oh no, the organisation founded by a Swedish EA with a racism scandal is defunct! No, not that one, the other one (www.futureofhumanityinstitute.org)

submitted 7 months ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems

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[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Over time FHI faced increasing administrative headwinds within the Faculty of Philosophy (the Institute’s organizational home). Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring. In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy decided that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed. On 16 April 2024, the Institute was closed down.

Sound like Oxford increasingly did not want anything to do with them.

edit: Here's a 94 page "final report" that seems more geared towards a rationalist audience.

Wonder what this was about:

Why we failed [...] There also needs to be an understanding of how to communicate across organizational communities. When epistemic and communicative practices diverge too much, misunderstandings proliferate. Several times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be received. Finding friendly local translators and bridgebuilders is important.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 18 points 7 months ago

everything in that "why we failed" breakdown is a work of art each to itself. babbie's first interaction with the real world each and every one of 'em

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

FHI was basically funded by one guy, James Martin - a computer millionaire. (His Wikipedia article misses the source of his wealth, but he owned a private island and the Oxford Martin School donation was the largest single donation in Oxford University's history.) He died in 2013. Its days were numbered at that point. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/about/founder/

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 15 points 7 months ago

remember that LessWrong used to be a joint SIAI (as was) and FHI project, with FHI supplying the academic cover

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago

I would guess it likely has a bit more cover/funding these days

but I was wondering the other day whether the setup was in any way resilient...

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 10 points 7 months ago

well now LW/MIRI runs on ethereum

FHI didn't seem to manage to tap into that tho

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 11 points 7 months ago

not quite entirely what I had in mind, but it will be interesting to see what happens with that down the way as well

[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 11 points 7 months ago

Yeah it's a bit of a relief to see everyone around him apparently knew he was a hack. Might have wanted to act on it sooner though!!

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago

my Perverse Incentives Rule Everything Around Me shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by...

[-] mountainriver@awful.systems 5 points 7 months ago

Why we failed: we tried explaining why everyone else was wrong and we were right, but somehow it didn't work. We would have needed outsiders who could have translated our obviously correct explanations to the other outsiders, then it totally would have worked. But our for hire signs with "can you talk stupid?" was misunderstood and defaced. Clearly a more stealthy tactic was needed.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 17 points 7 months ago

As superpredicted here by us, the superpredictors.

[-] Collectivist@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago

I would've suggested that we call ourselves the megaforecasters to one-up them, but then they might start calling themselves the überforecasters.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago

hyperforecasters

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago

but them calling themselves überforecasters might be a bit too mask off for most of them

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago

anyway that's guessing when your cab will arrive

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago

now now, them dropping the umlaut was totally because of brand confusion. it had nothing to do with the roots of the company servicing those wanting to be above the poors and putting that on the sign! what a ludicrous suggestion

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 16 points 7 months ago

An association designed to stand the test of time - or at least until the stolen crypto money runs out.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

apparently the shutdown of FHI did have a lot to do with Bostrom's racist email

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago

I would say "called it", but it's really not a hard guess :D

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago

goodness

[-] titotal@awful.systems 14 points 7 months ago

I'm sure they could have found someone in the EA ecoystem to throw them money if it weren't for the fundraising freeze. This seems like a case of Oxford killing the institute deliberately. The 2020 freeze predates the Bostrom email, this guy who was consulted by oxford said there was a dysfunctional relationship for many years.

It's not like oxford is hurting for money, they probably just decided FHI was too much of a pain to work with and hurt the oxford brand.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 12 points 7 months ago

my near-completely data-less guess: frozen in 2020 among many other things that year that had sudden stoppages, no clear reason to get unfrozen after that, and then when their ties and batshit ideas got a bit too popular recently it became easy to drop them like a rock

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago

HN gets the news

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40065862

Choice entry: Oxford dumped them because CS Lewis taught there and he would have hated them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40066549

Also standard orange site/tech views on race and IQ...

[-] jax@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

ffs...

orange site poster finds 2 and 2, struggles to come to terms with the fact that they add to 4:

Every time race comes up on HackerNews i am shocked at how horrifyingly racist (some) users of this site are. Not only did a user somehow think that this context would exonerate this very racist man, both you and I are getting immediately downvoted for disagreeing. There was a post last week or so that was so full of racist comments it just got taken down. I wonder what on earth brings together HackerNews and racism like this.

I wonder mate...

A shining HN knight hoists themself onto their (very) high horse to respond:

You know, topics like this are not always black and white. There is a full-range, nuance and discussion.

I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways.

Me, I think the refusal by some to admit (or accept) that the full-context post adds to the discussion and to instead double-down and cry more racism is definitely not constructive.

I'm honestly getting tired of these "race card" low-blows and one-sided thinking shutting down conversation.

[-] Evinceo@awful.systems 7 points 7 months ago

Seeing more pushback than I would have expected on EAs, EACCs, and Bostroms than I would have expected.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 7 months ago

fascists and racists do not welcome the spotlight (unless they're already in an extremely powerful position from which to, subjectively, enjoy the attention), and our very good friends have recently become quite illuminated

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 7 months ago

Yeah, HN is a huge "community" and even if the site design tries to flatten it to some sort of homogeneous soup[1] there's plenty of subcultures. The people who are interested in IQ, the danger of "woke" etc. tend to congregate on those submissions where these issues are discussed, but crucially, those submissions often don't stick around the front page that long. Neither do controversial discussions.

When these discussions do surface into mainstream HN, there will be pushback.

[1] I wrote a bit about this here: https://gerikson.com/m/2023/12/index.html#d03p01_sun