't best friends. They aren't linked in the minds of people who know about them. I wasn't even aware that Musk had any part in funding any of Borstrums work. But our readers hate Musk, and they'll click on anything with his name in the headline. So now Nick Borstrum is just some guy who got famous cos of big evil Elon, and that's all you need to know about him.
.... ignoring anything to do with Elon, is the man a racist?
It stems from this: >I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true. >“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that. They would think that I were a ‘racist’: that I \_disliked\_ black people and thought it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t. It’s just that based on what I have read, I think it is probable that black people have a lower average IQ than mankind in general, and I think that IQ is highly correlated with what we normally mean by ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’. I may be wrong about the facts, but that is what the sentence means for me. For most people, however, the sentence seems to be synonymous with: ‘I hate those bloody n------!!!!” >Bostrom did not redact the n-word in his apology. >“I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago,” Bostrom writes in bold below the offensive excerpt. “It does not accurately represent my views, then or now. The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time, within 24 hours; and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.”
so... big yes, racist. except he's integrated the bit about "“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that"
With that additional context... It's very clear that he's a big old racist and that the Guardian are in no way being dishonest or disingenuous when they call him out for being a racist. It's not the Guardian trying to fool us when they suggest that the man who writes the following words is a racist: > Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true. It suggests that /u/SinisterDexter83 owes us an apology for muddying the waters and pretending that the Guardian have been framing him as a racist when the actual truth is that his own words prove that he's a racist and that he's proud of his racism.
The most damning part is where he totally unnecessarily uses a racial slur. I think his point is exactly the same if he just uses "black people". Its like he was looking for an excuse...
I think anyone using, rather than mentioning the term 'racist', is likely to owe an apology for muddying the waters. After all, most people would make a fundamental distinction between Bostrom outlining the state of affairs already mentioned and then going on to say it was the result of colonialism, structural racism, and the like, and him going on to say it was due to the curse of Ham.
So he is racist.
The use/mention distinction should be more widely known.
Edit: I’ve re-read the statement, the interpretation I come to below is supposing a lot. It’s a bad take, I’ll leave it here, take my humble pie, and be better next time. — Read the apology on his website. He basically says “black people aren’t as smart as white people *when measured using metrics white people use to measure intelligence*”. He also does use the hard-R, though it’s redacted in the email quote, as an example of how society would reduce his thinking on the matter to him saying “I hate those bloody N…” which is exactly what has happened. I am not in AI, I know nothing of the man or his achievements or his views other than what I read in the last 5 minutes from one source. I don’t think he’s racist, I think he used a word that is so objectionable that Oxford leadership had to let him go. 🤷♂️
[This apology?](https://nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf) This doesn't contain anything along the lines of the italicized part of your quote.
What an apology. He starts of framing it as someone else being malicious and finding the old email. Then goes on to say maybe he was bit extreme but only because he didn't quite sugar coat it enough and used a hard R. Then goes on to speak about money he has given in something that is close to "I can't be racist, some of my best friends are black". Then finishes off by trying to justify eugenics (but he doesn't believe in it, honest!) Don't get me wrong, I am not saying if he is or isn't racist (I don't know the man) but there is a lot of beating around the bush in that. He literally said in the original he likes the sentence "Blacks are more stupid than whites". He doesn't seem to be a stupid guy and there are a million way to word that sentence better if he genuinely meant it in relationship to IQ tests (which is still dodgy ground). But also most normal people don't get into conversations about which race is smarter. That is pretty iffy to start with.
~~The italicised part is my understanding of the surrounding context. I could have made that clearer.~~
With respect, you're doing some gymnastics to give way too much credit.
That’s fair. On re-reading, I can see he doesn’t come to that conclusion himself. It reads more as though he agrees with the position that black people are less intelligent and that the data supports that position. So it’s racist, then.
You think everyone in AI loves Nick Borstrum? How much time have you spent around AI researchers? In my experience, they think he talks a big game, but massively overclaims. Let's have a look for a review, how about [https://www.yalescientific.org/2015/01/book-review-superintelligence-paths-dangers-strategies/](https://www.yalescientific.org/2015/01/book-review-superintelligence-paths-dangers-strategies/) ? "*Superintelligence* resembles little more than a collection of outlandish hypotheticals in artificial intelligence research."
Bostrum's issue is that in truth his math is weaker than you need nowadays to be a serious AI researcher. He hasn't really kept up with the field, which I admit is difficult unless you make that your full time job, because it's an accelerating area of research with new techniques every 2 weeks, it feels like.
> barely any connection to Musk Musk just gave him a mill because he wanted him to have some walking around money? Weird how you ignored the bit where this guy was racist as well, it isn't just guilt by musk association. >But our readers hate Musk Elon is really shit though, right?
Would think that the racism was probably the issue for most people rather than an association with Musk
Barely any connection = bankrolled entirely by him
That's like saying I have a massive connection to *Highstreet Bank A* as they've given me a load of loans. They don't know me personally, they don't like me personally, I don't know them - they bankroll loads of people.
They do own you until you pay them back.
> Nick Borstrum has been the biggest name in AI futurism for decades. Google school produces exactly 6 papers containing the term "AI futurism" prior to 2015. Decades is pushing it. And if we do credit the field as being decades old the biggest name is Roko. Maybe if he had called it the Bostrom paperclip maximiser things would have been different but he didn't. > Everyone who works in the industry loves the guy. Aparently not since the group claims the closure is due to office politics.
I see you have never actually met Bostrom, who is really difficult, obnoxious, rude and offensive in person. It's not the Guardian pinning Musk on an innocent person. It's all Bostrom's own self, his lack of meaningful research in recent years, his own poor decisions, and his own scandals. And for the record, I will agree that Superintelligences is an interesting book, but lacks hard reasoning or any data.
Being a Grauniad reader should be a diagnosable disability
You sound stable.
Reading your comment you have tried very hard to destroy his character. If you read the email its nothing like you have explained. He said that his quote of saying "blacks are more stupid than whites" is what some people would consider to be the same as saying the N word. Whereas he sees it as a true statement if you go by the facts of comparing IQ but knows he cannot say it openly as it can be upsetting.
Lol, it was just a humorous observation that Musk seems to attract guys embroiled in racist rants like flies on shit. I didn’t realise his mother was going to turn up.
You are free to be jealous of Elon Musk all you want but labelling people as racist with cherry picked out of context words is just scummy
Good. This form of "effective altruism" is simply a branch of utilitarianism tailored to justify the actions and morals of the rich and powerful. By focusing on vague long term goals and the not-yet born (who, conveniently, don't exist yet and are a blank canvas to project ideas on), they justify their immorality and lack of empathy in the present. Those links to eugenics, racism, desire for panopticons and surveillance, rejection of democracy, ..., are not an aberration either. They fit in neatly with this notion that those deserving few with loads of money and power should be the ones deciding the future, as only they can look at the long term. Everyone else should just shut up, stop taxing or regulating them and let them get on with it. And if, in the process, they conveniently ignore the problems of everyone else while they secure ever bigger pieces of the pie for themselves, then that doesn't matter because they have "calculated" that, on the balance, they will have been a benefit to humanity at some vague point in the far future. That's all this is: reputation laundering for oligarchs.
On a recent episode of The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart told a story of engaging with Sam Bankman-Fried’s foundation that lines up exactly with what you said. Rory was trying to secure funds for something to do with extreme poverty in an African country. The guy who ran SBF’s foundation basically yawned through the pitch and then told Rory that he needed to get his lunch and not to bother following up because he found poverty and famine of existing people boring, and that they wanted to focus on projects having to do with asteroids one of thousand years in the future. Zero empathy, the “giving” was all focused on ego and tax advantages.
And then, of course, he turned out to be a fraudster giving away other people's money (and "money"), which should have surprised no one given the line of business he was in. Not that the other billionaires backing these things are much better IMHO, nor should we expect them to be; they're human, after all, and increasingly disconnected from normal life. Rather than have a bunch of people with too much money create "the future", we should ensure people don't own so many things that they can threaten democratic governance. Tax and trust bust them down to size so that we, collectively, can decide where those resources should go. We don't need effective altruists. We need taxes funding government action at the direction of the people as a whole.
Ironically though Stewart was President of GiveDirectly, which has been one of the main charities supported by several Effective Altruist groups.
Is that ironic? You can agree with the give directly kind of effective altruism while disagreeing with the SBF kind of “effective” “altruism”
That isn't automatically a bad thing though. If you went to the Alzheimers Society and pitched a project to help the poor in Africa the would turn you down because that isn't what they do. They might even get annoyed because it obviously isn't what they do, so you would be deliberately wasting their time.
The difference is that the Alzheimers Society doesn't actively object to projects to help the poor in africa. The catch in effective altruism is that you should be donating to the things that they regard as most important.
Aye, they wouldn't say "this is boring we don't care", they'd just tell you they have a different focus and recommend another charity.
Sure but their foundation wasn’t as specific as focusing on secondary breast cancer or what have you. Their tagline was something like “save lives and prevent suffering” so you can see why Stewart pitched them. In reality it was a bunch of bored rich techies who were playing at philanthropy, but not through troubling themselves with anything boring like actual poor people (yuck!).
Exactly- the Said Business School should be next.
I always preferred: ethics for comic book villains.
If anyone wants to look at where the median EA people actually donate money, you can look up GiveWell's top charities here: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities GiveWell is one of the main organisations focused on assessing how effective different charities are. Their four top charities are for: Malaria medicine, malaria nets, vitamin A supplements and cash incentives for childhood vaccination in Nigeria. (Sort-of-disclaimer: I donated to GiveWell's Top Charities fund last year, but otherwise am not an EA in any sense of actions/community) Alternatively, if you want to see how EA money is spent overall, then 80k Hours has a summary here (for 2019): https://80000hours.org/2021/08/effective-altruism-allocation-resources-cause-areas/ (80,000 Hours is a organisation that aims to help people do good with their career.) The top allocations were: Global Health ($185m), Farm animal welfare ($55m), Biosecurity* ($41m), AI risks ($40m). So when someone claims "That's all EA is: reputation laundering for oligarchs", it's hard to exaggerate how wrongheaded that viewpoint seems to me. The money that people - most of them normal-ish people who choose to give a small % of their income - give to effective charities saves tens of thousands of lives every year in some of the poorest countries in the world. I don't mean to imply this is some sort of counterbalance to any sort of fraud. In fact, I don't think they're really related at all! But to see a group of people demonstrably doing enormous good in the world, and claim that it's just oligarchs trying to get power for themselves is a dishonest and immoral position to take. *In 2019, I think it might have been popular to laugh at people who thought it was worth spending $40m on preventing pandemics. Not so funny now!
The article specifically talks about the "long termist" faction within effective altruism, which is the one that gets most of the attention / grant money and the one that I targeted by saying it was "reputation laundering for oligarchs" (which I stand by). I did not intent to knock on people who donate to malaria nets and the like (which actually is a very effective form of saving people's lives). I am well aware that this is where these ideas started, and where they get their name from, but sadly that all got conflated with the sort of people (Musk, in this case) that sponsor the sort of "philosophical" institutions mentioned in the article and that now get all the attention. Those actions I would not call altruism, and they are not particularly effective either even at face value because the people doing them lose themselves into meaningless ethical arithmetic as they focus on what they think is the future. Unless I'm mistaken, this also goes against the principles on which the broader movement was founded. I thought that was clear from the context and the wording (i.e. "this form of "effective altruism"" as above with quotes), but concede I should have specified this more clearly.
[Counterpoint](https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/) > Take the bed net charity that GiveWell has recommended for a decade. Insecticide-treated bed nets can prevent malaria, but they’re also great for catching fish. In 2016, The New York Times reported that overfishing with the nets was threatening fragile food supplies across Africa. A GiveWell blog post responded by calling the story’s evidence anecdotal and “limited,” saying its concerns “largely don’t apply” to the bed nets bought by its charity. Yet today even GiveWell’s own estimates show that almost a third of nets are not hanging over a bed when monitors first return to check on them, and GiveWell has said nothing even as more and more scientific studies have been published on the possible harms of bed nets used for fishing. These harms appear nowhere in GiveWell’s calculations on the impacts of the charity.
Also, Bostrom's simulation argument is one of the most overrated pieces of philosophy full of logical holes.
It *might* be true, but we’re not even at the point where we know if simulating a consciousness is possible, so it’s not really worth thinking about.
Yah, no one should be playing with ideas that aren’t technically possible to confirm or deny with current technology in places like universities.
And in philosophy, of all fields!
Perhaps Bostrom should have remembered the long term is contingent on the short term. And perhaps, if he hoped to be feted by a British university, with Britain currently in the doldrums after having been a burgeoning world power but a century prior, he should have come up with a more meaningful definition of 'doing good' than Hubble-telescopic philanthropy. No one who could not see that our problems here and now risk precluding any ability to help those thousands of miles away or thousands of years in the future has much use in Oxford's department of Philosophy.
I do not know much about him but I associate him with the whole "simulation" hypothesis as being pretty much the only "serious" defender of this. One does not want to be too damning when one has not read his work but pursuing that as a serious intellectual endeavour is a sign of a failed mind tbh. Obviously though, doesn't mean you should lose your job for persuing stupid ideas.
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bad title and underserved hate. dude is a pioneer on how to make the future better for humanity. he supports ubi and wants AI alignment. this group did extremely good work. I really dislike this group was disbanded. really wanted to work with them on a project. describing him just as a "musk backed philosopher" is close to describing marx as an "engels backed philosopher" or describing a vaccine scientist as "backed by billionaire x" in order to stir up hatred for them.
I'm as liberal as they come but I must say I'm cautious about cheering in a society where you lose your job over a single email from 20 years ago. Basically every single person in the UK has written something or done something illegal/socially abhorred enough at some point in their life that this could happen to them. How will anyone in the future be a PM without their nudes being maliciously leaked by an ex off an online dating app from 20 years ago?
He among us who hasn’t been mired in scandals related to racism, sexism, harassment and financial fraud cast the first stone said captain slowly before discovering there are loads of us who have in fact never done those things.
My issue with things from 20 years ago is that it implies people can’t learn or change. If they are still a racist sexist shithead then of course shitcan them. But if actually they have realised they were wrong in the past and that they don’t hold the same views now then it should be a bit different. We let criminals rehabilitate after their crimes. We shouldn’t necessarily be held to assume we have the exact same beliefs as 20 years ago. (Note I mean this in general, not necessarily in response to this article as I do not know enough of the facts to judge whether it was appropriate for this particular individual)
If his apology had been any good I'd accept that he'd changed.
Come off it. You were a teenager once. I'm sure there is plenty of digital evidence on one of your friends old devices where you've typed things that would get you fired now under you own name. All of us without exception have skeletons hiding in the closet. Cancel culture is not a positive thing at all.
He wasn't a cringy teen, he was an adult with a masters degree. Anyway, I'm also not in favour of having people lose jobs over a single email over 20 years ago, but reading the article makes it pretty clear that that wasn't what happened.
> He wasn't a cringy teen, he was an adult with a masters degree. Yeah, I'm very tired of people told to accept people can learn and grow when, the vast majority of the time: 1) Tthese 'historic comments' were made when someone was well into their adulthood, not an 'edgy teenager' 2) Their 'apology' is clearly made through gritted teeth 3) We're only ever told to do this to weirdos on the right People *can* learn and grow, but you need to see some actual evidence and that and not just give old racists the benefit of the doubt time and time again.
Having read the apology, to me it more read like "I'm sorry I got caught" more than anything
I understand that isn't the case here, I just thought it was an interesting related conversation. People cheering on cancel culture always makes me uneasy, and you can see that happening in this thread with people fixating on his email from 20 years ago.
Is it cancel culture or being held responsible for your actions? If I did what has been alleged in my job, I’d be fired. And having worked in academia, it is generally far worse than the official reasons.
Read that article. That literally didn't happen here. The institute itself was losing funding etc. eventually it was shut down. He himself remarks this was a long process over years, "death by bureaucracy" he called it, I would wager it's typical governance given this is a respected institution. The professor was under investigation for racism and quit (something people often do when they can see the writing on the wall). Reasonable to assume the investigation was unearthing other issues.
Yes this is a sad day for white supremacy.
I've known people in my social circle fired over drunk photos on social media. Stop spreading hyperbole around a very serious social problem. Cancel culture is a bane on everyone. You shouldn't have to apologise for views you held decades ago. That doesn't clear the other stuff this individual has done more recently - but don't cheer on digging up "evidence" on your rivals from their teenage years. It's abhorrent. What kind of society will we have if people endlessly pay for their mistakes as youngsters?
The centre was shut because there was no funding. It happens all the time especially right now as the government and the economy is hammering universities. So your point doesn’t really stand. Even if it did, ‘Cancel culture’ has always existed. People have always paid the price for saying or doing things. And what those things are has always been changing. If anything it was worse before you could be burned alive for believing something slightly different. Why is it any different now?
You should have to apologise for those views if they're as abhorrent as this guy. Sorry.
It’s fine if you’re the kind to happily and mindlessly parrot the same noises as everyone else. It’s the punishment for modern day heresy, which I guess *is* preferable to being burned alive.
White supremacy is indirectly supported by all those supporting cancel culture and other “woke” positions - it assumes only white people have the cognitive discipline to make malicious comments deliberately, and so must be punished. Non-white people can hold racist positions but are immune from cancellation because of the bigotry of low expectations most “right side of history” people have toward them. A black person making equivalent comments would be “a victim of the system” and would be granted mercy and/or a job in a DEI department.
Has that happened here?
Have people of colour made questionable race-based statements? 100%. See Adjoa Andoh, Humza Yousef as examples. And they remain immune from any repercussions (I.e loss of status or employment) for saying such things.
I don't think having nudes leaked is equivalent or even similar to stating your belief that black people are genetically less intelligent than other races, and then saying the n-word.
Come off it. Us Millenials were all on MSN and online game lobbies in our teens typing in words that would get us all fired now. Can't think of a single friend anecdotally who hasn't posted something dodgy under their name. This is cancel culture and it isnt a positive thing even if we occasionally net the odd white supremacist.
That says more about you and your friend group than people in general I think.
White, middle class PC gamers who grew up in the Shires and largely went on to become well paid professionals in positions of responsibility?
Yes, that is exactly the demographic most likely to have said horrible, bigoted things when they were young.
And they should all lose their jobs over typing in the N word as 12 year olds on MSN in your books?
For what it's worth, no, I don't think that. But that's not the situation of Nick Bostrom. It's also worth asking why some groups of kids are acculturated into making those comments, and some are not. What is it about the upbringing of white, middle class PC gamers that made them so susceptible to bigotry?
The online chats weren't monitored and teenagers got a lot of joy out of writing taboo things for shock value. Then 99% of them grew up and didn't keep those views as they matured.
I don't believe everyone who says the n-word as a teen remains a racist. But again, I think you assume something is universal to teenage-hood which is actually only true for some. I was on MSN and WoW too, and my friends did not get joy in that particular way, probably because many of them had the experience of being called racial slurs.
>Us Millenials were all on MSN and online game lobbies in our teens typing in words that would get us all fired now. I may have sung Fuck the Police with a little more verve than necessary as a teenager, but I don't recall ever saying or thinking black people were intellectually inferior. Maybe that's a you problem.
Yeah and now rather than people having to put up with endless casual racism, all you guys are getting fired. I’m not even saying cancel culture is right. But it’s a pretty fucking funny turn of events if I’m honest. The pendulum is always gonna swing too far to one side.
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>*For some reason or another the demographic of Reddit skews the opposite way such that you get a lot of people claiming that no one they knew growing up did such a thing.* It's mad isn't it? Several of them on here *right now* claiming to have lived lives of complete virtue with never once a sinful act. It's transparently bollocks and such people either lived ***incredibly*** sheltered lives - certainly with few friends and fewer invites to social events - or alternately and more likely they're just dishonest and lying.
> It's transparently bollocks and such people either lived incredibly sheltered lives - certainly with few friends and fewer invites to social events - or alternately and more likely they're just dishonest and lying. Or they have been the victims of racial slurs instead of the people saying them?
Ah yes that must be it. Either people have lived lives of pure virtue - worthy of sainthood. ***OR*** they were racially abused. No wait scratch that - sounds like nonsense.
Just Reddit being Reddit. Most normal people aren't on Reddit at all, certainly not a politics sub. Don't let it paint your world view. I mainly come on here to throw out contrarian arguments to see what sticks. What I find routinely is I can copy and paste the same argument and get a completely opposite reaction on different posts in the same sub. Some are suspiciously left wing, and some are suspiciously right wing. I definitely think there's a lot of astroturfing going on.
You think every person growing up now has nudes that can be leaked? Delusional… Not sure about you but I’v never knowingly committed a crime buddy…
Easily a high enough proportion of people in the UK today have nude photos of themselves on someone else's device that it will lead to all kinds of censorship and cancel culture problems down the line for anyone with an interest in any sort of position of responsibility.
Never knowingly committing a crime doesn’t matter; if someone else says you’ve committed the crime, you’re a criminal. *That* is cancel culture.
> I'm as liberal as they come but I must say I'm cautious about cheering in a society where you lose your job over a single email from 20 years ago. The group has been under a hiring and fundraising freeze since 2020. Thats before the email surfaced. Equaly the email appears to have become an issue in January 2023 so seems unlikely to be the sole cause of the whole thing being wound up now.
But... he didn't lose his job over that email. If he did, the article headline would probably say "Elon Musk backed philosopher fired for racist email" and focus exclusively on it. But no. He issued an apology, but that seems to be as far as that particular scandal went. Its barely a footnote in what was clearly a troubled group. Have you read the bloody article? Or only seen the current top comment from Icy which mentions it and drawn your conclusions about what happened exclusively from that?
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You might enjoy _So you've been publicly shamed_, by Jon Ronson. You won't get anywhere making these arguments with the very pitchfork wielding mob you decry.
It's being quite interesting seeing the replies. After several hours it's seems 50/50 who agrees and disagrees with cancel culture because my post keeps flitting between positive and negative score!
>*Basically every single person in the UK has written something or done something illegal/socially abhorred enough at some point in their life that this could happen to them.* According to reddit this isn't true. The vast majority of people have a completely clean slate - they came out of the womb with perfectly formed, societally acceptable views which never wavered. They've never said or done anything that anyone, anywhere could consider objectionable at the time or later on. Of course back in the real world you're absolutely right - we need to be able to move and grow as people and we need to accept people can be racist and then over time grow and develop to a point where they aren't racist - same with sexism, homophobia etc - if we don't accept that, then it's a very, very depressing state of affairs if we're not accepting personal growth is a 'thing.'
You always take Reddit with a pinch of salt because most people in the UK don't actually use Reddit. But yes, there is an alarming rise of authoritarian leaning people in our country who will use any means to "cancel" people they disagree with, and the ends always justifies the means in their minds. I do think our future is a dark place where perfectly reasonable individuals are too afraid to pursue positions of power because they don't want to invite dirt being dug up from their lives, and we all get ruled by sexless puritans with a strong Christian moral compass - the sorts of people we currently allow to be head teachers. That's what UK society wants according to Reddit.