Jamie Loftus

There is no objective value to this number.

There's no rigor to this.

You are making up a number to determine the value of spending your money in certain ways.

And you are doing this so that whatever it is you want to do with your money, you can justify numerically as the scientifically best way to spend your money.

You can argue in this way by assigning these values in whatever wonky way you want.

No, me paying taxes to fund roads and the healthcare system is a shitty use of my money because it doesn't optimize this thing that I consider to be of higher long-term value.

And the thing that's of higher long-term value to me is spending money on fucking space travel research so that I can be a demigod on Mars, right?

Right.

That's best for human beings in the long term.

So in utilitarian speak, you know, the greatest good for the greatest number of people is us getting to Mars as opposed to feeding starving people right now.

You know, the utility function of getting to Mars is much higher.

So that's where our money ought to go.

There's literally some writing in that vein.

So it is through math like this that EAs are able to look at a world where millions face death by famine or disease or rising sea levels and say, the best way to help the planet is for us to become finance bros and then spend our money investing in AI companies or whatever.

The fundamental selfishness of this whole community is made clear when you read the essays these people write on their websites.

Like Less Wrong, a blog founded by self-declared AIX.

Yeah.

Eliza Yudkowsky.

Yudkowsky is a rationalist, which is a related subculture to the EAs.

There's a lot of bleed over.