I think that repeatedly re-opening discussions on any form of eugenics actively undermines the work many EAs are doing in the global south and severely risks our reputation and credibility as a movement in the global health space. Given the history of discussing this topic within EA, I do not believe that anyone in this community has the precision and tact to discuss proposals around eugenics without causing these harms, if it is even possible to do so at all (I do not believe it is).

I also believe that discussing eugenics on the forum undermines attempts to make EA more welcoming to a large number of racial groups, because of the association with forms of oppression and genocide against those groups. I believe that all of these harms persist even if you don’t specifically talk about where you might believe the existing differences in intelligence lie, because of that history. I believe that there are many people who would make fantastic EAs who are turned off of this movement because of this association.

I believe that members of the EA movement and its leaders should loudly and sharply condemn all forms of race science, human biodiversity, and more broadly, eugenics, because of these harms.

I am also, frankly, tired of having to write this comment every 6 months.

Hi, this has been discussed plenty of times before, often very controversially:

• Genetic Enhancement as a Cause Area
• How to better advocate for genetic enhancement to the EA community
• The Effective Altruist Case for Using Genetic Enhancement to End Poverty
• An instance of white supremacist and Nazi ideology creeping onto the EA Forum
• Most people endorse some form of eugenics
• EA should unequivocally condemn race science

Here are two write-ups from Reflective Altruism, a criticism blog, on the EA Forum’s engagement with this topic area.

I think that more than enough ink has been spilled on this topic on this forum and I don’t see this post adding a lot to it. I think a better version of this post would engage with the existing discussion while treading very carefully around the impacts that discussing eugenics has on the goal of the EA Forum to be a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone. I will leave my object-level thoughts on your post in a different comment.

That may be the intended effect

Well, like, I don’t care who wrote the words but I do care about who took ownership of them. If an I happened to write in my style/voice and I reviewed it and posted it, would you consider that my writing or the AI’s?

Nuance, I’d be happy for an AI to write a draft, but (at this time) I will never publish something without a thorough review and strong work to put it in my own voice. I will never let a single AI-written word go unreviewed. (This is the same for ghostwritten posts made on my behalf, I don’t think AI changes much here).

Our authorial voice and trust that people put in our words is one of the few things we really have left that makes us human. When I catch it, I find reading AI-written (or ghostwritten) content gross and disturbing, because it signals to me that the author has no respect for my time, or their own humanity. I know that’s an extreme position but I find it hard to take any other one.

As I wrote before—if you’re considering applying for the guided self-help intervention, please reach out to us at Kaya Guides and DM me! Happy to share lots of context :)

I’m sure there’s some good money in it but Anthropic signed this deal around 8 months ago, when they were making substantially less money. I’m just not sure it’s worth the fight when other frontier labs have comparably performant models and substantially less moral qualms—why risk the walkouts and resignations?

If you’re interested in understanding more about the digital guided self-help program, please reach out to us at Kaya Guides! I can be found on DMs here :)

Have you considered trying to offer this on food delivery apps? India has a lot of infrastructure for making it easy to find vegetarian products in their apps, I’ve found it very useful :)

(Even in the roles where it has produced productivity improvements, such as programming, that doesn’t necessarily imply job loss, as companies could get more ambitious with their existing budgets)