Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TESCREAL

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge‎ to Timnit Gebru. Any of the content, once merged, can be deleted if it is unreliably sourced. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 11:49, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

TESCREAL[edit]

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Fails WP:N. The only reliable source as far I can tell is an article in the Opinion section of the Financial Times (and the best that May 2023 article can do re sourcing is "The acronym can be traced back to an unpublished paper by Timnit Gebru, the former co-lead for Google on AI ethics, and Émile Torres, a PhD student in philosophy at Leibniz University").

Personally, I think a Redirect to Timnit Gebru is the best option, but the article author prefers that a deletion discussion be opened; I'm also reluctant to put in the effort to a Merge when I expect it will just be reverted at this point. Sorry, to be clear, I'd be happy with Merge with Timnit Gebru if there's consensus for it at the end of this process. WP:PROMERGE is more involved than a Redirect, but once I feel confident that it won't just get reverted, I'd be happy to implement. I suggest we at least leave out the parts that discuss Torres' views and the Response section when merging for concision. Ideally we'd get it down to one long paragraph and retain the most reputable sources.

In general, I think we should be especially cautious about lending legitimacy to conspiracy theories by creating Wikipedia articles for ones that aren't notable, not least because of the risk of straying into WP:BLPGOSSIP territory. (The author understandably dislikes the descriptor "conspiracy theory" due to the negative connotation, but on my understanding of the term, that is literally what this is: "an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy by powerful and sinister groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.") Tumnal (talk) 11:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support Merge rather than deletion; it would be trivial to copy/paste this entire article into a section of the Timnit Gebru article. I agree completely that this is a conspiracy theory. While the sourcing for independent notability is currently weak, if the content is kept in the Gebru article (I think that every source here mentions Gebru), it can be then seen and added to by people more easily than if it were deleted and need to be recreated.---Avatar317 ^(talk) 00:48, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a conspiracy theory at all, and its not because i dont 'like' the term, i think you are rather uninformed or misguided about the concept of ideology. I also cant see why this is a relevant point in the deletion process. The only real discussion is around WP:N, not caution about a supposed lending of 'legitimacy'. JoaquimCebuano (talk) 05:23, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support Delete or Merge with Timnit Gebru: I also agree that the sourcing for notability is weak.

The tweet and critical Medium post are not sufficiently independent to establish notability. The journalistic sources don't qualify as reliable secondary sources for statements of fact per WP:RSEDITORIAL due to being editorial, human interest, and/or from poorly established outlets. Similarly, the Devenot paper doesn't qualify as a reliable secondary source under WP:SCHOLARSHIP because it is an isolated study with no citations, from a journal with a likely POV (pro-psychedelics) and dubious peer review for the methodology in question.

Thus, the sources are only reliable as primary sources of evidence that the term is used in some public discourse. Notability requires independent and reliable secondary sources per WP:GNG, so the subject is not notable.

Now, here's my main concern:

The groups and ideologies referred to by the acronym generally have their own Wikipedia pages, often including links to others. Their existence and overlap are already documented.

This particular term appears in a small fraction of public discourse about these groups. When it is used, discussion often references the coiners' insinuations that the groups are malevolent or dangerous. An article specific to this low-usage acronym will mostly feature primary sources repeating or discussing this narrative, whereas discussion without the acronym will be used in existing pages. A TESCREAL page effectively forms a "Compilation of Something Very Bad" coatrack WP:COATRACK for this sort of claim. If the term gains wider usage such that reliable secondary sources use it, the article could be recreated. TheDefenseProfessor (talk) 22:00, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re: conspiracy theories, maybe just add a link to this: https://xriskology.substack.com/p/the-tescreal-conspiracy-theory-conspiracy Anonymous14159 (talk) 00:32, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I think the "conspiracy theory" terminology has become a distraction from the core issue of WP:N, as @JoaquimCebuano rightly points out.

But for what it's worth, your sharing this link to argue against the use of the term does support the worry I outlined: In this blog post, Torres says, "Gebru and I immediately recognized the conceptual—and linguistic—usefulness of this acronym, and so have many others, apparently, as the term has taken off, and now has its own Wikipedia page." Less than two weeks after the article's creation, Torres is already using its existence to lend legitimacy to accusations that the "backbone" of these seven movements is "literally a form of eugenics" and this very article platforms the accusation that promoters of these ideas are selling "psychedelic drugs" to "increase inequality". The article even names and links to some of these accused public figures. This is approaching circular reporting and WP:BLPGOSSIP. Tumnal (talk) 15:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Tumnal (talk) 11:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It seems there's two relevant evaluations of the acronym: 1) There is a cluster of groups/ideologies, and it's reasonable to have a name for it; and 2) the coiners of the term are fond of making conspiracy-theoretic insinuations about the group.

I think both are correct (except Cosmism doesn't belong). TheDefenseProfessor (talk) 20:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious as to why you believe 1) (except for Cosmism)? As far as I can tell, it's only the coiners of the term (Gebru and Torres) claiming that this is a cluster deserving of its own name. As I quote in my reply to @Thiagovscoelho, the source for the 'Response' section of TESCREAL rejects the idea that this this a meaningful group: "the idea of a 'TESCREAL' as a coherent set of ideologies makes little sense". And I think it's telling that no one identifies as a TESCREAList—it appears to be purely a negative concept used by critics. If the term has only been used in accusatory contexts to date, then I'm doubtful that there's a need for the term outside of their use in conspiracy-theorietic insinuations. (I'm genuinely curious to hear your thoughts—the fact you say that Cosmism doesn't fit suggests that you've thought about this in a reasonable amount of depth.) Tumnal (talk) 12:46, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say there are a lot of people that fit most of these: are not strictly opposed to radical technological changes to human experience, and wish some changes were closer; have read a good chunk of the LessWrong Sequences; had some engagement with EA, and try to follow morals with consequentialist components; think the long-term outcomes of sapient life are particularly neglected; think it's likely there will be an "intelligence explosion" in the next century that will be a major determinant of those outcomes; and have low hopes that the emerging intelligence will value what humans value. Some who have engaged with these ideas for long enough were members of the "Extropian" listserv.

(As opposed to eg: a transhumanist who's only excited about anti-aging treatments or robotic body modifications; a LessWrong & EA participant who isn't interested in futurism, just personal growth and poverty reduction; or a highly optimistic singularitarian.)

I'd put myself in this cluster, but I've found it difficult to refer to the cluster due to the lack of a common name. I'm reluctant to use this term though. Among other things, the coiners lump AI decelerationists, accelerationists, and "tech elites" into the group, whereas only decelerationism seems to have overlap with EA and longtermism. TheDefenseProfessor (talk) 17:49, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I propose coining the term 'REALEST' for this group. Like the people making the most effort to stay in touch with reality.

Seriously, if Gebru and Torres are going to accuse you of arrogance either way, I say own it ;) Tumnal (talk) 09:49, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've only ever heard of this as a term for those ideologies without any conspiracy connotations, such as in the other search results for it, so without any source otherwise, I'll assume the "conspiracy theory" label was mistaken (in good faith of course). Thiagovscoelho (talk) 11:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your first link is to a page with a podcast with Torres, Torres' book, and only has negative things to say about these schools of thought: "The TESCREAL ideologies are all controversial, and they have been criticized by some for being unrealistic or dangerous. However, they are also incredibly influential, and they are shaping the way that we think about the future of technology and humanity."

Your second link says simply: "TESCREAL is an acronym labelling a belief system that crosses over traditional and contemporary transhumanist-aligned ideas. It was coined in 2023 by transhumanist critic Émile Torres and AI bias researcher Timnit Gebru and used as a pejorative framing Silicon Valley elite techno-utopianism. James Hughes and Eli Sennesh have written about how the idea of a "TESCREAL" as a coherent set of ideologies makes little sense and Gebru and Torres' analysis of the "TESCREAL bundle" amounts to a left-wing conspiracy theory. "TESCREALism" has been further critisized by M. Adelstein at Bentham's Newsletter." (and then expands the acronym).

This sounds like "an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy by powerful and sinister groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable" to me. Your second link even literally contains the words "conspiracy theory". Tumnal (talk) 12:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, to me it doesn't sound like a conspiracy, in the basic sense of "people secretly planning to do bad things", but clearly I also made a mistake here, sorry. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 12:58, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.