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  • Timnit Gebru (she/her).timnitGebru@dair-community.social
    Aug 21, 2026, 2:05 PM

    Well, well, well, I KNEW that the hounding of Arday was gonna get connected back to the TESCREAL bozos somehow. See this "paper" by the guy who hired Cofnas at Ghent University.

    Reminder "dysgenic" is the opposite of "eugenic," they mean Black people and other undesirables reproducing too much.

    Reminder, the L in TESCREAL is for "longtermism."

    Read more at dair-institute.org/projects/te

    These are also the people pushing generative AI down your throats.

    The dysgenics objection to longtermism Bouke de Vriesa, b, 1 ª Department of Philosophy, Ghent University, Belgium b Department of Philosophy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Check for updates ARTICLE INFO Longtermism Intelligence Fetic Moral Status Future generations ABSTRACT - Strong longtermism maintains that how we should act morally is determined almost entirely by the expected effects on the welfare of our descendants existing thousands if not millions of years into the future, who might include both other humans and any artificial agents with a comparable or higher moral status that we end up creating. It is based on three key assumptions: (i) that our descendants will have a moral status that is at least as high as ours and therefore should not have their welfare discounted by us; (ii) that there is a good chance that these individuals will vastly outnumber us; and (iii) that we can do things here and now that can be expected to positively shape the long-term trajectory of humanity. The aim of this contribution is to suggest that authors such as Will MacAskill and Hilary Greaves have been too optimistic about all these assumptions as a result of having ignored evidence that the populations of post-industrial countries are becoming less intelligent due mostly to the negative relationship that has emerged within these societies between intelligence and fertility and to the proclivity of intelligent people to delay parenthood.
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  • Violet Maddervioletmadder@kolektiva.social
    Aug 22, 2026, 6:47 AM

    @FediThing @timnitGebru

    It completely blows my mind that these depraved sociopaths expect anyone to believe they give even one actual fuck about hypothetical future generations while they treat everyone around them in the here and now like absolute garbage.

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  • DavidM_yegDavidM_yeg@beige.party
    Aug 24, 2026, 4:41 AM

    @FediThing @violetmadder @timnitGebru

    Once you’ve decided the end justifies the means, and then place the end comfortably far enough away that it can be whatever you decide it is, this line of ‘reasoning’ becomes carte blanche to do whatever you want.

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  • Violet Maddervioletmadder@kolektiva.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 5:56 AM

    @DavidM_yeg @FediThing @timnitGebru

    They tried to push the end so far away they can pretend it's important with their math, painting a fancy picture of what they think morality is supposed to be shaped like, with no clue at all what any of it MEANS.

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  • Niels Abildgaardnielsa@mas.to
    Aug 21, 2026, 3:33 PM

    @timnitGebru That is one of the wildest abstracts I have ever read. Elsevier straight up publishing fash propaganda?? It's the weak men/weak civilization strong men/strong civilization take on longtermism??

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Aug 21, 2026, 4:46 PM

    @timnitGebru Once in high school, in a science class, I made some argument about dysgenics I'd picked up from a science fiction short story. The teacher was so impressed she announced she was giving me extra credit.

    Later I read a history textbook and saw a Nazi propaganda poster making the same argument, and I was horrified that I'd believed it.

    I feel I can forgive myself only on the condition I never let myself forget it.

    Years later it occurred to me to question why the teacher was so eager to endorse it.

    This idea has been part of US culture for a long time, just hiding below the surface for a while.

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  • Erik the short (vi)kingbright_helpings@mspsocial.net
    Aug 23, 2026, 9:09 PM

    @foolishowl @timnitGebru Black people and other disabled people have always been conscious of how eugenics have always been part of the landscape of white supremacy.

    Angela Saini's book "Superior: The Return of Race Science" was a recent valuable read for me on this subject.

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  • CassandraVertCassandraVert@indieweb.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 1:47 AM

    @foolishowl @timnitGebru Theoretically, the best argument wins. I discovered while I was still in school that it's not even that hard to make a bad argument sound good, and there are lots of little psychological tricks to enhance it.

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  • Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏alan@mindly.social
    Aug 21, 2026, 4:48 PM

    @timnitGebru What I love most about this abstract is that it supports the thesis that intelligent people create intelligent babies, when there's a pile of evidence that pre- and post-natal nutrition is a much more significant factor.

    My response to this claim has always been "if you want to raise the overall intelligence of the human population, make sure pregnant mothers and their children in the third world have adequate nutrition."

    The frowns I get from this (especially from white men) are fucking priceless.

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  • ckohtalackohtala@scholar.social
    Aug 22, 2026, 4:04 AM

    @timnitGebru
    the grant Ghent gave him to supplement his (prestigious) ERC Starter Grant on loneliness, with which he hired Cofnas: research.ugent.be/web/result/p

    the report Ghent professors compiled to protest and show evidence of Cofnas' unsuitability and shoddy scholarship when he was hired has also been released (apparently, and an English translation, with a dropbox link going round)

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 23, 2026, 9:19 PM

    @timnitGebru I knew these people had invaded the universities--which is giving the universities a walk, I know; that's where these people's ideas were encouraged before there was so much money behind them.

    I also knew that academic publishing was a grift, largely because I follow and listen to academics.

    And yet I find myself nauseated by this "academic" paper.

    I'm more naive than I want to admit.

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 23, 2026, 9:30 PM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru You are on the Internet thanks to academic publishing, which you call a grift. Which academics told you that academic publishing is a grift? It is by far and away the most reliable kind of knowledge that humans have, admittedly most reliably in math & physical sciences.

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  • Simon Brookesimon_brooke@mastodon.scot
    Aug 23, 2026, 10:32 PM

    @jonesmurphy @dnkboston @timnitGebru

    No. No one is on the Internet due to academic publishing. The early IETF (and GADS, which preceded it) was very much a self organised group of computer engineering academics and DARPA officials.

    Academic publishing had nothing to do with the process.

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 23, 2026, 10:55 PM

    @jonesmurphy Academics have talked about the way they experience a shakedown to get their journal articles published. I'm going to oversimplify, but it sounds like a flavor of pay-to-play.

    I don't know how long it's been this way.

    @timnitGebru

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 11:25 AM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru There's always been some degree of intentional fraud, unintentional mediocrity & grifting in academia. But overall, peer-reviewed academic publishing produces the most reliable knowledge that humans have ever had. Nothing else comes close. I applaud Retraction Watch and other sleuths who police the integrity of academic publishing. We need more of that in this era of misinformation. It is absolutely misinformation to tar all academic publishing with the sins of a few.

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 11:28 AM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru Your broad slam on academic publishing literally is word for word the bullshit that RFKJr, Elon Musk and DOGE have spewed on their way to massively gutting American STEM research and ending generations of US scientific leadership. This garbage has precipitated an enormous brain drain out of the USA.

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 24, 2026, 11:41 AM

    @jonesmurphy

    Elsevier seems to be the worst of the bunch, but they're not the only bad actors.

    The Criticisms and Controversies section of this page lays out some of what I heard en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier

    The root issue with academic publishing seems to be the same as regular publishing, hyper-concentration.

    RFK Jr, Elon Musk, MAGA, and MAHA seem to object to the scientific method and go for the feels and truthiness. My critique is based on corruption of baseline principles.

    @timnitGebru

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 11:47 AM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru Elsevier are horrible, as are their peers. And yet these horrible actors made it possible for you to be here on the Internet slamming academic publishing as a whole. What RFKJr, Elon Musk, MAGA & MAHA do is say exactly the same things you're saying and use that to attack the scientific method. Efforts are underway to break the oligopoly of the publishing cartel, and those efforts are going very well. Look at the size & scope of this list:

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 24, 2026, 2:08 PM

    @jonesmurphy

    I'm happy to see that there are so many independent, open-access journals, and I hope that list grows.

    It seems to me that the basket of deplorables is weaponizing the open science movement for its own political ends.

    I understand how the internet came to me (thank you, DoD). But I don't think it's fair to say 1) that it wouldn't exist without academic journals, and 2) that therefore I can't criticize said journals.

    @timnitGebru

    1/

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 24, 2026, 2:11 PM

    @jonesmurphy

    I am highly critical of the technologists and inventors of the 20th century who made computers possible (and don't get me started on the ones who made phones possible). If the next logical step is "then don't use those tools," believe me, I've thought about it.

    I'm not saying that academic publishing is inherently corrupt, but it has been deeply corrupted. Springer was the publisher I was originally thinking of, but there are more.

    @timnitGebru

    2/

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 24, 2026, 2:16 PM

    @jonesmurphy

    This abstract talks about the immense amount of money made by the publishing companies on the "article processing charges" alone (not the fees paid by universities and libraries to access the journals).

    arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551

    While these publishers and their titles have the strength they do, it looks like a grift. But I'll grant that there are indies who aren't part of that dishonest system.

    @timnitGebru

    3/3

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 3:19 PM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru I do not share the MAGA view that the world was a better place without phones and computers. I lived years without phones in a predominantly black colony of the British Empire. It wasn't nearly as much fun as you imagine it was. People died of medical emergencies, including in childbirth. Life expectancy was much lower. Everyone has the choice to quit using telecoms. Few make that choice. You're evidently online, not making that choice yourself.

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 3:22 PM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru Open access is soaring. Grifty academic publishing is shrinking. The basket of deplorables weaponizes everything for their own political ends. They are not a useful measure of anything. They are just horrible people who need to be treated like their Confederate monument heroes. DoD played the role that it did in the creation of the Internet because the Deplorables had started slashing taxes on billionaires immediately after Civil Rights, and cutting R&D funding as well.

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Aug 24, 2026, 3:24 PM

    @jonesmurphy I switched to a flip phone in 2019. I was very happy. I got another smartphone in 2023 when a relative suddenly died overseas and I needed to fly there. I genuinely don't like it or feel like my life is better for it. I'd like to go back to a world in which payphones were more available.

    I've been posting intermittently for a few months about how trapped I feel trying to be an ethical tech consumer. There doesn't seem to be any such thing.

    @timnitGebru

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  • Jones Murphyjonesmurphy@mastodon.social
    Aug 24, 2026, 3:26 PM

    @dnkboston @timnitGebru It's tough living immersed among Nazis. The USA is heading for another Civil War. It's not easy being ethical in an environment so heavily infested by unethical people. That is not a problem with tech, it's just a total societal problem.

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  • Martijn Vosmcv@friendica.opensocial.space
    Aug 23, 2026, 9:52 PM
    Is this a real Elsevier-published paper from the University of Ghent, writing people off as "dysgenics"? Holy fuck. I hope heads will roll for such repugnant pseudoscience at a once-credible institution.
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  • TC Won't Give In To LiesTCatInReality@mastodon.social
    Aug 23, 2026, 10:06 PM

    @timnitGebru

    TESCREAL is such a scam. Imagine a morality that allows you to justify *anything* now in order to benefit hypothetical people in the distant future.

    What a laughable rationale for demanding a blank cheque and zero accountability.

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