# Émile Torres Émile Torres is a philosopher, historian of existential risk, and one of the most incisive intellectual critics of the [[longtermist]] movement—a unique position they occupy as a former insider to the movement who became its most devastating analyst. Co-creator (with [[Timnit Gebru]]) of the [[TESCREAL]] framework, Torres's signature contribution to understanding the tech-oligarchy ecosystem is tracing the intellectual genealogy of longtermism back through eugenics, scientific racism, and colonial "civilizing mission" ideology—demonstrating that longtermism is not a novel philosophy but a repackaging of old hierarchical worldviews in futurist language. ## Background and Formation Torres holds a PhD in philosophy and originally published work under a different name before transitioning. Their early career included serious engagement with existential risk scholarship—a field that is foundational to [[Effective Altruism]], [[rationalism]], and longtermist thought. They published on existential risk topics and participated in the longtermist/[[effective-altruism]] intellectual community. This insider-to-critic trajectory gives their later analysis particular force: Torres understands the movement's internal logic, rhetorical moves, and self-understanding because they were part of it. This background is crucial to understanding Torres's contribution. They are not an external critic dismissing longtermism from the outside, but an intellectual who worked within its frameworks before concluding that those frameworks were philosophically unsound and historically rooted in darker intellectual traditions than their adherents acknowledged. ## The Break with Longtermism Torres's evolution from longtermist-adjacent researcher to the movement's most comprehensive critic emerged through a series of intellectual turning points: **Recognition of the eugenics thread:** Torres identified direct connections between historical eugenics discourse and contemporary longtermist philosophy—connections that the movement's leaders either denied or treated as peripheral to its core logic. **The devaluation of present suffering:** Torres observed that longtermist reasoning systematically devalued the lives and wellbeing of people alive today. The philosophical move is simple: if the future contains vastly more beings than the present, then (according to longtermist mathematics) preventing future suffering matters infinitely more than alleviating current suffering. This justified diverting resources away from contemporary crises—climate change, poverty, inequality—in favor of speculative future risks. **Immunity to criticism:** Torres noted how longtermism's self-image as the apotheosis of rationality and evidence-based reasoning created an insularity that prevented genuine external criticism. The movement treated challenges to its core assumptions not as intellectual problems to be engaged but as signs of the challenger's irrationality or bias. Torres's break was fundamentally intellectual, not primarily political. They did not reject longtermism because it was conservative or elitist, but because they concluded its philosophical foundations were unsound and its genealogy far darker than its adherents acknowledged. ## The [[Eugenics]] Genealogy: Torres's Signature Argument Torres's most important contribution is tracing a direct intellectual lineage connecting historical eugenics to contemporary TESCREAL ideologies: **The genealogical chain:** - **Francis Galton** (1822-1911): Coined the term "eugenics" and established it as a scientific project. Galton believed that a self-appointed elite of scientists and intellectuals had both the knowledge and the moral duty to improve the human species through selective breeding and reproduction policies. - **Julian Huxley** (1887-1975): Coined the term "transhumanism," led the British Eugenics Society, and served as the first director-general of UNESCO. Huxley explicitly rebranded eugenics as "transhumanism" and remained its champion throughout his career, arguing for eugenic principles under a new name. - **Modern TESCREAL ideologies**: The contemporary longtermism, [[transhumanism]], AI accelerationism, and rationalist movements inherit Huxley's framework structurally: a self-appointed elite claims superior knowledge and moral authority to make binding decisions about humanity's genetic and technological future without democratic input. **The structural continuity:** Torres argues that the underlying logic remains identical across centuries: eugenicists believed a rational elite should direct human reproduction toward "improvement"; longtermists and transhumanists believe a rational elite should direct humanity's future through technological intervention. The mechanism of "improvement" shifted from genetics to AI to existential risk management, but the fundamental structure—elite gatekeeping, claims of special rationality, dismissal of democratic input, and implicit hierarchies of human "value"—persists. **Bostrom and the contemporary eugenics problem:** Torres's analysis of [[Nick Bostrom]]'s work is particularly revealing: - Bostrom's 1996 racist email discussing eugenics and IQ - His writings on "dysgenic" trends in modern populations - His 2004 paper on genetic selection and enhancement - The "astronomical waste" argument: the claim that failing to create vast future populations of high-quality beings represents a cosmic tragedy Torres argues these are not aberrations or youthful mistakes disconnected from Bostrom's core philosophy—they are the logical endpoint of a framework that treats the "quality" and "value" of future human beings as more important than the equality and dignity of present humans. Once you accept that preventing future suffering outweighs alleviating current suffering, and that future beings can be "higher quality" than present ones, you have reconstructed the eugenic calculus in longtermist language. **The colonial "civilizing mission" parallel:** Torres identifies another crucial historical parallel. European imperialists of the 19th and 20th centuries justified conquest and exploitation of colonized peoples by claiming to serve those peoples' long-term interests—bringing "civilization," "rationality," and "progress." Indigenous peoples' own understanding of their interests was dismissed as parochial or irrational. The structure mirrors longtermism exactly: a self-appointed elite claims special knowledge of what serves humanity's true long-term interests, overriding present-day people's own assessment of their needs. **Modern pronatalism and embryo selection:** Torres connects contemporary pronatalist movements (championed by figures like Simone and Malcolm Collins) and tech-funded embryo selection programs to this genealogy. These movements explicitly invoke the language of "genetic improvement" and selective reproduction, now enabled by IVF technology and funded by tech billionaires. They represent contemporary eugenics reformulated as personal choice and consumer optimization. ## "The World's Most Dangerous Secular Credo" Torres's influential 2021 Aeon essay "The Case Against Longtermism" encapsulates the core of their critique. The argument proceeds through several devastating points: **Systematic devaluation of present life:** Longtermism generates conclusions that justify neglecting—or actively harming—people alive today in service to speculative future benefits. Torres provides detailed examples of how this reasoning cascades through contemporary policy and funding priorities. **Moral cover for climate inaction:** If the distant future matters infinitely more than the next century, then accelerating climate change might be acceptable if it enabled technologies (AI, space colonization, enhanced beings) that longtermists believe will ultimately benefit humanity. Torres documents how longtermist reasoning provides intellectual justification for inaction on humanity's most pressing immediate crisis. **Power concentration without accountability:** Longtermism naturally gravitates toward elite control. If only a small group of rationalists understands what the future requires, then only they should make binding decisions about humanity's path. This justifies tech billionaires' unilateral control over AI development, space exploration, and existential risk mitigation. Democratic deliberation becomes an obstacle to overcome. **Dangerous speculative reasoning:** Longtermism enables bad arguments. If future benefit is all that matters, then almost any present harm can be justified by speculating about future benefits. Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud was explicitly justified through longtermist reasoning: his crimes today would fund a vastly larger longtermist movement tomorrow, which (he claimed) would prevent existential catastrophe affecting trillions of future beings. SBF's case is not an aberration—it is longtermism's logic taken seriously. ## The TESCREAL Framework In 2023, Torres co-created the [[TESCREAL]] framework with [[Timnit Gebru]], a genealogical and analytical project that named and systematized the connections between seven ideologies: **T**ranshumanism, **E**xtropian**ism**, **S**cientism, **C**apitalism, **R**ationalism, **E**ffective **A**ltruism, and **L**ongtermism. Torres's intellectual contribution to TESCREAL was decisive: they provided the historical and philosophical analysis demonstrating that these seven are not independent schools of thought but components of a single interconnected ideological system. They share: - **Genealogy**: intellectual lineage through 19th-century scientific racism, eugenics, and British imperialism - **Personnel**: overlapping circles of thinkers and funders - **Funding flows**: money circulating through the same networks of tech billionaires and rationalist foundations - **Conclusions**: convergent arguments that justify elite control, downplay present-day suffering, and frame technological transformation as humanity's salvation Key publications in this framework include their First Monday paper with Gebru and numerous pieces in Truthdig, Salon, and academic venues. TESCREAL's power lies in its naming function: it makes visible what was previously presented as separate intellectual movements, revealing them as aspects of a coordinated ideological bundle. ## Key Publications and Arguments **Major works include:** - *Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation* (2019): A comprehensive history of existential risk thinking that traces its genealogy through eugenics, scientific racism, and imperial ideology - "The Case Against Longtermism" (multiple essays and articles): The core philosophical critique - TESCREAL framework papers (with Timnit Gebru) in *First Monday* and other venues: The systematic analysis of interconnected ideologies - "Longtermism and Eugenics": The genealogical work establishing the historical connections - Regular public commentary on social media, in major publications, and at academic conferences Torres's work is characterized by meticulous genealogical research, philosophical rigor, and a refusal to accept the movement's self-description as reliable. Instead, they trace what longtermists actually say, what historical traditions they inherit, and what conclusions their reasoning actually generates. ## The Critique of "AI Safety" Torres extends their analysis to the "AI safety" discourse championed by [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]], [[Nick Bostrom]], and the broader rationalist community. Torres argues that AI safety, as practiced by TESCREAL figures, functions primarily to: **Concentrate AI development:** The claim that "only rationalist safety experts understand how to build AI safely" justifies extreme concentration of AI development in fewer hands—those hands belonging to tech billionaires and their favored researchers. **Redirect resources:** Enormous funding and attention are diverted from concrete, present-day harms caused by AI systems (surveillance, labor displacement, disinformation, bias) toward speculative future scenarios (superintelligent AI that might threaten humanity in 2070 or beyond). **Legitimize oligarchic power:** The "AI safety" framing provides moral language for what is fundamentally a project of tech oligarchs securing unilateral control over the most powerful technology in human history. It transforms power concentration into ethical necessity. **Delegitimize democratic deliberation:** Longtermist AI safety discourse treats democratic input on AI development as dangerous. If democratic publics made AI policy, they would prioritize their own interests (reducing harms, ensuring equitable access) over the elite's assessment of humanity's true long-term interests. Therefore democracy must be circumvented. Torres's key insight: "AI safety" as practiced by TESCREAL is not fundamentally about making AI safe for everyone. It is about ensuring that the "right people"—defined as rationalist elites who understand existential risk—control the most powerful technology in human history. ## Reception and Backlash Torres's work has generated significant hostility from the longtermist/rationalist community. They have been personally attacked, smeared through social media campaigns, and dismissed by TESCREAL-aligned figures. Their professional credentials have been questioned; their motives have been impugned. This hostility is analytically significant. Torres documents it carefully because the response itself reveals something important about movements that claim to value "truth-seeking," "evidence-based reasoning," and "updating on evidence." When their foundational assumptions are rigorously challenged, such movements often become intensely defensive and hostile toward the challenger. Ad hominem attacks replace engagement with arguments. The movement's vaunted rationality becomes a tool for dismissing criticism rather than engaging it. The backlash also illustrates a broader dynamic: people with genuine expertise and legitimate criticisms can be systematically isolated and smeared by well-funded ideological movements. Torres's analysis is based on careful research and philosophical argument, yet the response has often ignored the substance and focused on delegitimizing the person making the argument. ## Why Torres Matters for this KB Torres provides the intellectual framework that makes the Right Wing KB's documentation of the tech-oligarchy ecosystem legible as a *system* rather than a collection of individual obsessions or unrelated movements. Without Torres and TESCREAL: - [[Peter Thiel]]'s life extension investments appear to be an eccentric billionaire's personal quirk - [[Elon Musk]]'s Mars obsession seems an isolated technological fantasy - [[Sam Bankman-Fried]]'s fraud appears to be criminal malfeasance disconnected from ideology - [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]'s AI doom prophecies read as an extreme outlier opinion - The defense-tech pipeline seems coincidental With Torres's framework: - All these are revealed as logically interconnected expressions of TESCREAL ideology - Thiel's life extension, Musk's Mars plans, SBF's fraud, Yudkowsky's doomerism, and tech oligarchs' AI monopolism are components of a single worldview: that a self-appointed rational elite must secure power over humanity's future because existing humans and democratic publics cannot be trusted to make wise decisions - The connections are not accidents but necessary expressions of shared ideological foundations Torres has provided the analytical vocabulary that makes the vault's entire project of documentation coherent. They have shown that the tech oligarchy is not just a collection of billionaires with disproportionate power, but the institutional expression of a specific ideological tradition with genealogical roots in eugenics and scientific racism. ## Connections Within the KB **Core related concepts:** - [[TESCREAL]] — the framework co-created with Gebru that structures understanding of interconnected tech ideologies - [[Longtermism]] — the primary target of Torres's critique - [[Effective Altruism]] — component ideology of TESCREAL - [[Rationalism]] — intellectual tradition underlying longtermism and EA - [[Transhumanism]] — historical precursor and contemporary sibling ideology **Key figures Torres engages with:** - [[Nick Bostrom]] — detailed analysis of Bostrom's eugenics connections and philosophical commitments - [[William MacAskill]] — critique of MacAskill's longtermist reasoning - [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] — analysis of rationalist AI safety discourse - [[Timnit Gebru]] — co-creator of TESCREAL framework, collaborator in ideological analysis - [[Peter Thiel]] — connections through transhumanism and life extension funding - [[Francis Galton]] — historical genealogy of eugenics tradition - [[Julian Huxley]] — the figure who explicitly rebranded eugenics as transhumanism **Historical intellectual genealogy:** - Eugenics movement - Scientific racism - Colonial "civilizing mission" ideology - [[Russian Cosmism]] (precursor to transhumanism) - British Eugenics Society ## See Also - [[TESCREAL]] — the comprehensive framework - [[Longtermism]] — detailed examination of the philosophy Torres critiques - [[Effective Altruism]] — component movement and funding structure - [[Nick Bostrom]] — the longtermist most thoroughly analyzed by Torres - [[Timnit Gebru]] — co-author and collaborator - [[AI Safety]] — the discourse Torres critiques as elite power-legitimation - [[Tech Oligarchy]] — the beneficiary of TESCREAL ideology - [[Existential Risk]] — the framing that justifies elite decision-making - [[Transhumanism]] — ideological predecessor and contemporary ally - [[Rationalism]] — intellectual foundation of longtermism and TESCREAL