Carla Cremer

Carla Zoe Cremer is a researcher on existential risk who co-wrote the 2021 paper "Democratising Risk: In Search of a Methodology to Study Existential Risk" with Luke Kemp and wrote about its reception on the Effective Altruism Forum under the name CarlaZoeC.¹²

The 2021 paper

The paper by Cremer and Kemp was posted to arXiv on December 27, 2021. Its abstract argues that existing approaches to existential risk studies "are not yet fit for purpose, and perhaps even run the risk of increasing harm." It singles out the "techno-utopian approach," which it says "relies on a non-representative moral worldview, uses ambiguous and inadequate definitions, fails to incorporate insights from risk assessment in relevant fields, chooses arbitrary categorisations of risk, and advocates for dangerous mitigation strategies," and adds that "Its moral and empirical assumptions might be particularly vulnerable to securitisation and misuse."²

The Effective Altruism Forum post

On December 28, 2021 Cremer posted "Democratising Risk - or how EA deals with critics" on the Effective Altruism Forum. It begins "Luke Kemp and I just published a paper which criticises existential risk for lacking a rigorous and safe methodology." She wrote that "the creation of this paper has not signalled epistemic health" and that "It has been the most emotionally draining paper we have ever written." She listed what the authors had lost over disagreements on "whether this work should be published, whether potential EA funders would decide against funding us and the institutions we're affiliated with, and whether the authors whose work we critique would be upset." She wrote that the version posted was version 28 and had been seen by "approximately 20 + reviewers," around half of whom the authors sought out as likely sceptics.¹

She wrote that "the burden of proof placed on our claims was unbelievably high in comparison to papers which were considered less 'political' or simply closer to orthodox views," and that "Making the case for democracy was heavily contested."¹

Cremer also wrote: "We were told by some that our critique is invalid because the community is already very cognitively diverse and in fact welcomes criticism." She continued that "It was these same people that then tried to prevent this paper from being published," which they did "largely out of fear that publishing might offend key funders who are aligned with the TUA," the techno-utopian approach. Of those individuals, "often senior scholars within the field," she wrote that they "told us in private that they were concerned that any critique of central figures in EA would result in an inability to secure funding from EA sources, such as OpenPhilanthropy. We don't know if these concerns are warranted."¹

Affiliations

A profile on the archived CERN SPARKS site lists Cremer as a research scholar at the Future of Humanity Institute and a research affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and states that she was to begin a doctorate in computational neuroscience at the University of Oxford in autumn 2021 with an FHI DPhil scholarship.³ The home page of the Human Information Processing Lab at Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology, directed by Chris Summerfield, lists her among its alumni (PhD students and research assistants) with the entry "Zoe is now working for a nonprofit somewhere."⁴

David Morris reports that Cremer's appointment at the Future of Humanity Institute ended in 2021, that the institute was closed by Oxford in 2024, and that she has not posted on the Effective Altruism Forum under her own name for three years and did not answer an attempt to reach her at a listed email address.⁵