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ACX: Galton, Ehrlich, Buck

astralcodexten.substack.com

Scott has posted a discussion of the conversation about eugenics, framed as an actual conversation. I found it thought-provoking, as he made better arguments for both sides than I am used to seeing from either.

A: Given that mild, consensual forms of eugenics have historically led to extreme, horrifying versions, we have reason to believe the topic is a slippery slope which ought to be avoided outright.

B: This proves too much, as there are plenty of other ideas with similar history but much higher body counts. Thus eugenics ought to be carefully investigated rather than tabooed outright.

In the footnotes, he also presents C: Ehrlich did nothing wrong, and sometimes expected-value calculations don’t plan for the long tails. Democracy, as a form of distributed consent, is our best way to square this circle. This (correctly, IMO) leaves Scott uncomfortable. I appreciate that he included it.

I was not at all familiar with Ehrlich’s work, or with the quintessentially-McNamara history of Indian aid programs. Both add some valuable context for the argument. Oh, and I guess Scott talks about HBD a little bit; that’ll be catnip for this community, but it’s really secondary to the main thrust. Seriously, just read the article for a better version than anything I can write.

Discuss.

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If anything, it's worse than that. From Ehrlich's Population Bomb, a book that sold 2 million copies:

The Ehrlichs float the idea of adding "temporary sterilants" to the water supply or staple foods. However, they reject the idea as unpractical due to "criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area."

They propose a powerful Department of Population and Environment which "should be set up with the power to take whatever steps are necessary to establish a reasonable population size in the United States and to put an end to the steady deterioration of our environment."

In the rest of the book the Ehrlichs discuss things which readers can do to help. This is focused primarily on changing public opinion to create pressure on politicians to enact the policies they suggest, which they believed were not politically possible in 1968.

Who can say how much of this stuff seeped into popular culture, how many children weren't born in the West due to the influence of this ideology? The overpopulation theory and Club of Rome stuff was also influential in China:

In 1980, the central government organized a meeting in Chengdu to discuss the speed and scope of one-child restrictions.[26] One participant at the Chengdu meeting had read two influential books about population concerns, The Limits to Growth and A Blueprint for Survival, while visiting Europe in 1980. That official, Song Jian, along with several associates, determined that the ideal population of China was 700 million, and that a universal one-child policy for all would be required to meet that goal.

There is some debate about how accurate this is (other historians say the Party decided before asking scientists) but it's interesting that Maoist-era China used to be ideologically pro-natal on the simple logic of population=power. That still makes a lot of sense today. Why would they suddenly change their minds in the 70s and 80s?

It's silly in general terms to implement population control for fear of mass famine - food supply constraints automatically reduce population growth. People suffering malnutrition are less fecund. That's the regime we lived under for millennia. Population only grew like 0.1% a year or less in pre-industrial times.

Neither of us like Yudkowsky but that's a grossly unfair and unreasonable article. I think the median motte-user would read it and be swayed in the opposite direction. How is it any better than what LeCun puts on twitter? We both agree those are weak arguments that don't engage with the substance of Yud's stuff. Yud's position makes much more sense than Ehrlich's. It's still wrong but for much better reasons.

Some casual holes I can pick:

  1. Food shortages are not intelligent and cannot plot against us

  2. Yudkowsky's argument never relied on there being no diminishing returns on intelligence ever, only that returns on intelligence were very great

  3. We have not been dealing with AI for millennia like we have with food shortages

Frankly I'd prefer a chad-hominem argument like 'we shouldn't take advice from a man who can't even lose weight - fix your waistline before saving the world'.

Frankly I'd prefer a chad-hominem argument like 'we shouldn't take advice from a man who can't even lose weight - fix your waistline before saving the world'.

So you are saying that if Brad Pitt and other handsome and good looking Hollywood celebrities told you that AI will kill you soon unless you give up your GPU, you will salute, say "Yes, sir!" and immediately smash your high capacity assault computer with hammer?

You do not have to worry, it could happen soon.

No - why would anyone trust an actor, someone who is paid to speak the words of others? I'd trust a healthy philosopher over an obese one.

Edit: Still better would be more substantive counterarguments, such as those Daseindustries has made earlier.