6 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Their wordsThe problem with these grand ambitions—saving humanity from extinction and enabling our species to reach its full potential millions of years from now—is that they ostensibly justify any cost in the present.
Their wordsDiverting attention and resources from global health and poverty is an enormous gamble, as it will make many lives poorer, sicker, and shorter in the name of fending off threats that may or may not materialize.
Their wordsThis is a worldview that’s uniquely susceptible to hubris, dogma, and motivated reasoning.
Their wordsUnlike other interventions EA has sponsored, there are scant metrics for tracking the success or failure of investments in existential risk mitigation.
Their wordsWhile there are interesting theoretical arguments for these causes, there’s a disconnect between an almost-neurotic focus on hard evidence of effectiveness in some areas of EA and a willingness to accept extremely abstract and conjectural “evidence” in others.
Their wordsStrangely enough, as EA becomes more absorbed in the task of saving humanity, the movement is becoming less humanistic.