Re: Misanthropic Altruism (Philosophy)

On 8/1/2026 7:37 PM, dart200 wrote:
> On 8/1/26 3:51 PM, Dude wrote:
>> On 8/1/2026 9:46 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
>>> On Sat, 1 Aug 2026 09:37:27 -0700, dart200
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 8/1/26 9:01 AM, Wilson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Your daughter’s smile is dearer to you than that of a stranger half a
>>>>> world away. Of course it is. Human life is situated and embodied, 
>>>>> and so
>>>>> are our obligations and loves. But the ideology that holds sway over
>>>>> many Silicon Valley elites diagnoses this preference for those near 
>>>>> and
>>>>> dear to you as an evolutionary defect. Instead, according to the
>>>>> adherents of this worldview, every sentient being in every place, in
>>>>> every time, holds the same moral claim on every other. This philosophy
>>>>> is known as Effective Altruism (EA).
>>>>>
>>>>> Scandals in the EA world, most notably the downfall of the
>>>>> cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, prompted many effective
>>>>> altruists to renounce the name in recent years. But the ideas 
>>>>> endure. In
>>>>> 2025, six EA-aligned grantmakers deployed $1.25 billion, and this 
>>>>> number
>>>>> is set to grow along with the success of the world’s leading 
>>>>> artificial
>>>>> intelligence company, Anthropic, which was founded on EA 
>>>>> principles. The
>>>>> firm’s founders have pledged to donate 80 percent of their wealth upon
>>>>> the firm’s IPO. These wealth pledges, combined with the company policy
>>>>> of matching employee donations, will create billions in philanthropic
>>>>> capital, channeled through EA’s entrenched institutions.
>>>>>
>>>>> Effective Altruism is the final flowering of utilitarianism, that
>>>>> Victorian philosophy of calculating reformers, transplanted into 
>>>>> Silicon
>>>>> Valley boardrooms and granted the false vitality of billion-dollar
>>>>> balance sheets. Because it is constitutively blind to what makes a
>>>>> civilization worth preserving, its utopia will entail dissolving 
>>>>> America
>>>>> in the name of humanity.
>>>>>
>>>>> Several historical developments help explain EA’s success. One is the
>>>>> rise of mass media, which widened the circle of concern that once 
>>>>> might
>>>>> have encompassed only family and neighbors. By the beginning of the
>>>>> 1970s, televisions were present in nearly every American home. Footage
>>>>> of people suffering abroad became a regular fact of American life. In
>>>>> 1972, the philosopher Peter Singer published "Famine, Affluence, and
>>>>> Morality," the essay that would become EA’s foundation. His 
>>>>> argument was
>>>>> simple: If we can prevent suffering at little cost to ourselves, we
>>>>> must, and it makes no moral difference whether the person we help 
>>>>> is "a
>>>>> neighbor’s child ten yards from me" or a stranger on another 
>>>>> continent.
>>>>> Another precondition for EA’s rise was the modern pathologization of
>>>>> traditional sources of identity — nation, religion, family, tradition.
>>>>> Especially after World War II, such particular loyalties were 
>>>>> recast as
>>>>> the wellspring of fascism. Later generations, whose education
>>>>> dispossessed them of everything particular, were prepared to 
>>>>> receive the
>>>>> EA program.
>>>>>
>>>>> In his 1981 book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that every
>>>>> culture is defined by its stock of "characters," the social roles that
>>>>> embody its moral ideals. "Characters," he wrote, "are the masks 
>>>>> worn by
>>>>> moral philosophies." The twentieth century’s main character was the
>>>>> bureaucrat, whose authority was derived from a seemingly scientific
>>>>> knowledge of human affairs, grounded in the supposed 
>>>>> incommensurability
>>>>> of facts and values. The bureaucrat administers according to facts,
>>>>> while values are condemned to the private sphere. His expertise cannot
>>>>> be challenged. The standard of his authority is effectiveness.
>>>>> He flattens all goods into a single quantifiable dimension, converting
>>>>> them into units like lives saved, suffering averted, and dollars per
>>>>> outcome. The units’ apparent neutrality conceals a range of 
>>>>> ideological
>>>>> assumptions. The human "good" becomes a function of EA’s calculus. 
>>>>> Then,
>>>>> pretending value-neutrality, EA denounces defection as backwards,
>>>>> unscientific, and immoral. Any challenge appears to spurn both science
>>>>> and human dignity.
>>>>>
>>>>> More recently, EA’s impartiality has expanded far beyond those 
>>>>> currently
>>>>> living, to what "longtermists" envision as 10^58+ potential future
>>>>> beings — human and digital. These future beings’ existence depends on
>>>>> the avoidance of human extinction. The longtermists consider AI the
>>>>> dominant existential risk, and frontier development is concentrated 
>>>>> in a
>>>>> few American labs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some have taken the argument to its violent conclusion. Eliezer
>>>>> Yudkowsky, the most influential of the doomsayers, wrote in Time that
>>>>> nations should "be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by 
>>>>> airstrike,"
>>>>> nuclear war notwithstanding. And since 2022, the Zizians, a cult that
>>>>> splintered off from the same Bay Area rationalist scene, have been
>>>>> linked to six killings.
>>>>>
>>>>> Congress must treat the philanthropic apparatus of frontier AI as it
>>>>> treats any concentration of unaccountable power. Lawmakers should 
>>>>> demand
>>>>> disclosure of the grantmaking networks that fund labs with national
>>>>> security implications. They should condition federal contracts on 
>>>>> terms
>>>>> any defense contractor would recognize: Disclose the instructions and
>>>>> value systems trained into the models, certify systems sold to the
>>>>> government will execute lawful orders without an engineer’s veto, and
>>>>> reserve the government’s right to audit.
>>>>>
>>>>> The machines our government buys must serve the American people, not
>>>>> some present or future humanity. And procurement standards should 
>>>>> favor
>>>>> open-weight models, which anyone can download, run, and test, so that
>>>>> the nation never depends on intelligence a handful of labs can 
>>>>> withhold.
>>>>> —William Thibeau
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.compactmag.com/article/misanthropic-altruism/
>>>>>
>>>>> The philosophical and ethical question is, is it beneficial to value
>>>>> those close to us more highly than others,
>>>>
>>>> no
>>>>
>>>>> or is it better to value all human life equally?
>>>>
>>>> yes
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Is it even /possible/ to value all lives equally?
>>>>
>>>> yes
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Does attempting to see all life as equal inevitably lead to placing a
>>>>> lower value on the lives of those close to us (both temporally and
>>>>> physically)?
>>>>
>>>> no
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What about the lives of those who oppose the idea of seeing all 
>>>>> life as
>>>>> morally equal?
>>>>
>>>>   > subethical beliefs self-resolve in fate
>>>
>>> So it seems. 
>>  >
>> There's no "fate" - where did you two get that idea? The three ancient 
>> goddesses (in Greek and Roman stories) who spin, measure, and cut the 
>> thread of human life?
>>
>> Everything happens for a reason.
>>
>> Moral relativism is the view that right and wrong are not absolute or 
>> universal truths. Instead, moral judgments are true or false only 
>> relative to specific cultural, social, or individual standpoints.
>>
>> Where's Creon?
> 
> being a lil bitch
> 
You snipped out the definition of misanthropic. Why did you do that 
Nick? You know that's unethical on Usenet, right?

So, you like to condemn some people outside your group - your group 
being out of work programmers in Silicon Valley.

misanthropic/ˌmis(ə)nˈTHräpik/:

Misanthropic means having or showing a strong dislike, distrust, or 
hatred of other people and human nature. It describes someone who avoids 
human society or expects the worst from everyone.

You came here to post misanthropic shit. Where's Noah?

Where I come from, silence usually indicates agreement. YMMV.
 >
>>> Somewhere in the depths of the human psyche is the
>>> potential to do better than that.  Maybe.
>>>