TESCREAL
TESCREAL is an acronym neologism, proposed by Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres, standing for "transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism (as espoused by Eliezer Yudkowsky in the LessWrong blog community),[1] Effective Altruism, and longtermism." Gebru and Torres allege that these concepts overlap, especially in social and academic circles in Silicon Valley centered around artificial intelligence. As such, the acronym is sometimes used by them to criticize a perceived belief system associated with Big Tech.[2][3][4][5] Neşe Devenot has used the TESCREAL acronym to also refer to "global tech elites" who promote new uses of psychedelic drugs as mental health treatments, not because they want to help people, but rather so that they can make money on the sale of these new pharmaceuticals, as part of a deliberate plan to increase inequality.[6]
Torres claims that these ideas have previous overlaps;[3] that transhumanism, extropianism and singularitarianism are presented as a coherent set of ideas by Ray Kurzweil, a notable technology evangelist and AI researcher at Google.[2] Dave Troy, a reporter for the The Washington Spectator, attributes Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian rocket scientist and proponent of Cosmism, as an influence on Elon Musk.[2]:1 Sam Bankman-Fried was a member of the Effective Altruism community, collaborating with some frequency with the Oxford philosopher Will MacAskill.[2] Torres says that Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky are "TESCREALists".[3]
Many of the discourses around an existential risk from artificial general intelligence occur among supporters of the TESCREAL ideologies.[2]
Responses[edit]
Sociologist, transhumanist, and bioethicist James J. Hughes (with Eli Sennesh) characterizes this analysis of futurist ideas and people as a conspiracy theory, and states: "These new left conspiracists cast all futurist philosophies together under the acronym of TESCREAL, linked in their minds to eugenics and racism. Again, there is a web of facts underlying their fantasies, just as [Jeffrey] Epstein was confirmatory for QAnon. But the conspiracy style of argumentation is bad intellectual history and bad politics."[7] Torres has rejected the description.[1]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Torres, Émile (2023-06-20). "Twitter conversation about the description of anti-TESCREAL as a conspiracy theory". Retrieved 2023-10-14.
This is funny because Sandberg is a transhumanist who participated in the Extropian movement, anticipates the Singularity, has a long history with cosmists (Goertzel) and Rationalists (Yudkowsky), is very influential among Rationalists and EAs, comments on the LessWrong blog, and [...]
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Troy, Dave (1 May 2023). "The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — the Weird Ideologies Behind Silicon Valley's Rightward Turn". The Washington Spectator. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares". 15 June 2023. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
- ↑ "We need to examine the beliefs of today's tech luminaries". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
- ↑ "He's played chess with Peter Thiel, sparred with Elon Musk and once, supposedly, stopped a plane crash: Inside Sam Altman's world, where truth is stranger than fiction". Business Insider. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
- ↑ Devenot, Neşe (2023). "TESCREAL hallucinations: Psychedelic and AI hype as inequality engines". Journal of Psychedelic Studies.
Counterfactual efforts to improve mental health by increasing inequality are widespread in the psychedelics industry. These efforts have been propelled by an elitist worldview that is widely-held in Silicon Valley. The backbone of this worldview is the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies, ... While others have noted similarities between the earlier SSRI hype and the ongoing hype for psychedelic medications, the rhetoric of psychedelic hype is tinged with utopian and magico-religious aspirations that have no parallel in the discourse surrounding SSRIs or other antidepressants. I argue that this utopian discourse provides insight into the ways that global financial and tech elites are instrumentalizing psychedelics as one tool in a broader world-building project that justifies increasing material inequality.
- ↑ Hughes, James (2023-06-12). "Conspiracy Theories, Left Futurism, and the Attack on TESCREAL - Some critics have decided futurist philosophies and their advocates are bound together in a toxic, reactionary bundle, promoted by a cabal of Silicon Valley elites. This style of conspiracy analysis has a long history and is always a misleading way to understand the world. We need a Left futurism that can address the flaws of these philosophies and frame a liberatory vision".
We completely support a ruthless deconstruction of the shallow, self-serving, and dangerous ways that some billionaires have adopted these futurist ideas. But reducing two hundred years of intellectual history and political reality to the sloppy musings of a handful of tech bros and a tenuous web of guilt by association is seriously misleading, like all conspiracy theories. ... Worse, the anti-TESCREAL conspiracy is reactive rather than proactive.
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