Template:Did you know nominations/TESCREAL

• ... that Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres created the acronym TESCREAL to describe a group of ideologies popular among people focused on existential risk from artificial general intelligence?

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Kelvite sounding machine

GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC).

• The readable prose size is 1,119 words which is well short of the required 1,500 words. Notifying nominator.

  @PearlyGigs: DYK requires articles be greater than 1,500 characters in length, which this article exceeds (7,845). GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 20:32, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

  Characters? Oh, dear! My apologies, GorillaWarfare, and I'll continue. First one of these I've done. PearlyGigs (talk) 20:57, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

• Was a draft until today so new enough and, as I now realise, also long enough. I can't see any problems in the article around copyvio, POV or OR. Sourcing looks good overall and the hook citations appear to be sound and reliable. The hook is certainly interesting because it caught my eye immediately when I was checking my own nomination. QPQ has been done. I think this is fine and it should be promoted. PearlyGigs (talk) 21:17, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose this nomination: An article on this subject was deleted 7 months ago because of weak sourcing. There haven't been any new sources added other than a paper by the two proponents of this theory and lots of other really weak sources. Wikipedia's job isn't to promote anti-vaxx conspiracy theories or other conspiracy theories, of which in my and other people's opinions, this is one. The only people claiming that ANYONE adheres to these multiple philosophies is Torres and Gebru. ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:56, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Original admin who closed AfD undeleted it after i proposed appropriate changes. the AfD never came to consensus of conspiracy theory (just u), and deleted it due to lack of WP:N. if u want to delete this again, use AfD again or bug the original admin.Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:12, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that that would be a conversation for AfD, not DYK. The article is neutral and adequately sourced. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 01:57, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

The LEAD is well written and neutral, thanks for that.---Avatar317^(talk) 03:34, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

• I was aware when I did the DYK review that the article is about ideologies, but I don't consider the article to be promoting those ideologies because it is neutral. The subject, in my opinion, is notable. I can't say I'm knowledgeable about TESCREAL but the article does appear to be adequately sourced. I've been reading it again and I still think the hook should be promoted. But, as I say, I am not an SME in this area so I will happily step aside if an SME is needed. Incidentally, the lead is the primary location of the hook material and its two sources. Thanks. PearlyGigs (talk) 09:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

• I have to second the concerns brought up above: this article was merged in November for poor sourcing and the fact that it seemed to lean very heavily into the op-ed angle of the source it did use. To be clear, I certainly have a great personal distaste for the majority of people who run the majority of software companies, and ethical objections to a good portion of the United States' GDP (I am a diehard Linux user with all of the political implications that entails). However, the implication that "global tech elites" are engaged in a deliberate scheme to carry out eugenics (as one of the sources said from the previous version of this article), based on a collection of op-eds and blog posts where people who hate them say this a bunch of times, seems to raise some rather significant BLP issues. It is somewhat concerning to vaguely imply this in wikivoice as though it's settled fact, and then the citations are to a journal of biosemiotics. jp×g🗯️ 02:17, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

• Posting on here same stuff as in the Talk Page section:

A) This article was merged for lack of WP:N. If you consider it still an issue, use WP:AfD or bug the original admin who deleted, merged, than undeleted this. It isn't a valid argument to suggest that it's settled that it deserves to remerged if we've added a ton of sourcing and improved on it. Settle it by starting the process to delete it if you want.

B) Are there reliable sources indicating that TESCREAL is a significantly derogatory epithet similar to Libtard/Chud? Marc Andreessen self-describes as TESCREAList. Many of these folks regularly ascribe to multiple of these philosophies as transhumanists, ethical altruists, long-termists, etc. Sourcing here does not necessarily imply that every TESCREAList is also a eugenicist, nor do we use WP:SYNTH to suggest that these folks are all eugenicists. There is no mention of eugenicist claims in the third section. Also, we have Big Tech as a wikipedia article along with criticism, which is also a similar "perjorative" against tech companies, and other significant "perjoratives" with negative connotations such as Democrat in Name Only and Cuckservative. These all explain what opinion writers and commentators mean, and why. This article is far more tame than many of those.

C) That more than a dozen opinions use a term like this should be notable enough. I suspect that any sort of article about philosophies will require opinionated sources or commentaries. Effective altruism includes sourcing from Centre for Effective Altruism and by extension the Effective Altruism Forum, study centers specifically invested in effective altruism and founded by leaders, as well as many opinions.

D) WP:OPINION applies here, especially for philosphical arguments. I looked for criticisms of TESCREAL. If more are published, we can include them. These sources are WP:SECONDARY, they contain analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. Secondary sources are not necessarily independent sources.

E) If you want to settle WP:BLP, please post in the section on WP:BLPN. We've already started and done this argument. There are multiple sources on WP:PUBLICFIGUREs here alleging that many of these folks use TESCREAL to justify their tech projects, and we make sure to use the word "allege" correctly, as per WP:OPINION, along with the correct sourcing

Conclusion:) TESCREAL is unliked by some portion of folks on here for some reason. I'm happy to listen to arguments, but I want an argument about why we are suddenly so sensitive about criticism of Elon Musk/etc. for using human extinction for every time someone criticizes his behavior or cars or products. If you are just an elon musk/nick bostrum/etc. fan, than say it and stop throwing mud on an article that contains a criticism of philosophies that occurs often enough that we can gather 20+ sources, including 10 using the term in severe detail to directly dissect the argument that yelling extinction every 15 minutes doesn't mean you've justified your next mega project. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:39, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

 Note: In the interests of not duplicating every comment, I'll just note that there is a parallel discussion happening at Talk:TESCREAL#Neutrality (to/from which some of these comments have been copied). GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 12:02, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, a neutrality tag remains on this article. If this is, as it seems, a continually-controversial topic, I am not inclined to promote, having no desire to get shouted at at WP:ERRORS. Do you think the issues brought up by a number of editors can be resolved? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:53, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know whether the issues can be resolved, but I believe that this is and will remain a contentious topic, like many other articles in American politics. This topic is very new, and so the coverage of it is not what I would call "mature", which in my opinion makes it harder for an article to be stable, but GorillaWarfare will probably have a better insight on that than I.---Avatar317^(talk) 21:59, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

@Avatar317: The banner is not for controversial topics: it is placed when someone is concerned that the article does not use neutral language. This will need to be rectified before it is promoted, or this nomination can be withdrawn. Z1720 (talk) 00:50, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

at the end of the day, i think what avatar317 means to say is the topic is contentious and attracts complaints, spurious or otherwise. i personally believe we correctly attribute all opinions and statements but others do not.

is there a topic board or wikiproject we can notify to ask for more voices to confirm how to proceed? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I suggest asking at WT:DYK.--Launchballer 11:37, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

• Commment. I only just saw this nomination having just participated on the AfD and voting to keep. My opinion here is that the article and nomination is being unfairly targeted due to its overt criticism of Silicon Valley-related movements and philosophies. I don't personally view this topic as controversial, having written about the criticism of technological utopianism for more than a decade. However, this topic is apparently controversial for some people, and I think those people are going out of their way to make this more controversial than it needs to be by deliberately engaging in maintenance tagging, attempts at deletion (this is the second), and now blocking this DYK. Because these people are unlikely to give up and will continue to disrupt this topic area, I would encourage closing this nomination at this time and revisiting it later in the article improvement process, perhaps as a GAN. I wish we had a way to stop this kind of disruption, but I've seen this kind of thing so many times before here, and there isn't anything anyone can do to stop it. There's even extreme examples that I can recall, such as the targeted campaign against Melanie Joy and carnism, which went on from 2006 to 2013, involving multiple deletions and discussions. This kind of thing resembles that dispute. So I would close this now as unpromoted and revisit it later when the involved parties are able to act in good faith. I should note, that I personally support this DYK and would like it to pass, but I don't see that happening. Viriditas (talk) 23:07, 9 August 2024 (UTC)