---
aliases:
- Émile Torres
- Emile P. Torres
category: Skeptics & Critics
created: 2026-09-22
relations:
- fn: 3
  role: coined the term; co-author with Timnit Gebru
  start: 2023
  type: participant_in
  with: '[[TESCREAL]]'
summary: Philosopher and historian of existential-risk thought who wrote a 2017 introduction
  to existential risks, then attacked longtermism in 2021 and coined the acronym TESCREAL,
  developed with Timnit Gebru.
tags:
- Person
- Philosophy
- Longtermism
- EffectiveAltruism
- TESCREAL
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Émile P. Torres is a philosopher who, in October 2021, was a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany and the author of *The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse* (2016) and *Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks* (2017).[^1] They run the newsletter *xriskology.*[^2]

### Against Longtermism

In "Why longtermism is the world's most dangerous secular credo," published by *Aeon* on October 19, 2021, Torres traced longtermism to [Nick Bostrom](/people/nick-bostrom/), who founded the [Future of Humanity Institute](/organizations/future-of-humanity-institute/) in 2005, and to Nick Beckstead of the institute and [Open Philanthropy](/organizations/open-philanthropy/), and named its "central dogma": "nothing matters more, ethically speaking, than fulfilling our potential as a species." Torres quoted Bostrom's description of the world wars, AIDS and Chernobyl as "mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life," cited his proposals for a global surveillance system to enlarge "capacities for preventive policing" and for preemptive war against existential threats, and wrote that Beckstead had argued for prioritizing the lives of people in rich countries over those in poor ones. Torres noted that the Center for Security and Emerging Technology had been founded by [Jason Matheny](/people/jason-matheny/), a former research assistant at the institute who had become deputy assistant to President Biden for technology and national security, and urged readers to "care about the long term but reject the ideology of longtermism."[^1]

Torres coined, and developed with the computer scientist [Timnit Gebru](/people/timnit-gebru/), [TESCREAL](/concepts/tescreal/), an acronym for transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism and longtermism, which they argued form one worldview descended from Anglo-American [eugenics](/concepts/eugenics/); the term appeared in *Truthdig* in June 2023 and in their paper in *First Monday* in April 2024.[^3][^4] Torres and Gebru placed [Julian Huxley](/people/julian-huxley/) with Francis Galton among the bundle's eugenic progenitors, and applied the label "TESCREALists" to [Sam Altman](/people/sam-altman/), [Elon Musk](/people/elon-musk/), [Marc Andreessen](/people/marc-andreessen/) and [Sam Bankman-Fried](/people/sam-bankman-fried/).[^3] In a 2023 interview with *Current Affairs,* Torres said there was "almost no serious thought within EA" about the origins of global problems in "systems of power," and "no discussion of the legacies of colonialism," and that "we're just absolutely clueless about what the future is going to look like."[^5] Torres treated the closure of the Future of Humanity Institute in 2024 as the end of its intellectual project.[^2]

[^1]: Torres, Émile P. "Why longtermism is the world's most dangerous secular credo." *Aeon,* October 19, 2021, with author biography. https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo
[^2]: Torres, Émile P. "The future of the future of humanity." *xriskology,* 2024. https://xriskology.substack.com/p/the-future-of-the-future-of-humanity
[^3]: Gebru, Timnit, and Émile P. Torres. "The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence." *First Monday* 29, no. 4, April 2024. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636
[^4]: Torres, Émile P. "The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares." *Truthdig,* June 2023. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares/
[^5]: Robinson, Nathan J. "Why Effective Altruism and Longtermism Are Toxic Ideologies," interview with Émile P. Torres. *Current Affairs,* May 2023. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/05/why-effective-altruism-and-longtermism-are-toxic-ideologies