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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   26485 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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Oxford has shut down the Future of Humanity Institute.

This was Nick Bostrom's organization within the University of Oxford for those of you wondering what on Earth the Future of Humanity Institute is. FHI has been a powerhouse on the intellectual wing of the Effective Altruism/existential risk movement. Everything in "orthodox" AI thinking that didn't come from Yudkowsky came from FHI.

What happened? Why would a premier university shut down such an influential and respected organization? The easy answer is Bostrom's N-word email from 2023, but the timeline doesn't quite line up. The final report of the institute gives their side of the story, and they paint a picture of bureaucratic strangling, leaving the reader to put the pieces together.

"Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring. Unfortunately, this led to the eventual loss of lead researchers and especially the promising and diverse cohort of junior researchers, who have gone on to great things in the years since. While building an impressive alumni network and ecosystem of new nonprofits, these departures severely reduced the Institute. In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy announced that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed. On 16 April 2024, the Institute was closed down"

Obviously you don't impose a freeze on fundraising unless you want the organization to die. Funding was not the issue.

"Where we failed

Any organization embedded in a larger organization or community needs to invest to a certain degree in establishing the right kind of social relationships to maintain this embeddedness. Incentives must be aligned, and both parties must also recognize this alignment. We did not invest enough in university politics and sociality to form a long-term stable relationship with our faculty.

There also needs to be an understanding of how to communicate across organizational communities. When epistemic and communicative practices diverge too much, misunderstandings proliferate. Several times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be received. Finding friendly local translators and bridgebuilders is important."

Translation: They hated us, they hated our ideas, and they hated our autism.

As stated before, this is FHI's accounting of the events, but they sure seem upset.

There is a niche for a third tier university to accept autistic weirdos who are kicked out of tier one institutions. This is far from just a wokeness issue, a lot of geniuses are difficult people. By creating a safe space for researchers who don't see what is wrong with asking a woman if she is pregnant or fat and giving them long term research grants, a university can increase the chances of getting groundbreaking research. If a university punches high above its weight class in research, it could compensate for other issues.

It wouldn't surprise me if a university in Asia adopted this strategy. Find deplatformed westerners and build a top tier research facility that rivals famous institutions with several times the budget.

This is already being effectively prevented. Every national science grant requires a DEI statement now, evaluated by a DEI committee. Even astronomers need to talk about how their work will empower marginalized communities and engage with indigenous ways of knowing. The system is set up at every level to ruin weirdos, dissenters, and anyone who isn't at the forefront of party dogma.

The absurd hypotheticals already happened years ago without anyone noticing.

There is a niche for that, but there is also an empowered activist vanguard who wants to destroy those niches, among other objectives.

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