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Nick Bostrom, Longtermism, and the Eternal Return of Eugenics - Truthdig

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This is the first of a multi-part Dig series, Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century: New Names, Old Ideas, investigating the racist underpinnings of the Longtermism movement. Sometime last year, I happened to come across an email from 1996, written by a 23-year-old graduate student at the London School of Economics named “Niklas Bostrom.” Upon reading it, my jaw dropped to the floor, where it stayed for the rest of the day. Here’s part of what Bostrom, now known as “Nick Bostrom,” an Oxford University philosopher who’s been profiled by The New Yorker and become highly influential in Silicon Valley, sent to the listserv of “Extropians”: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and think it is true. But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that. They would think that I were [sic] a “racist”: that I disliked black people and thought that it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t. It’s just that based on what

Jan 23, 2023 Nick Bostrom, Longtermism, and the Eternal Return of Eugenics The techno-utopian ideology gets its fuel, in part, from scientific racism. This is Part I of the "Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century: New Names, Old Ideas" Dig series Émile P. Torres / Truthdig Contributor Support Link copied Comments Save This This is the first of a multi-part Dig series, Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century: New Names, Old Ideas , investigating the racist underpinnings of the Longtermism movement. Sometime last year, I happened to come across an email from 1996, written by a 23-year-old graduate st

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