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the effectively altruistic AI's fans are gonna pipe bomb a Planned Parenthood (forum.effectivealtruism.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [M] to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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[–] 12 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

Is it just me or does the author just… not really spend any time trying to defend forced birth? Like, other than quoting counterarguments to abortion defences. It’s like he’s sort of assuming everyone already has ideas about why abortion itself is bad, but find it permissible for whatever reason. Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?

Overall it reads like a business proposal. Is this how you’re supposed to talk to an EA person? Instead of saying “here is why you should care about x”, you have to pitch them on the potential ROI of caring about something? If so, that’s a fucking frustrating way to think about the world, and this was a fucking awful article to read, just like every other treacles-y long form logorrhoea you get from these people.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    He says like "well actually having access to abortion doesn't make women happier" , as if abortion isn't pretty essential to the happiness of SOME women. But he thinks if women are forced to have babies they'll realize that they really like it actually, because he's a wretched dog.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Bonus points for the part where he rails against contraception and sex education in the appendix, because we all know what this is really about.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Ah just like the prolife campaigner I argued with recently who said that in his* ideal world, abortion, contraception, and the morning-after pill would all be illegal. Apparently having an abortion is "irresponsible" because you're acting as if it's "someone else's problem". That really threw me for a loop. I mean, it's not like you can get someone else to have the abortion for you! He justified a contraception ban along the same lines - that people needed to accept the consequences of having sex, or something. I suggested to him that contraception was actually very effective at preventing abortions, and he frowned as if he couldn't understand what I was saying.

    *Yes, he was a cis man who has never been pregnant or made anyone else pregnant. Sure, what else would you expect?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    EA is a movement for rich philanthropists to justify whatever they want to do, with data* and studies**. It's literally ends justifying the means.

    *data it's heavily cherry picked for whatever you, the powerful and so smart philanthropist, want to accomplish

    **studies are funded to guarantee results that you want

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Yeah the studies he cites are all over the place. One about how single motherhood isn't fun, which would seem like an argument for abortion, not against? It's just the aul "contraception causes pregnancy" argument catholic pro-lifers used to lose.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?

    I actually wouldn't be surprised if this were the case -- the whole schtick of a lot of these people is "worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans", so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?

    Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go "well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it's obviously bad and I don't really need to justify it." (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you're Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See also the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case – the whole schtick of a lot of these people is “worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans”, so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?

    Same energy as those score-maximising Tetris AIs that taught themselves to stack blocks to the kill line and pause.

    Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go “well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it’s obviously bad and I don’t really need to justify it.” (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you’re Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.

    Ughhh yeah that sounds about right.

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