Dear people who post things like “Incest is neat” and “Whites are smarter than blacks”: those things are currently controversial. Therefore, they don’t come close to being unthinkable or impossible to talk about.
Yuh. On LessWrong, scientific racism is a standard permitted scientific heresy for signaling nonconformity. It’s the nonconformist in black, not the one in a clown suit. (And this is a stupidity that is extremely offputting.)
It’s not “racism” if you feel sympathetic and heartbroken for all the people and cultures clearly, unknowingly fucked over by mere biology, and would work hard on something in that direction—a global uplift project, donating to avenues which could eventually provide opportunity for massive genetic surgery (a class of charity currently consisting of SIAI, SIAI and SIAI), developing a political and cultural framework for something like “compassionate eugenics” (using as little coercion and stirring up as little drama as viable) - yes, I’d commit to any of that, if I wasn’t confident that simply trying to cut all the Gordian knots in our vicinity with superhuman intelligence wasn’t a better idea. (As it stands, I sort of desire to fight my akrasia to a standstill and find a good optimized way to help with the latter; however, it’s not just akrasia, it’s all sorts of problems I have with getting in productive work on anything.)
However, if I was, for some defensible reason, unwilling to relegate the entire mess to superintelligence, wouldn’t trying what I described be noble instead of “racist”?
(Uh-huh, my signaling is about as subtle as a troll with a sledgehammer here. A troll of the fantasy non-network variety, that is. Well, whatever, I’m certain I’ve got a valid and coherent sentiment.)
Aaaaaaaa. This is such a bad idea that I don’t even know where to start.
Racism as it’s presently conceptualized isn’t a simple matter of fear or hatred of ethnic others, unfortunately. That would be comparatively easy to deal with. It’s an enormously messy tangle of signaling and countersignaling and I really can’t do it justice without reading a few books for background and then devoting a sequence to it (which I’m not going to do for reasons that should be obvious), but as an oversimplification you can probably sum up most of the Western world’s high-status thinking regarding race as follows:
Everything even tangentially related to race is ineradicably tainted by ingroup/outgroup biases.
Because of this, attitudes and social prescriptions appearing to differentiate in any way by ethic background, or by any factor that can plausibly be linked to ethic background, are automatically suspect and should be compensated for as soon as discovered.
That includes these rules.
Now, that’s a fairly cynical way of putting it (I’m optimizing for brevity), but to a first approximation I don’t think it’s even wrong.
So yes, conceptually your project should be seen as noble, if you accept all its prerequisites. But no one’s going to try to evaluate those prerequisites on their merits. Instead you won’t make it five steps before someone links to “The White Man’s Burden” and things get nasty.
Now, that’s a fairly cynical way of putting it (I’m optimizing for brevity), but to a first approximation I don’t think it’s even wrong.
Might be. Might be. Yet can’t you envision e.g. transhumanism being tabooed like that if found to be “ineradicably tainted” by the human lust for power and an insidiously corrupting desire for a “legitimate” reason to feel superior to the people you currently associate yourself with?
But no one’s going to try to evaluate those prerequisites on their merits. Instead you won’t make it five steps before someone links to “The White Man’s Burden” and things get nasty.
If the so-called “HBD-sphere” or “Reactosphere” in general, for all its flaws (and I see some pretty fucking horrific flaws in it) can get away with a lot more, so can the LW Discussion section, or that semi-private enclosure being proposed around here.
Yet can’t you envision e.g. transhumanism being tabooed like that if found to be “ineradicably tainted” by the human lust for power and an insidiously corrupting desire for a “legitimate” reason to feel superior to the people you currently associate yourself with?
That’s a common argument against it, actually, although it’s usually framed in class terms. Maybe the most common once you filter out all the various manifestations of “ew, that’s gross”.
Not one that I accept myself, but like I said I only buy an approximation of the thinking above. There’s plenty of places it’ll steer you wrong at the margins.
Also, I’m indeed feeling a significant pressure to agree wholeheartedly with this comment and retract everything, because you and the high-status mainstream thinkers would be for me retracting it, and people like the HBD Bi- sorry, HBD Chick would be derisive of such “self-censorship”. Now I can feel for myself just how insidious the Blue vs Green pattern in your head can get when it’s really trying to override you.
People competent enough about intelligence enhancement tech to understand what you said are usually too incompetent about racism to start implementing anything like this without it blowing up in our faces. Remember that video where Razib Khan (?) asked Eliezer which groups were most interested in race-IQ research results, and it went like “I don’t know, Ashkenazi Jews?” “White supremacists.” “Oh.”? That’s how ridiculously ignorant we are. The common wisdom is here for a reason.
Yeah. Lots of people mention the finding that white people are smarter in average than black people, but few of them mention that East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are even smarter.
(And if I was asked about that, I’d answer “Yes, it has been found that white people have a higher average IQ than black people, but then again, Asians and Jews have an even higher one”, so that I don’t lie but still get to piss extreme-right-wingers off.)
The same. Hell, I remember reading the comments on such some alt-right blog—maybe UR, maybe some other one—and seeing a bunch of “white nationalists” who frequent those first imply that intelligence is the only measure of a person that matters, then trying to wriggle out of proclaiming the Jews to be the world’s only rightful aristocracy and bowing down before them; that “argument” basically went like “We embrace Nature’s truth if it makes us smarter than someone, but we aren’t obliged to shit if someone ends up smarter than us.” Equating “smarter” with “superior”, of course.
Not to argue about definitions, but this seems well within the original definition of ‘racism’ as I understand it (”...claim that some races are superior to other races”). And society has good historical reasons to look askance at it—for example, the outside view says nobody should trust your motives. (In particular, you shouldn’t trust yourself.) It also says we shouldn’t trust your factual beliefs without extremely strong evidence.
Plenty of racists historically wanted to “uplift” the savages, mostly through cultural assimilation, but occasionally through interbreeding. Neither of these could fully uplift them to our level, of course, but at least they would be better off than they would be on their own. “developing a political and cultural framework for something like “compassionate eugenics” (using as little coercion and stirring up as little drama as viable)” has also been a fairly obvious position for, y’know, actual racists, as opposed to the stereotyped klan member people are thinking of when they use that signal.
HBD is firmly in clown suit territory in real life, people lose jobs over it, are physically assaulted or ostracised. If you want to see what LW’s wearing black to school thing is check out the Moldbug references people love making.
Aurini made a mistake. He apologized for it. But his mistake is not representative of LessWrongers who believe ideas about human biodiversity are plausible or likely or perhaps have an interest in the topic.
I know you perceive them as political enemies, but hey you are usually civil about this. You are pulling some passive aggressive stuff recently tho and I think I need to call you out on it. If you want people who consider HBD plausible gone, you can just say it directly. Perhaps even make a list of names and post it asking posters to down vote them.
I’m sure we will leave if you do this. We might not be happy about it though.
We must stay and fight. The accusers of racism are the true racists: they think by ignoring the differences the differences will go away, but to ignore the differences is fake egalitarianism that makes the less capable worse off then they would be if we acknowledged the differences and we could allow for them.
I’m sorry your nick is a bit ifffy so I’m not sure as to your sincerity. If you are don’t worry, eventually this will clear up with future participation. Just in case you are not a troll, I wrote this out.
I do agree that the fake egalitarianism of insisting we treat people decently because they are objectively all the same, instead of that simply being the right thing to do, is really dangerous in the long term, if society one day realizes they aren’t objectively all the same according to most measures and damaging in the short run because it least to things like bad education policies or dehumanizing people society decides to scapegoat for some differences.
This however is far from only being a problem with “race”, it turns up in many different places and on different issues. Class, gender… It even exists in lesser measure with individual differences.
We must stay and fight.
Here I kind of disagree. I don’t see this as a war with sides, that attitude is perhaps useful if you are doing politics in the comment section of a news site, but not that great when it comes to participating here. I see this as more a interesting solvable question that has some unfortunate signalling and politics mixed in. I take the LW community at its face value and so far it surprisingly seldomly disappoints in being a place genuinely interested in truth. I always try hard to make sure that if anyone is going tribal and being mindkilled it isn’t me, especially since “HBD fans” like me may still turn out to be wrong (check out some of the criticism raised by Chuck at Occidentalist).
So lets keep away from the fighting words and try being genuinely curious about the outcome. Also if people want us to leave so much worse for them, they don’t own rationality and by refusing to judge ideas on their own merits they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Those not shooting themselves in the foot might find races easier to win.
Yuh. On LessWrong, scientific racism is a standard permitted scientific heresy for signaling nonconformity. It’s the nonconformist in black, not the one in a clown suit. (And this is a stupidity that is extremely offputting.)
It’s not “racism” if you feel sympathetic and heartbroken for all the people and cultures clearly, unknowingly fucked over by mere biology, and would work hard on something in that direction—a global uplift project, donating to avenues which could eventually provide opportunity for massive genetic surgery (a class of charity currently consisting of SIAI, SIAI and SIAI), developing a political and cultural framework for something like “compassionate eugenics” (using as little coercion and stirring up as little drama as viable) - yes, I’d commit to any of that, if I wasn’t confident that simply trying to cut all the Gordian knots in our vicinity with superhuman intelligence wasn’t a better idea. (As it stands, I sort of desire to fight my akrasia to a standstill and find a good optimized way to help with the latter; however, it’s not just akrasia, it’s all sorts of problems I have with getting in productive work on anything.)
However, if I was, for some defensible reason, unwilling to relegate the entire mess to superintelligence, wouldn’t trying what I described be noble instead of “racist”?
(Uh-huh, my signaling is about as subtle as a troll with a sledgehammer here. A troll of the fantasy non-network variety, that is. Well, whatever, I’m certain I’ve got a valid and coherent sentiment.)
Aaaaaaaa. This is such a bad idea that I don’t even know where to start.
Racism as it’s presently conceptualized isn’t a simple matter of fear or hatred of ethnic others, unfortunately. That would be comparatively easy to deal with. It’s an enormously messy tangle of signaling and countersignaling and I really can’t do it justice without reading a few books for background and then devoting a sequence to it (which I’m not going to do for reasons that should be obvious), but as an oversimplification you can probably sum up most of the Western world’s high-status thinking regarding race as follows:
Everything even tangentially related to race is ineradicably tainted by ingroup/outgroup biases.
Because of this, attitudes and social prescriptions appearing to differentiate in any way by ethic background, or by any factor that can plausibly be linked to ethic background, are automatically suspect and should be compensated for as soon as discovered.
That includes these rules.
Now, that’s a fairly cynical way of putting it (I’m optimizing for brevity), but to a first approximation I don’t think it’s even wrong.
So yes, conceptually your project should be seen as noble, if you accept all its prerequisites. But no one’s going to try to evaluate those prerequisites on their merits. Instead you won’t make it five steps before someone links to “The White Man’s Burden” and things get nasty.
Of course not. That would subject accusations of racism to falsifiability.
Might be. Might be. Yet can’t you envision e.g. transhumanism being tabooed like that if found to be “ineradicably tainted” by the human lust for power and an insidiously corrupting desire for a “legitimate” reason to feel superior to the people you currently associate yourself with?
If the so-called “HBD-sphere” or “Reactosphere” in general, for all its flaws (and I see some pretty fucking horrific flaws in it) can get away with a lot more, so can the LW Discussion section, or that semi-private enclosure being proposed around here.
That’s a common argument against it, actually, although it’s usually framed in class terms. Maybe the most common once you filter out all the various manifestations of “ew, that’s gross”.
Not one that I accept myself, but like I said I only buy an approximation of the thinking above. There’s plenty of places it’ll steer you wrong at the margins.
Also, I’m indeed feeling a significant pressure to agree wholeheartedly with this comment and retract everything, because you and the high-status mainstream thinkers would be for me retracting it, and people like the HBD Bi- sorry, HBD Chick would be derisive of such “self-censorship”. Now I can feel for myself just how insidious the Blue vs Green pattern in your head can get when it’s really trying to override you.
People competent enough about intelligence enhancement tech to understand what you said are usually too incompetent about racism to start implementing anything like this without it blowing up in our faces. Remember that video where Razib Khan (?) asked Eliezer which groups were most interested in race-IQ research results, and it went like “I don’t know, Ashkenazi Jews?” “White supremacists.” “Oh.”? That’s how ridiculously ignorant we are. The common wisdom is here for a reason.
Remember reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
Referring to this (video here)?
Yeah. Lots of people mention the finding that white people are smarter in average than black people, but few of them mention that East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are even smarter.
(And if I was asked about that, I’d answer “Yes, it has been found that white people have a higher average IQ than black people, but then again, Asians and Jews have an even higher one”, so that I don’t lie but still get to piss extreme-right-wingers off.)
The same. Hell, I remember reading the comments on such some alt-right blog—maybe UR, maybe some other one—and seeing a bunch of “white nationalists” who frequent those first imply that intelligence is the only measure of a person that matters, then trying to wriggle out of proclaiming the Jews to be the world’s only rightful aristocracy and bowing down before them; that “argument” basically went like “We embrace Nature’s truth if it makes us smarter than someone, but we aren’t obliged to shit if someone ends up smarter than us.” Equating “smarter” with “superior”, of course.
Not to argue about definitions, but this seems well within the original definition of ‘racism’ as I understand it (”...claim that some races are superior to other races”). And society has good historical reasons to look askance at it—for example, the outside view says nobody should trust your motives. (In particular, you shouldn’t trust yourself.) It also says we shouldn’t trust your factual beliefs without extremely strong evidence.
You know, it is.
Plenty of racists historically wanted to “uplift” the savages, mostly through cultural assimilation, but occasionally through interbreeding. Neither of these could fully uplift them to our level, of course, but at least they would be better off than they would be on their own. “developing a political and cultural framework for something like “compassionate eugenics” (using as little coercion and stirring up as little drama as viable)” has also been a fairly obvious position for, y’know, actual racists, as opposed to the stereotyped klan member people are thinking of when they use that signal.
Easy for you to say.
HBD is firmly in clown suit territory in real life, people lose jobs over it, are physically assaulted or ostracised. If you want to see what LW’s wearing black to school thing is check out the Moldbug references people love making.
Yes, we’ve seen how “HBD” plays out on LessWrong lately.
Stop doing that. ｏ( ><)o
Aurini made a mistake. He apologized for it. But his mistake is not representative of LessWrongers who believe ideas about human biodiversity are plausible or likely or perhaps have an interest in the topic.
I know you perceive them as political enemies, but hey you are usually civil about this. You are pulling some passive aggressive stuff recently tho and I think I need to call you out on it. If you want people who consider HBD plausible gone, you can just say it directly. Perhaps even make a list of names and post it asking posters to down vote them.
I’m sure we will leave if you do this. We might not be happy about it though.
We must stay and fight. The accusers of racism are the true racists: they think by ignoring the differences the differences will go away, but to ignore the differences is fake egalitarianism that makes the less capable worse off then they would be if we acknowledged the differences and we could allow for them.
I like your posts here.
I’m sorry your nick is a bit ifffy so I’m not sure as to your sincerity. If you are don’t worry, eventually this will clear up with future participation. Just in case you are not a troll, I wrote this out.
I do agree that the fake egalitarianism of insisting we treat people decently because they are objectively all the same, instead of that simply being the right thing to do, is really dangerous in the long term, if society one day realizes they aren’t objectively all the same according to most measures and damaging in the short run because it least to things like bad education policies or dehumanizing people society decides to scapegoat for some differences.
This however is far from only being a problem with “race”, it turns up in many different places and on different issues. Class, gender… It even exists in lesser measure with individual differences.
Here I kind of disagree. I don’t see this as a war with sides, that attitude is perhaps useful if you are doing politics in the comment section of a news site, but not that great when it comes to participating here. I see this as more a interesting solvable question that has some unfortunate signalling and politics mixed in. I take the LW community at its face value and so far it surprisingly seldomly disappoints in being a place genuinely interested in truth. I always try hard to make sure that if anyone is going tribal and being mindkilled it isn’t me, especially since “HBD fans” like me may still turn out to be wrong (check out some of the criticism raised by Chuck at Occidentalist).
So lets keep away from the fighting words and try being genuinely curious about the outcome. Also if people want us to leave so much worse for them, they don’t own rationality and by refusing to judge ideas on their own merits they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Those not shooting themselves in the foot might find races easier to win.
My fourth comment on LessWrong from over 2 years ago.