Just discovered this 9 months after the fact. To be fair to Phil, the OP, since the post is at −41 karma (22 total votes) and has only 2 top level comments in 9 months other than his own, it does lend a bit of credibility to the claim that some kind of ‘cancelling’ happened.
But, Phil’s comments seem to be geared to incite emotional discomfort as part of an agitation strategy. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of folks downvoted out of principle and didn’t care enough to engage with the claims. So the overall claim is not that convincing, bit of an own-goal.
Maybe Nick Bostrom and his supporters have some weird ideas, and weird claims that are glossed over, that seems possible. Yet to then impute, therefore, that they must be degenerates, seems like a nasty rhetorical trick. Which really undermines Phil’s position in the eyes of any experienced reader.
After all anyone could equally claim Phil must also be a degenerate because of x, y, or z. Needless to say this line of reasoning is ridiculous as it could lead to the conclusion that everyone on Earth can become suspect just by saying these magic words.
There’s also the meta problem of discussions like this quickly devolving to Godwin’s law, where multiple sides compete to come up with clever ways to analogize each other’s positions to the least defensible group.
If Phil refines and only presents his strongest claims there might be more serious discussion on the alleged drawbacks of ‘longtermism’.
Just discovered this 9 months after the fact. To be fair to Phil, the OP, since the post is at −41 karma (22 total votes) and has only 2 top level comments in 9 months other than his own, it does lend a bit of credibility to the claim that some kind of ‘cancelling’ happened.
But, Phil’s comments seem to be geared to incite emotional discomfort as part of an agitation strategy. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of folks downvoted out of principle and didn’t care enough to engage with the claims. So the overall claim is not that convincing, bit of an own-goal.
Maybe Nick Bostrom and his supporters have some weird ideas, and weird claims that are glossed over, that seems possible. Yet to then impute, therefore, that they must be degenerates, seems like a nasty rhetorical trick. Which really undermines Phil’s position in the eyes of any experienced reader.
After all anyone could equally claim Phil must also be a degenerate because of x, y, or z. Needless to say this line of reasoning is ridiculous as it could lead to the conclusion that everyone on Earth can become suspect just by saying these magic words.
There’s also the meta problem of discussions like this quickly devolving to Godwin’s law, where multiple sides compete to come up with clever ways to analogize each other’s positions to the least defensible group.
If Phil refines and only presents his strongest claims there might be more serious discussion on the alleged drawbacks of ‘longtermism’.