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Effective Obfuscation (mollywhite.net)
37 points by treesciencebot on Nov 26, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



This is a fantastic article.

Ever since I wrote this comment[1] a year ago, I've been grappling with the parts of effective altruism I find admirable and the parts that I think are hubristic and self-serving. Similarly, I've been trying to wrap my head around the various strains of thought around AI safety/doomerism, AI ethics, and AI accelerationism.

Molly White takes these threads and weaves them together to tell us something meaningful about the Silicon Valley ethos and shine a light on its dark externalities.

Side note: I wish there were more discussion about SV elites' obsession with maintaining population growth - there are many otherwise-uncommon beliefs worth interrogating in that area (for one: both Peter Thiel and Sam Altman apparently believe that a flat global population will spell certain disaster for most of humanity).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626584




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