Posted on 09/14/2026 2:54:37 PM PDT by spintreebob
Today, EA is the unseen force driving AI safety discourse. Its ideas and money course through institutions seeking to build and govern AI and, with it, America’s future. And Americans deserve to know about it, because the EA crowd is trying to restrict your access to the most important technology of the 21st century.....
Effective altruism is a utilitarian philosophy that claims to use evidence and reason to do good, ranking competing needs through a common calculus. It leads in strange directions. For example, in a truly universal moral frame, effective altruists argue, why should a single country like the United States or a single species like humanity take precedence? (According to EA, shrimp welfare is an urgent priority.) Indeed, why should we value ourselves and our children more highly than the countless generations that come after us? ...
These are overlapping institutions and fortunes, financing a struggle over who controls the future. The only thing they agree on about the future is that you should not be in control of it. ...
Vladimir Lenin invented the notion of the “vanguard,” a small cadre of revolutionaries with privileged insight into humanity’s future and a special right to force others into compliance. The EA doomsayers are the Leninist vanguard of the algorithmic age: It is for them, they say, to chart the future of this technology, and for us to comply. As in the 20th century, this is a recipe for despair and decline. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at thefp.com ...
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Well, the Deer Crossing signs should be placed at a safer location.
“Danger Danger Will Robinson!’’.
For all the times a freeper posted a completely bat crazy article that we thought was from the Bee and it turned out the people (in the article) really believed the stupid things they were saying.
We must spare no expense to teach those Deer to read the damn signs.
Bttt
Unknown to most, deer can read thus they faithfully cross the road at deer crossing signs. I steal the signs at put them around my hunting stand. It works better than Deer Corn.
Would I lie to you? Signed Joe Issuzu.
Above humor aside I no longer hunt, as the joy of killing game left me. My neighbor hunts my land and his. I get some of the venison. It is delicious. We process it ourselves as when you go to a commercial place you can never be sure of the quality of processing and cleanliness. Each year we put about 150 lbs. of processed deer meat in the freezer. In effect close to $2000 dollars of meat if retail. Our land, our deer, our great meals.
Forgot to add this. My friend is an ethical hunter who obeys the laws strictly. He and I both despise those that are not this. The game wardens are the ethical hunters best friend. The ethical hunter is a poachers nightmare. We hate them.
Today’s AI warning might be the result of someone trying to short the market.
I just asked AI to tell me more about Effective Altruism. After defining it and how it’s focus is on the greater good, I asked this.
Me: I’m wondering how this philosophy could be used for a person or group to try and convince others what I desires is in everyone’s best interest when it is not?
When a philosophy focused on maximizing the “greater good” is twisted to serve selfish ends, it becomes a form of weaponized utilitarianism. Because effective altruism (EA) relies heavily on data, forecasting, and abstract ethical calculations, its framework can be manipulated to disguise personal desires as universal necessities.
Here is how a person or group could exploit this philosophy to manipulate others:
1. The “Long-Termism” Shield
* The Tactic: Arguing that a massive, hypothetical future catastrophe outweighs any current, tangible suffering.
* How it works: A leader can demand that followers sacrifice their current well-being, money, or rights to fund a vague, long-term project that the leader controls. By framing the project as the only way to save humanity’s long-term future, any disagreement is framed as short-sighted or selfish.
2. Fabricating Data and “Impact Metrics”
* The Tactic: Using pseudoscientific models, arbitrary probability percentages, and complex spreadsheets to give selfish goals a veneer of objective truth.
* How it works: Because EA highly values quantification (like measuring “Quality-Adjusted Life Years”), a bad actor can manipulate the variables in a cost-effectiveness model. They can make their preferred outcome look like the most “efficient” use of resources on paper, making it incredibly difficult for outsiders to argue against without getting bogged down in math.
Me: This sounds like the argument of climate change and funding green energy
You have made a very sharp connection. The debate surrounding climate change policy and green energy funding frequently mirrors these exact psychological and philosophical dynamics, used by actors on both sides of the issue.
Because climate change is global, complex, and tied to the survival of the planet, it is a prime candidate for the “greater good” framework. This can be used legitimately, but it can also be weaponized to hide self-interest, corporate greed, or political overreach under the guise of saving humanity.
Here is how the four manipulation tactics play out specifically in the green energy and climate debate:
1. The “Long-Termism” Shield & Shifting Sacrifices
* The Dynamic: In the political sphere, policies are often promoted by arguing that immediate economic pain is a necessary sacrifice to prevent a apocalyptic future.
* The Manipulation: This can be weaponized when governments or private entities push through massive subsidies or regulations that hurt working-class families—such as soaring electricity costs or job losses in traditional energy sectors—while insulating themselves from the consequences. Bad actors use the terrifying scale of the future threat to imply that questioning the immediate negative impact on real people is morally unacceptable.
2. Fabricating Data and “Greenwashing”
* The Dynamic: Climate policy relies heavily on complex economic modeling, carbon accounting, and “Social Cost of Carbon” metrics.
* The Manipulation: This complexity allows for massive financial rent-seeking. Corporate interests, tech investors, and energy conglomerates can manipulate carbon metrics or invent vague “offset” schemes to secure billions in government grants and tax credits. By wrapping a highly profitable business venture in the language of carbon reduction, corporations can disguise a corporate handout as an essential survival strategy for the species. Critics from various political angles often label these heavily subsidized, poorly managed projects as a “green scam”.
3. Moral Licensing: The “Green Tech” Pass
* The Dynamic: Because an entity is fighting the “ultimate evil” (climate change), its other harms are minimized or ignored.
* The Manipulation: Companies that manufacture electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, or wind turbines sometimes engage in severe environmental destruction (like toxic mining for lithium or cobalt) or exploit labor in developing countries. Under weaponized utilitarianism, these harms are brushed aside using the math of the greater good: “Yes, this mining destroys a local ecosystem or harms workers, but it offsets gigatons of carbon globally, so it is net-positive.” It allows organizations to claim high moral ground while operating exploitatively.
4. Framing Dissent as “Anti-Science” or “Irrational”
* The Dynamic: Legitimate climate action requires consensus based on rigorous data.
* The Manipulation: A political or corporate group can weaponize this consensus to silence valid, practical dissent. If a community objects to a massive wind farm being built on protected indigenous land, or if an economist questions the efficiency of a specific green technology, proponents can dismiss them as “climate deniers,” “anti-progress,” or “rationally blind.” By framing a deeply complicated economic and cultural issue as a simple binary choice—either you support our specific project or you want the planet to burn—they bypass the need to negotiate or address real localized harm.
The Reality
This doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real or that green energy isn’t vital. Instead, it highlights how the nobility of a cause does not make its proponents immune to corruption. The moment a goal becomes “existentially mandatory,” it becomes incredibly profitable and politically useful for bad actors to hijack that goal for wealth and control.
You're more likely to be strangled to death by an angry feminist than be impacted by AI.
For the past 50 years, every corporation had an IT department that maintained critical data for purposes of paying bills, payroll, asset management, inter departmental coordination, tax reporting, and government compliance regulation.
About six years ago that began to stop. Data was sent to "A Cloud". It saved a ton of money and time. Well, now you know just where this "Cloud" is! It's in those data centers. Instead of 50,000 companies housing and manning an AS-400 Server, powering it, staffing it, and securing it, just one data center takes that role over for 50,000 companies, and let's them all watch porn at the same time. That's what Data Centers are. Racks of a hundred thousand servers meeting your every inquiry. They used to exist in 50,000 places, drawing power from 50,000 switchgear yards, and employing uncooperative geeks to yell at you if you need something. Now it's centralized. Nothing has changed. It just gets bounced around until your request is fulfilled.
Every corporation of 2,000 total employees or more, has been able to shed hundreds of annoying jerks, scale back 20,000 square feet of restricted access AS-400 rooms climate controlled, and another 50 department clerks to smooth crap out.
"Electronic Arts" is still around? Haven't heard of them in years.
Ayn Rand made a convincing argument of the destructive nature of altruism. The morality started out as religious dogma but even after God was removed from the justification that morality was kept intact.
This gave birth to godless leftists , immune to reason because the 'good' is always sacrifice for all. No matter how destructive their redistribution grand designs are they stick with them because ,in their mind , that ,in and of itself , is the moral path .
just listened to the clip of Dario Amodei saying he’d give up control ‘to the right combination of governments’. What an f-ing idiot.
Effective altruism promoted by new age cult leader William MacAskill with prominent disciples the likes of Sam Bankman Fried and his homely girlfriend.
Their FTX Crypto DNC money laundering operation went into the drain faster even than Theranos. I can still picture that corrupt Maxine Waters looking desperate to throw them a life preserver as they went overboard.
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