This is a post written by David Thorstad, a philosophy professor who maintains a blog for criticizing various tenets of effective altruism called Reflective Altruism, as part of a series of on human biodiversity (HBD), a modern iteration of so-called race science. HBD, of course, isn’t typical fare for EA, or any of its championed causes. Yet it has, to much controversy over the years, been recognized as a subject of interest among prominent thinkers associated with either the effective altruism or rationality communities, or others writers they’ve been affiliated with. This latest post in Thorstad’s series provides a critical overview of @Scott Alexander’s history of engagement with said body of ideas, both on his current blog, Astral Codex Ten (ACX), as well as before then, such as on his previous blog, Slate Star Codex (SSC).
I think this is a really bad article. So bad that I can’t see it not being written with ulterior motives.
1. Too many things are taken out of context, like “the feminists are literally voldemort” quote.
2. Too many things are paraphrased in dishonest and ridiculously over the top ways. Like saying Harris has “longstanding plans to sterilize people of color”, before a quote that just says she wants to give birth control to people in Haiti.
3. Offering negative infinity charity in every single area. In the HBD email, Scott says he thinks neoreactionaries create endless streams of garbage, but with some tiny nuggets of gold. And that he can take the nuggets of gold and just tune out the rest. The article then goes on to list everything bad about neoreactionaries as if Scott’s email is evidence he endorses all of neoreaction? What?
4. Overall no clear direct argument. The article spends half its word justifying the connection between Scott and EA, which I don’t think anyone would deny. Then puts up the email, instantly infers the worst possible intent being it with little justification. Then lists every single racist person scott has ever said anything even lighly good about.
Overall, the article updates me in the direction of thinking scott is less racist and less sympethetic to neoreactionary thinking. The article has clearly put in effort, and the author is clearly trying their very best to pain Scott in a bad light, and Scott has literally 20 years of constant blogging put out openly on the internet. But the article is not very convincing.
I’m not disagreeing with this assessment. The author has an agenda, but I don’t think it’s hidden in any way. It is mostly word thinking and social association. But that how the opposition works!
What would “ulterior motives” be here? Do you think Thorstad is consciously lying? That seems really weird to me.
I just meant not primarily motivated by truth.
David Thorstad’s readers and funders are effective altruists that want someone to tell them how bad they are. I don’t think they care much about the strength of the arguments, and they might even prefer weak arguments to strong ones. He collects things from sneerclub, Torres, and the most downvoted comments and posts to stir drama. People enjoy that enough to read him and fund him.
It’s Bad On Purpose To Make You Click
The above link posted is a lengthy and relatively well-sourced, if biased, post about Scott Alexander’s writing related to human biodiversity (HBD). The author is very clearly opposed to HBD. I think it is a decent read if you want to understand that position.