Content note: this episode includes discussion of eugenics, Nazi forced sterilization and the murder of disabled people, and the Holocaust.
Be altruistic. Think about the future. Save the world. No one could possibly object to that, right?
This week, the first of two episodes on effective altruism, a philosophy that has influenced many of the most powerful people in artificial intelligence, one its defenders believe is among the best ideas we have for doing good, and one that other thinkers believe could help bring about the end of the world.
For three episodes we asked which minds count. Now we ask whose future counts: the people here today, the trillions who don’t exist yet, or digital beings we (probably) haven’t yet built? And I’ve started to think the best way to understand these ideas isn’t as philosophies at all. It’s as eschatologies.
Philosopher Émile Torres grew up in a Baptist household waiting for the Rapture, and describes how the study of existential risk filled the “eschatology-shaped hole” left behind when they lost their faith, and argues that the promise of a cosmic utopia is how the people building AI justify the harm it’s causing now. Writer Ed Simon places EA in the tradition of Bentham and Mill. Journalist Dorian Lynskey, author of Everything Must Go, on the radical empathy that first drew him to it, and how it turned toward longtermism and Sam Bankman-Fried. Philosopher Dr. Marcus Arvan asks whether “doing the most good” is even a coherent idea, and whether human beings are capable of real altruism at all.
Then Simone and Malcolm Collins, the pronatalist authors and podcasters who believe effective altruism hasn’t gone far enough. They call it Hard EA. We talk about why they believe future people matter as much as anyone alive today, why demographic collapse scares them more than anything on the Doomsday Clock, and the question nearly everyone asked me when I said I was interviewing them: aren’t they eugenicists?
Also: Dune and the Litany Against Fear, the Butlerian Jihad, mosquito nets (so many mosquito nets), the Rapture, polygenic embryo screening, what Claude made of the Collinses’ book, Peter Thiel and the Antichrist, Gurren Lagann, Pantheon (again), and how any of us survive Thanksgiving.
Everyone in this story thinks they’re saving the future. That’s what makes it so hard to talk about, and so important. And if you’re part of the effective altruism community and think we got something wrong: GET AHOLD OF US. We want to hear from you.
Next week, Part Two: The Dark Enlightenment. We follow the other branch of the fork, to the people for whom the end of the world isn’t something to prevent, but a doorway.
We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com
Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Amy Levy, Émile Torres, Dr. Joel Gold and Ian Gold, PhD., and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia
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Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady
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Guests:
Émile Torres — Philosopher and historian of science / Author, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation — https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/
Ed Simon — Writer, cultural critic, and professor at Carnegie Mellon / Author, The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse — https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb
Dorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1
Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa — Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aa
Simone and Malcolm Collins — Authors and podcasters / Authors, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion — https://link.amazon/B00hVgEeO
Other works and things mentioned:
Frank Herbert, Dune (1965), the Litany Against Fear and the Butlerian Jihad — https://link.amazon/B09GICw7g
Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/
Effective altruism and longtermism: Toby Ord: The Precipice – https://link.amazon/B0cDl0lZj
William MacAskill — What We Owe the Future – https://amzn.to/4fqeepB
Émile Torres & Timnit Gebru, “The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence” (First Monday) — https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636
Dispensationalism and the Rapture — https://www.britannica.com/topic/dispensationalism
Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried
The Doomsday Clock, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2026 statement — https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/
Polygenic embryo screening: American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics statement on polygenic risk scores for embryo selection — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38393332/
The Nazi “euthanasia” program — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program
The Man in the High Castle (Prime Video) — https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MJFK5BDOS4K13C3WBUIB7NY98?ref_=atv_dp_share_cu_r
Gurren Lagann — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann
Pantheon — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQ
Peter Thiel’s lectures on the Antichrist — https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/
The Most Human Human — our TESCREAL story with Émile Torres — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000777856826
Dreaming Machines – our John West episode, on friction and the frictionless society — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000788829733
A Great Loss to the Universe (Part Three) — last week’s episode, with David Benatar — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000792369838
Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307
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Credits:
Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami
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Editor: David Justin Martin
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Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett
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