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jmyeet 11 hours ago

I'm leery of any philosophy that is popular in tech circles because they all seem to lead to eugenics, hyperindividualism, ignoring systemic issues, deregulation and whatever the latest incarnation of prosperity gospel is.

Utilitarianism suffers from the same problems it always had: time frames. What's the best net good 10 minutes from now might be vastly different 10 days, 10 months or 10 years from now. So whatever arbitrary time frame you choose affects the outcome. Taken further, you can choose a time frame that suits your desired outcome.

"What can I do?" is a fine question to ask. This crops up a lot in anarchist schools of thought too. But you can't mutual aid your way out of systemic issues. Taken further, focusing on individual action often becomes a fig leaf to argue against any form of taxation (or even regulation) because the government is limiting your ability to be altruistic.

I expect the effective altruists have largely moved on to transhumanism as that's pretty popular with the Silicon Valley elite (including Peter Thiel and many CEOs) and that's just a nicer way of arguing for eugenics.

omnimus 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Effective altruism and transhumanism is kinda the same thing along with other stuff like longetermism. There is even name for the whole thing TESCREAL. Very slightly different positions invented i guess for branding.