Neo-Malthusians, Longtermists, And Elon Musk

The German theoretical physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder has a blog as well, where she often posts text versions of her YouTube presentations. I follow several physics YouTubers, in part because I have a suspicion that there are theoretical physics classes in Purgatory. However, Dr Hossenfelder also posts opinions on general topics, sometimes quirky ones. In a recent post, she talks about a school of thought she calls "longtermism", which it seems to me is in opposition to the current neo-Malthusian strain among globalists. In doing so, she gives an insight into Elon Musk's thinking, although I can't completely disagree with anyone who asks, "Why would you want to have that?"

Have you ever put away a bag of chips because they say it isn’t healthy? That makes sense. Have you ever put away a bag of chips because you want to increase your chances of having more children so we can populate the entire galaxy in a billion years? That makes. . . That makes you a longtermist. Longtermism is a currently popular philosophy among rich people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn. What do they believe and how crazy is it? That’s what we’ll talk about today.

. . . Longtermism has its roots in the effective altruism movement, whose followers try to be smart about donating money so that it has the biggest impact, for example by telling everyone how smart they are about donating money. Longtermists are concerned with how our future will look like in some billion years or longer. Their goal is to make sure that we don’t go extinct. So stop being selfish, put away that junk food and make babies.

Well, this explains one thing, possibly including the alleged frozen embryos he made with Amber Heard:

Elon Musk joked about his big family in a Friday interview with the Financial Times, saying that he is “pretty sure there are no other babies looming.”

The 51-year-old, however, called himself an “autumn chicken,” clarifying that he isn’t opposed to welcoming more children down the line.

The Tesla CEO became a dad in 2002 when his son Nevada arrived, but the infant died at 10 weeks old.

Two years later, he and then-wife Justine Wilson welcomed twins Griffin and Vivian, now 18.

He and Wilson, 50, are also the parents of 16-year-old triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian, born in 2006.

. . . After the former couple’s 2008 divorce, the SpaceX founder went on to welcome son X AE A-XII, now 2, and daughter Exa, now 10 months, with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Grimes in May 2020 and December 2021, respectively.

In July, news broke that Musk is the father of Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis‘ twins. The little ones were born in November of the previous year.

. . . Musk gave more insight into his expanding family via Twitter.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” he wrote. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

It actually isn't entirely clear if he's the father of Amber Heard's daughter:

The Zombieland actress later welcomed daughter Oonagh Paige, 1, via surrogate in April 2021. She's never revealed the name of the baby's father. She also has not specified if she knew the donor personally or if he is presently involved in their daughter's life.

Nor is it known precisely how many of Musk's acknowledged children were also delivered via surrogates. This level of imputed altruism reminds me of claims during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that someone as highly evolved as Bill Clinton had a biological duty to spread his superior DNA to as many women as possible. (I mean, could you ask for a better illustration than his daugher, Chelsea?) This also brings back associations with one of the creepiest sci-fi flicks of all time, The Frozen Dead:

For 20 years, unrepentant Nazi scientist Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews) has been experimentally thawing frozen Nazi soldiers who have been kept in suspended animation at his English country estate since the end of World War II. He is awaiting his superiors, General Lubeck (Karel Stepanek) and Captain Tirptiz (Basil Henson), who have been told by Norberg's assistant, Karl (Alan Tilvern) that Norberg's experiments have been a complete success. Unfortunately, they have not been. Norberg can thaw the body, but not the brain. All that he can produce are zombie-like beings who can do no more than endlessly repeat the memory of just one action from their past. The worst of them, Prisoner no. 3 (Edward Fox), is extremely violent, and is Norberg's brother.

This is yet another source that fed the brilliant TV series Fringe. What will become of all Musk's frozen embryos?

The intriguing question here is one Dr Hossenfelder doesn't mention, the contrast with the other, currently more popular population theory, which I've called neo-Malthusianism. The original version of Malthusianism failed when its premise, that population would grow faster than the world food supply, was refuted empirically. By the late 20th century, it was clear that world population could grow exponentially yet not run out of food. The neo-Malthusian reaction has been simply to substitute another set of variables in the same equation: growing population will produce greenhouse gases and overheat the planet, or fertilizer will pollute the water supply with nitrates, or reliance on meat will generate methane from herds of cattle, resulting in renewed prospects of Malthusian extinction.

The cure, though never made completely clear, must be not just green energy or eating insects, but also extreme population reduction combined with extreme reduction of world living standards. A speker at the World Economic Forum, someone named Sadhguru, let the cat out of the bag:

WEF’s Young Global Leaders, like Sadhguru, have long openly advocated for depopulation and are galvanizing public support for reducing the world’s population.

. . . “It’s good to hold back your reproduction otherwise nobody is going to live well on this planet. It doesn’t matter what technology you bring, it doesn’t matter what you do, nobody is going to live well on this planet if you continue to increase. When I say continue to increase I want you to understand the volume of increase that we have caused.”

. . . Like Sadhguru and WEF Agenda Contributor Bill Gates, WEF advisor Yuval Noah Harari admittedly wants to rid the planet of billions of people or “useless eaters.”

“We just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” Harari argued in a recent interview with Chris Anderson, the head of TED .“The future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”

As Sadhguru puts it,

“Because you can’t expand the planet you have to decrease the population. There is no other way. Either you do it, or nature will do it. When nature does it, it’s not going to be nice, it’s not going to be nice at all.”

He doesn't propose a specific nice way ro reduce the population by billions, though. At least, he doesn't propose a nicer way than leaving it to nature, however he imagines that.

Elon Musk is at least slightly less crazy.