Polygenic risk prediction on its own might be picking up steam, especially in research spaces such as with personalized medicine, but PGT-P (the test for embryos) is not becoming commonplace. This...
Polygenic risk prediction on its own might be picking up steam, especially in research spaces such as with personalized medicine, but PGT-P (the test for embryos) is not becoming commonplace. This is the second think piece I have read about it that has overstated how common this is to give the ethical conversation more oomph. Anyone doing IVF/ICSI and undergoing any form of PGT is typically required to undergo counseling with a genetic counselor to discuss actual risks. It’s not really a splurge purchase people are throwing on. The only people I actually have read about using stuff like this are super rich (and lucky to have enough embryos to be willing to discard some for these maybes) or are kind of radical such as the ultra pro natalist tech crowd.
From the blog post: ... ... ... ... He ends with a criticism of one of Scott Alexander's posts: [...]
From the blog post:
Polygenic risk prediction is becoming commonplace, raising the question of what exactly “risk” means. Nowhere is this question thornier than in the application to polygenic embryo selection, where companies not only claim to predict the risk for a disease, but also the potential reduction of risk when selecting one embryo over another. This understanding of risk reduction is shaping how individual customers see the product, and how all of us think about the impact on society. Here, I argue that typical risk reduction estimates tend to exploit statistical assumptions to overstate their benefits and lead to confusion.
...
A simple example where the liability threshold model fails to align with our intuitions is (Class III) obesity, defined as a BMI over a threshold of 40. For this condition, we can think about risk reduction either in terms of lower BMI or in terms of fewer individuals above the threshold. In prior simulations, I showed that for parents with BMI>40, the use of embryo selection would be expected to decrease the BMI in their offspring from a mean of 41 to a mean of … 40. Embryo selection would thus have very limited utility for this continuous trait, as it would for most continuous traits [...]. On the other hand, the same exact change would translate into a striking 50% risk reduction for the threshold trait of BMI>40 obesity. Because many people sit just above the threshold, a small change in the liability can shift a sizable fraction of individuals from just above to just below i.e. from ill to “healthy” according to the model.
...
As it happens, many of the conditions currently being screened by embryo selection companies are defined in exactly this way: a disease label is triggered by an ad hoc threshold, with individuals just shy of the line still at risk for poor outcomes and often still advised to seek treatment.
...
Medicine needs clear go/no-go decision points to be consistent and reliable, which has led to diagnostic boundaries. But such boundaries rarely reflect actual biological thresholds, they are a heuristic to aid the clinician. For the patient, what matters is the biology and consequences of disease, not whether they are assigned the label.
...
For some conditions, all people are born healthy and then go on to develop the disease through the gradual degradation of some biological process. Cancer, for example, is often driven by the accumulation of somatic mutations and the inability of the body to repair them: a person born with less effective DNA repair machinery is likely to develop cancer earlier/faster than someone with more effective DNA repair function. But if both people lived infinitely long they would both eventually develop the malignancy. [...] Under the hazard model, interventions delay or accelerate the disease rather than “cure” it.
He ends with a criticism of one of Scott Alexander's posts:
The blogger/psychiatrist Scott Alexander recently wrote a glowing post about a new embryo selection company, for which he himself is also a satisfied customer. While initially noting that the company presents their overall score in terms of “years of healthy life”, he quickly switched to talking about these interventions as lifetime cures.
[...]
I don’t think Scott is doing anything nefarious here, it is very intuitive to think about risk in this way and then take the basic intuition and run with it (“now we divide by risk to estimate expected utility”, “now we extrapolate that utility to national healthcare spending”, etc). But polygenic selection does not work this way, and the marketing around embryo selection products is exploiting the complexity of risk to encourage such misconceptions.
I didn’t know these companies existed and it’s kind of weirding me out. Do kids come with warranties now? Can you sue the company if your kid ends up with MS?
I didn’t know these companies existed and it’s kind of weirding me out. Do kids come with warranties now? Can you sue the company if your kid ends up with MS?
Boy, that's... rather scary. I don't blame anyone who want to make sure their kids are healthy and happy but well, the article explains some caveats in statistics that most are not aware of....
Boy, that's... rather scary. I don't blame anyone who want to make sure their kids are healthy and happy but well, the article explains some caveats in statistics that most are not aware of. Despite myself having taken a course in statistics where a lot of the unintuitive parts were explained very well(which I'm really grateful for) I still come across new paradoxes every now and then because of how weird probabilities can be. To which
The blogger/psychiatrist Scott Alexander recently wrote a glowing post about a new embryo selection company, for which he himself is also a satisfied customer.
the fact that someone who does in fact have a full fledged background in (some parts of) medicine can 'fall' for this, tells me that I could fall for it if I'm not careful. It's easy to overestimate the independence of your decision-making, imo. (you could even argue that my own comment is at risk for 'falling' for this article, but well, follow that chain of reasoning and you'll never stop doubting anything and everything)
Also, I'm not convinced the data provided will be particularly safe for ethnic minorities. I can't claim to know how well genetic analysis keeps that kind of diversity in mind nowadays, but I'd be very skeptical of any analysis if I was part of an ethnic minority. (which in practice is almost anyone not white given richer countries being white and being able to fund said research more thoroughly)
He's expressed ideas in support of "Human Biodiversity" (rewashed race science) and things like sterilizing poor people, and sperm banks for Nobel prize winners. Some will argue this is just what...
He's expressed ideas in support of "Human Biodiversity" (rewashed race science) and things like sterilizing poor people, and sperm banks for Nobel prize winners. Some will argue this is just what rationalists do, I don't think that's a "win" in their column. But my point is his professional education doesn't seem to come into play (and I'm not sure how much education doctors get in stats after undergrad anyway) on these topics.
Thank you for sharing that. Because my first reaction is holy shit. Let's just say that this is one of the reasons I dislike the term 'rationalists' in general. Personally, I'd argue it's anything...
Thank you for sharing that. Because my first reaction is holy shit.
Some will argue this is just what rationalists do, I don't think that's a "win" in their column.
Let's just say that this is one of the reasons I dislike the term 'rationalists' in general. Personally, I'd argue it's anything but rational and to be blunt, your description just sounds straight up like whitewashed eugenics to me. I'll admit that I'd need to read some of his blog entries to make a strong opinion, though I sure as hell don't feel like it.
I strongly disagree with DefinitelyNotAFae on how she characterizes Scott Alexander. I’m not going to go into it, but I recommend you judge for yourself.
I strongly disagree with DefinitelyNotAFae on how she characterizes Scott Alexander. I’m not going to go into it, but I recommend you judge for yourself.
Mmm, thanks for stating that - disagreeing is important for this reason. I'll bookmark your comment for when I hopefully have the time and headspace for it. Given some of the topics involved I do...
Mmm, thanks for stating that - disagreeing is important for this reason. I'll bookmark your comment for when I hopefully have the time and headspace for it. Given some of the topics involved I do want to make sure I got that.
(not skybrian replying) I have found that nearly every time when I encounter articles criticizing Scott Alexander, after going either to the articles of his that the criticism is referencing or...
(not skybrian replying)
I have found that nearly every time when I encounter articles criticizing Scott Alexander, after going either to the articles of his that the criticism is referencing or other articles touching the same topic (he regularly explicitly or impicitly references his past writing) that give more context to his opinions, it's never quite what the critic claims. So to make your own opinions I recommend that.
Perhaps the most controversial example are his private leaked emails about "human biodiversity", in other words the claim that there is a correlation between ethnicity and IQ (and possibly other heritable traits). This is obviously shocking. However the content of the emails is roughly "I did my best to go through all the available evidence and I'm quite worried because the conclusion is that there may be some truth in it. I'm only saying this privately because the implications of that would be very bad".
This may still be shocking, but much less so than the way it's usually presented. He may be wrong about the data (I don't know, he as a psychiatrist is closer to the field than I am), but he obviously doesn't see the possibility as a good thing.
Other criticisms I saw and double checked in his articles were considerably less shocking than this, I think this is clearly the worst.
If you like, the most recent one I read was a back and forth hypothetical dialogue about eugenics specifically. In which he specifically shares which portions he definitely agrees with, though...
If you like, the most recent one I read was a back and forth hypothetical dialogue about eugenics specifically. In which he specifically shares which portions he definitely agrees with, though leaves vague what he opposed entirely.
I'd love to not keep finding new things, personally. But there keeps being more. And while we disagree, i do respect the legwork. That said, I think him explicitly supporting sterilizing less desirable people was worse than his email, which IMO is just dodging consequences for his beliefs.
Legitimately and I am not making this up but every single time I write a post about the man, even this short one, I do so after having read another one of his columns. In this case, I read him...
Legitimately and I am not making this up but every single time I write a post about the man, even this short one, I do so after having read another one of his columns. In this case, I read him having a simulated conversation discussing eugenics wherein he states he does not agree with all of the points that one of the people in the fully imagined by him conversation made, but that he does agree specifically with some of them. That said, I do not feel better for the experience and I don't recommend it.
What rationalists do is allegedly consider every opinion, even the ones others might consider evil because it is simply removing all of the moralizing from it considering it "rationally"
I don't find the term particularly useful as an actual category, but I do find it useful to describe this group of folks that thinks they have the world figured out on behalf of the rest of us, and it just so happens that they're predominantly wealthy white cis men.
(Edited to fix Voice to Text typos, I may have gotten them all, maybe not)
The main problem I see with "rationality", and yeah, I really hate that we're calling it that, is that their thought process starts from a generally accepted axiom (human suffering is bad, or...
The main problem I see with "rationality", and yeah, I really hate that we're calling it that, is that their thought process starts from a generally accepted axiom (human suffering is bad, or something like that usually), and then make a series of logical deductions from that which on their own seem reasonable, but by the end of the chain you're advocating for AI run death camps and other equally wacky obviously evil shit.
If your chain of reasoning requires a dozen "therefores" to get to your final conclusion, and each "therefore" is sort of on shaky ground, you're going to end up with batshit conclusions.
It usually goes something like "human suffering is bad, therefore, we should try to minimize human suffering, therefore, we should limit the amount of things that humans do that cause one another to suffer, therefore, reducing crime as much as possible should be a priority, therefore, we should identify people who commit crimes at higher rates, therefore... and you can see where this is going.
That's not rational thought. That's slowly edging your argument into where you want it to go, and where they want it to go too frequently means genocide, slavery, mass murder, and other equally heinous stuff.
Agreed. It's the same issue I have with where "effective altruism" goes. It's not just like "checking to see if where you donate funds is a responsible steward of your money" but it manages to...
Agreed. It's the same issue I have with where "effective altruism" goes. It's not just like "checking to see if where you donate funds is a responsible steward of your money" but it manages to disregard practical solutions about saving lives today in favor of "solving" big picture problems, sometimes by investing in AI to inevitably let it solve those future big picture problems. (ETA and a lot to basic prevent an evil AI that will kill us all or something)
Meanwhile mosquito nets don't get funded and people die of malaria. Maybe there were good intentions behind it, but it seems like ultimately the same people and same money behind all of it.
You could write a SF novel where society's population is controlled by the government which would theoretically solve climate change which would theoretically be for the greater good, and everyone would realize it's bad. But IRL when someone says essentially that you should push forward with [replacement word for eugenics] because you believe it'll save the world, we defend it as "just rationally considering all the options."
I can't agree with this when arguably the most well known charity evaluator connected to effective altruism, GiveWell, has mosquito nets as the second best option, the first one being malaria...
It's the same issue I have with where "effective altruism" goes. It's not just like "checking to see if where you donate funds is a responsible steward of your money" but it manages to disregard practical solutions about saving lives today in favor of "solving" big picture problems, sometimes by investing in AI to inevitably let it solve those future big picture problems. (ETA and a lot to basic prevent an evil AI that will kill us all or something)
Meanwhile mosquito nets don't get funded and people die of malaria. Maybe there were good intentions behind it, but it seems like ultimately the same people and same money behind all of it.
I can't agree with this when arguably the most well known charity evaluator connected to effective altruism, GiveWell, has mosquito nets as the second best option, the first one being malaria treatment and the other two in their top charities list are preventing/treating vitamin A deficiency and vaccines, both in children. Giving What We Can, motivating people to give 10% of their income to effective charities and also founded at least partially by EA people, is the same. I listened to a couple interviews with EA people done by Sam Harris and I think Lex Fridman and mosquito nets were the number one example of efficiency mentioned in both.
Fair criticism, I believe it was Andreesen who was disparaging of them and he's one of the exemplars of all the things I dislike and is or at least was part of the official idea of whatever EA is....
Fair criticism, I believe it was Andreesen who was disparaging of them and he's one of the exemplars of all the things I dislike and is or at least was part of the official idea of whatever EA is. But I am not on that website so I don't know how the EA movement has shifted or split or whatever over the years.
I also fundamentally believe that everything shouldn't be optimized and that that is not how most people will or should make their charity decisions. People give to causes that they care about for a variety of reasons.
There are certainly people who advocate for odd-sounding ideas, but I’ve never seen anything like “AI run death camps.” It’s more likely to be schemes to improve animal welfare or warnings about AI.
There are certainly people who advocate for odd-sounding ideas, but I’ve never seen anything like “AI run death camps.” It’s more likely to be schemes to improve animal welfare or warnings about AI.
I posted Ozy Brennan's article because it's informative and shows what high-quality insider criticism looks like. I don't see it as "too lenient." The Guardian article about the Zizians is also...
I posted Ozy Brennan's article because it's informative and shows what high-quality insider criticism looks like. I don't see it as "too lenient." The Guardian article about the Zizians is also good, but it's doing something different, telling the story of the Zizians themselves. I see them as complementary.
I posted this article for a reason, too. It's another example of high-quality criticism. It's about subtle statistical mistakes, not name-calling, and few people would understand the issues well enough to write an article like that. It assumes good faith, and I think that's a reasonable assumption.
I do think Scott Alexander can be wrong about things. He seems a bit overenthusiastic about novel medical interventions for my tastes. But that's just a vibe, not proof of anything. It's not always easy to figure out what the mistake might be, and I actually am curious about what the flaws are.
To put this into perspective, what's the consequence of being wrong? Maybe using polygenic scoring was a waste of money, but it's picking an embryo that they could have been picked anyway by chance, so at worst it didn't work. It doesn't seem medically harmful or scary. It's a variant on genetic testing of embryos for genetic diseases, which is already done. Well-off people have wasted money on their kids in worse ways.
I'm somewhat resigned to the fact that some people on Tildes will use any article about the Rationalists as an excuse to kick them again, but I think these are good articles and I like to save them here so I can find them later.
I spent a few hours looking into the guy because the combination of [profession] +"blogger" + "authority about and unrelated topic" is always a treat and he seemed like a the type that would put...
I spent a few hours looking into the guy because the combination of [profession] +"blogger" + "authority about and unrelated topic" is always a treat and he seemed like a the type that would put skull measurements in his dating profile. I do think they were likely radicalized by the NYT doxxing him and then being propped up the "free thinkers" crowd.
Regardless, this type of thinking isn't troubling to me because it's "big picture morality" or "it threatens my genetic legacy". It's a problem because they are sane washing Nazi shit. Probability health outcomes makes makes this an insurance issue. Baseing the assessment on an inherent characteristics means that a person is born with a set risk assessment that can't be changed. People with a more favorable genetic profile affords them lower premiums, encouraging the proliferation of certain groups and discouraging everyone else.
Its not far off from identifying preferred traits to genetics. Attribution of those traits to social utility. These traits can be factored into employment and education opportunities. It sets a persons worth from before they are even born and strips away any agency for change. Because why would any good capitalist risk a sub-optimal probability of success.
Its all that anti-DEI crap coming full circle. The ideal "best person for the job". The thing is, supremacists believe they were born better than everyone else at everything and they can't fathom a world where it's not the case.
I understand that there's a morality aspect to American partisan preferences, given the way things are going on over there. But simply not voting for the overt classic racists is a laughably low...
I understand that there's a morality aspect to American partisan preferences, given the way things are going on over there. But simply not voting for the overt classic racists is a laughably low bar. Especially with how your Democratic party seems more than happy to abandon all principals to appease Donors and the radicalized fascists.
The reason Nazism is so horrific is that it's industrialized supremacy theory. Leveraging the power of central government and mechanization for the near automated disenfranchisement and elimination of entire classes of people "for the good of society".
Should genetic screening and its outcomes be speculated to have a high-yield profit, what sort of industry do you think will develop around it and how will that affect society. Keep in mind the other social and cultural impacts of "disruptions" like Uber, airBnB, online dating, twitter, Netflix, AI/LLM, algorithmic hyper-optimizations, blitzscaling, private equity and all the other wonders of modern capitalism. The tagline that drove the the reckless VC and now LLM madness is that it for the good of humanity.
I don't want to presume your situation, intentions or experience so please don't take this personally. But I have no patience for someone like Mr Alexander who has a platform and entertains this type of thinking. Because even if they make these arguments in good faith and with the best of intentions, they are still puppets of whoever is willing to leverage suffering for profit. Its the reason corporations and businesses are happy to give dictators golden statues.
Some form of natural supremacy philosophy has been prevalent in almost every sphere throughout history and justified many of the atrocities that got us to this point. Divine hierarchies putting men above woman,
allowing for the subjugation of half a population for centuries. Race/civilization hierarchies justifying enslavement and colonization of any peoples who happened to not have a military advantage. Caste systems depriving entire swaths of people of basic human dignity. Hell, it goes all the way back to old testament teachings allowing Canaanites to be slaughtered to the last man, woman, animal and male child because god said they were all not worth saving.
The problem is that even if there is some grand power prescribing a perfect order that ensures only the best outcomes, they have always seemed to entrench existing powers that deliver this divine message. The same structures that are just as susceptible to wealth capture. And that's where we start to see prosperity gospel style teachings come into play where where the civil liberties, property rights and earning potential of certain classes are placed above the needs of common people. The same common people who often rely on them for basic needs.
The true test of this philosophy would be if all the people favored by the current system were willing to surrender all their privileges for whatever societal good it provides. Because we know what sort of economic or social or environmental policy will create the best outcomes. The science and consensus is pretty clear. Yet we still sell some fantasy of divine rights and natural orders built on flawed logic that only generates needless suffering.
Eugenics (and white supremacy) is not only a right-wing issue. California was sterilizing inmates in the past 20 years. The idea of making "smart people" sperm banks for example or that one...
Eugenics (and white supremacy) is not only a right-wing issue. California was sterilizing inmates in the past 20 years. The idea of making "smart people" sperm banks for example or that one annoyingly loud pro-natalist couple who talks about wanting to breed their superior genes. They at least claim to be liberal, but are fine advocating alongside explicit racists.
Personally, I've heard plenty of liberals argue that there should be parenting tests, or that Idiocracy is real, be casually racist, etc.
Polygenic risk prediction on its own might be picking up steam, especially in research spaces such as with personalized medicine, but PGT-P (the test for embryos) is not becoming commonplace. This is the second think piece I have read about it that has overstated how common this is to give the ethical conversation more oomph. Anyone doing IVF/ICSI and undergoing any form of PGT is typically required to undergo counseling with a genetic counselor to discuss actual risks. It’s not really a splurge purchase people are throwing on. The only people I actually have read about using stuff like this are super rich (and lucky to have enough embryos to be willing to discard some for these maybes) or are kind of radical such as the ultra pro natalist tech crowd.
From the blog post:
...
...
...
...
He ends with a criticism of one of Scott Alexander's posts:
[...]
I didn’t know these companies existed and it’s kind of weirding me out. Do kids come with warranties now? Can you sue the company if your kid ends up with MS?
No, nobody makes any guarantees like that. How could they? Picking a different embryo just changes the odds a little.
Boy, that's... rather scary. I don't blame anyone who want to make sure their kids are healthy and happy but well, the article explains some caveats in statistics that most are not aware of. Despite myself having taken a course in statistics where a lot of the unintuitive parts were explained very well(which I'm really grateful for) I still come across new paradoxes every now and then because of how weird probabilities can be. To which
the fact that someone who does in fact have a full fledged background in (some parts of) medicine can 'fall' for this, tells me that I could fall for it if I'm not careful. It's easy to overestimate the independence of your decision-making, imo. (you could even argue that my own comment is at risk for 'falling' for this article, but well, follow that chain of reasoning and you'll never stop doubting anything and everything)
Also, I'm not convinced the data provided will be particularly safe for ethnic minorities. I can't claim to know how well genetic analysis keeps that kind of diversity in mind nowadays, but I'd be very skeptical of any analysis if I was part of an ethnic minority. (which in practice is almost anyone not white given richer countries being white and being able to fund said research more thoroughly)
He's expressed ideas in support of "Human Biodiversity" (rewashed race science) and things like sterilizing poor people, and sperm banks for Nobel prize winners. Some will argue this is just what rationalists do, I don't think that's a "win" in their column. But my point is his professional education doesn't seem to come into play (and I'm not sure how much education doctors get in stats after undergrad anyway) on these topics.
Caveat: I have a low opinion of the man.
Thank you for sharing that. Because my first reaction is holy shit.
Let's just say that this is one of the reasons I dislike the term 'rationalists' in general. Personally, I'd argue it's anything but rational and to be blunt, your description just sounds straight up like whitewashed eugenics to me. I'll admit that I'd need to read some of his blog entries to make a strong opinion, though I sure as hell don't feel like it.
I strongly disagree with DefinitelyNotAFae on how she characterizes Scott Alexander. I’m not going to go into it, but I recommend you judge for yourself.
Mmm, thanks for stating that - disagreeing is important for this reason. I'll bookmark your comment for when I hopefully have the time and headspace for it. Given some of the topics involved I do want to make sure I got that.
(not skybrian replying)
I have found that nearly every time when I encounter articles criticizing Scott Alexander, after going either to the articles of his that the criticism is referencing or other articles touching the same topic (he regularly explicitly or impicitly references his past writing) that give more context to his opinions, it's never quite what the critic claims. So to make your own opinions I recommend that.
Perhaps the most controversial example are his private leaked emails about "human biodiversity", in other words the claim that there is a correlation between ethnicity and IQ (and possibly other heritable traits). This is obviously shocking. However the content of the emails is roughly "I did my best to go through all the available evidence and I'm quite worried because the conclusion is that there may be some truth in it. I'm only saying this privately because the implications of that would be very bad".
This may still be shocking, but much less so than the way it's usually presented. He may be wrong about the data (I don't know, he as a psychiatrist is closer to the field than I am), but he obviously doesn't see the possibility as a good thing.
Other criticisms I saw and double checked in his articles were considerably less shocking than this, I think this is clearly the worst.
If you like, the most recent one I read was a back and forth hypothetical dialogue about eugenics specifically. In which he specifically shares which portions he definitely agrees with, though leaves vague what he opposed entirely.
I'd love to not keep finding new things, personally. But there keeps being more. And while we disagree, i do respect the legwork. That said, I think him explicitly supporting sterilizing less desirable people was worse than his email, which IMO is just dodging consequences for his beliefs.
Legitimately and I am not making this up but every single time I write a post about the man, even this short one, I do so after having read another one of his columns. In this case, I read him having a simulated conversation discussing eugenics wherein he states he does not agree with all of the points that one of the people in the fully imagined by him conversation made, but that he does agree specifically with some of them. That said, I do not feel better for the experience and I don't recommend it.
What rationalists do is allegedly consider every opinion, even the ones others might consider evil because it is simply removing all of the moralizing from it considering it "rationally"
I don't find the term particularly useful as an actual category, but I do find it useful to describe this group of folks that thinks they have the world figured out on behalf of the rest of us, and it just so happens that they're predominantly wealthy white cis men.
(Edited to fix Voice to Text typos, I may have gotten them all, maybe not)
The main problem I see with "rationality", and yeah, I really hate that we're calling it that, is that their thought process starts from a generally accepted axiom (human suffering is bad, or something like that usually), and then make a series of logical deductions from that which on their own seem reasonable, but by the end of the chain you're advocating for AI run death camps and other equally wacky obviously evil shit.
If your chain of reasoning requires a dozen "therefores" to get to your final conclusion, and each "therefore" is sort of on shaky ground, you're going to end up with batshit conclusions.
It usually goes something like "human suffering is bad, therefore, we should try to minimize human suffering, therefore, we should limit the amount of things that humans do that cause one another to suffer, therefore, reducing crime as much as possible should be a priority, therefore, we should identify people who commit crimes at higher rates, therefore... and you can see where this is going.
That's not rational thought. That's slowly edging your argument into where you want it to go, and where they want it to go too frequently means genocide, slavery, mass murder, and other equally heinous stuff.
Agreed. It's the same issue I have with where "effective altruism" goes. It's not just like "checking to see if where you donate funds is a responsible steward of your money" but it manages to disregard practical solutions about saving lives today in favor of "solving" big picture problems, sometimes by investing in AI to inevitably let it solve those future big picture problems. (ETA and a lot to basic prevent an evil AI that will kill us all or something)
Meanwhile mosquito nets don't get funded and people die of malaria. Maybe there were good intentions behind it, but it seems like ultimately the same people and same money behind all of it.
You could write a SF novel where society's population is controlled by the government which would theoretically solve climate change which would theoretically be for the greater good, and everyone would realize it's bad. But IRL when someone says essentially that you should push forward with [replacement word for eugenics] because you believe it'll save the world, we defend it as "just rationally considering all the options."
I can't agree with this when arguably the most well known charity evaluator connected to effective altruism, GiveWell, has mosquito nets as the second best option, the first one being malaria treatment and the other two in their top charities list are preventing/treating vitamin A deficiency and vaccines, both in children. Giving What We Can, motivating people to give 10% of their income to effective charities and also founded at least partially by EA people, is the same. I listened to a couple interviews with EA people done by Sam Harris and I think Lex Fridman and mosquito nets were the number one example of efficiency mentioned in both.
Fair criticism, I believe it was Andreesen who was disparaging of them and he's one of the exemplars of all the things I dislike and is or at least was part of the official idea of whatever EA is. But I am not on that website so I don't know how the EA movement has shifted or split or whatever over the years.
I also fundamentally believe that everything shouldn't be optimized and that that is not how most people will or should make their charity decisions. People give to causes that they care about for a variety of reasons.
There are certainly people who advocate for odd-sounding ideas, but I’ve never seen anything like “AI run death camps.” It’s more likely to be schemes to improve animal welfare or warnings about AI.
I posted Ozy Brennan's article because it's informative and shows what high-quality insider criticism looks like. I don't see it as "too lenient." The Guardian article about the Zizians is also good, but it's doing something different, telling the story of the Zizians themselves. I see them as complementary.
I posted this article for a reason, too. It's another example of high-quality criticism. It's about subtle statistical mistakes, not name-calling, and few people would understand the issues well enough to write an article like that. It assumes good faith, and I think that's a reasonable assumption.
I do think Scott Alexander can be wrong about things. He seems a bit overenthusiastic about novel medical interventions for my tastes. But that's just a vibe, not proof of anything. It's not always easy to figure out what the mistake might be, and I actually am curious about what the flaws are.
To put this into perspective, what's the consequence of being wrong? Maybe using polygenic scoring was a waste of money, but it's picking an embryo that they could have been picked anyway by chance, so at worst it didn't work. It doesn't seem medically harmful or scary. It's a variant on genetic testing of embryos for genetic diseases, which is already done. Well-off people have wasted money on their kids in worse ways.
I'm somewhat resigned to the fact that some people on Tildes will use any article about the Rationalists as an excuse to kick them again, but I think these are good articles and I like to save them here so I can find them later.
I spent a few hours looking into the guy because the combination of [profession] +"blogger" + "authority about and unrelated topic" is always a treat and he seemed like a the type that would put skull measurements in his dating profile. I do think they were likely radicalized by the NYT doxxing him and then being propped up the "free thinkers" crowd.
Regardless, this type of thinking isn't troubling to me because it's "big picture morality" or "it threatens my genetic legacy". It's a problem because they are sane washing Nazi shit. Probability health outcomes makes makes this an insurance issue. Baseing the assessment on an inherent characteristics means that a person is born with a set risk assessment that can't be changed. People with a more favorable genetic profile affords them lower premiums, encouraging the proliferation of certain groups and discouraging everyone else.
Its not far off from identifying preferred traits to genetics. Attribution of those traits to social utility. These traits can be factored into employment and education opportunities. It sets a persons worth from before they are even born and strips away any agency for change. Because why would any good capitalist risk a sub-optimal probability of success.
Its all that anti-DEI crap coming full circle. The ideal "best person for the job". The thing is, supremacists believe they were born better than everyone else at everything and they can't fathom a world where it's not the case.
I'd say we agree. It's the same thing in a new fancy wrapper, over and over.
I think it's worth saying that the person you're accusing of sane washing nazi shit recommends voting for democrats in iirc every US election.
I understand that there's a morality aspect to American partisan preferences, given the way things are going on over there. But simply not voting for the overt classic racists is a laughably low bar. Especially with how your Democratic party seems more than happy to abandon all principals to appease Donors and the radicalized fascists.
The reason Nazism is so horrific is that it's industrialized supremacy theory. Leveraging the power of central government and mechanization for the near automated disenfranchisement and elimination of entire classes of people "for the good of society".
Should genetic screening and its outcomes be speculated to have a high-yield profit, what sort of industry do you think will develop around it and how will that affect society. Keep in mind the other social and cultural impacts of "disruptions" like Uber, airBnB, online dating, twitter, Netflix, AI/LLM, algorithmic hyper-optimizations, blitzscaling, private equity and all the other wonders of modern capitalism. The tagline that drove the the reckless VC and now LLM madness is that it for the good of humanity.
I don't want to presume your situation, intentions or experience so please don't take this personally. But I have no patience for someone like Mr Alexander who has a platform and entertains this type of thinking. Because even if they make these arguments in good faith and with the best of intentions, they are still puppets of whoever is willing to leverage suffering for profit. Its the reason corporations and businesses are happy to give dictators golden statues.
Some form of natural supremacy philosophy has been prevalent in almost every sphere throughout history and justified many of the atrocities that got us to this point. Divine hierarchies putting men above woman,
allowing for the subjugation of half a population for centuries. Race/civilization hierarchies justifying enslavement and colonization of any peoples who happened to not have a military advantage. Caste systems depriving entire swaths of people of basic human dignity. Hell, it goes all the way back to old testament teachings allowing Canaanites to be slaughtered to the last man, woman, animal and male child because god said they were all not worth saving.
The problem is that even if there is some grand power prescribing a perfect order that ensures only the best outcomes, they have always seemed to entrench existing powers that deliver this divine message. The same structures that are just as susceptible to wealth capture. And that's where we start to see prosperity gospel style teachings come into play where where the civil liberties, property rights and earning potential of certain classes are placed above the needs of common people. The same common people who often rely on them for basic needs.
The true test of this philosophy would be if all the people favored by the current system were willing to surrender all their privileges for whatever societal good it provides. Because we know what sort of economic or social or environmental policy will create the best outcomes. The science and consensus is pretty clear. Yet we still sell some fantasy of divine rights and natural orders built on flawed logic that only generates needless suffering.
Eugenics (and white supremacy) is not only a right-wing issue. California was sterilizing inmates in the past 20 years. The idea of making "smart people" sperm banks for example or that one annoyingly loud pro-natalist couple who talks about wanting to breed their superior genes. They at least claim to be liberal, but are fine advocating alongside explicit racists.
Personally, I've heard plenty of liberals argue that there should be parenting tests, or that Idiocracy is real, be casually racist, etc.