In one post, [Alexander] aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.”
So on the one hand, this particular paragraph does seem like it’s misleadingly implying Scott was endorsing views on race/iq similar to Murray’s even though, based on the quoted passages alone, there is little reason to think that. On the other hand, it’s totally true that Scott was running a strategy of bringing up or “arguing” with hereditarians with the goal of broadly promoting those views in the rationalist community, without directly being seen to endorse them. So I think it’s actually pretty legitimate for Metz to bring up incidents like this or the Xenosystems link in the blogroll. Scott was basically using a strategy of communicating his views in a plausibly deniable way by saying many little things which are more likely if he was a secret hereditarian, but any individual instance of which is not so damning. So I feel it’s total BS to then complain about how tenuous the individual instances Metz brought up are—he’s using it as an example or a larger trend, which is inevitable given the strategy Scott was using.
(This is not to say that I think Scott should be “canceled” for these views or whatever, not at all, but at this stage the threat of cancelation seems to have passed and we can at least be honest about what actually happened)
Just because the defendant is actually guilty, doesn’t mean the prosecutor should be able to get away with making a tenuous case! (I wrote more about this in my memoir.)
But was Metz acting as a “prosecutor” here? He didn’t say “this proves Scott is a hereditarian” or whatever, he just brings up two instances where Scott said things in a way that might lead people to make certain inferences....correct inferences, as it turns out. Like yeah, maybe it would have been more epistemically scrupulous if he said “these articles represent two instances of a larger pattern which is strong Bayesian evidence even though they are not highly convincing on their own” but I hardly think this warrants remaining outraged years after the fact.
So I think it’s actually pretty legitimate for Metz to bring up incidences like this
but also
This is not to say that I think Scott should be “canceled” for these views or whatever, not at all
which seems like a double standard. E.g. assume the consequence of the NYT article had actually lead to Scott’s cancellation. Which wasn’t an implausible thing for Metz to expect.
(On a historical analogy, Scott’s case seems quite analogous to the historical case of Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza could be (and was) accused of employing a similar strategy to get, with his pantheist philosophy, the highly taboo topic of atheism into the mainstream philosophical discourse. If so, the strategy was successful.)
I mean it’s epistemically legitimate for him to bring them up. They are in fact evidence that Scott holds hereditarian views.
Now, regarding the “overall” legitimacy of calling attention to someone’s controversial views, it probably does have a chilling effect, and threatens Scott’s livelihood which I don’t like. But I think that continuing to be mad at Metz for his sloppy inference doesn’t really make sense here. Sure, maybe at the time it was tactically smart to feign outrage that Metz would dare to imply Scott was a hereditarian, but now that we have direct documentation of Scott admitting exactly that, it’s just silly. If you’re still worried about Scott getting canceled (seems unlikely at this stage tbh) it’s better to just move on and stop drawing attention to the issue by bringing it up over and over.
Beliefs can only be epistemically legitimate, actions can only be morally legitimate. To “bring something up” is an action, not a belief. My point is that this action wasn’t legitimate, at least not in this heavily abridged form.
If you mean by “statement” an action (a physical utterance) then I disagree. If you mean an abstract object, a proposition, for which someone could have more or less evidence, or reason to believe, then I agree.
So on the one hand, this particular paragraph does seem like it’s misleadingly implying Scott was endorsing views on race/iq similar to Murray’s even though, based on the quoted passages alone, there is little reason to think that. On the other hand, it’s totally true that Scott was running a strategy of bringing up or “arguing” with hereditarians with the goal of broadly promoting those views in the rationalist community, without directly being seen to endorse them. So I think it’s actually pretty legitimate for Metz to bring up incidents like this or the Xenosystems link in the blogroll. Scott was basically using a strategy of communicating his views in a plausibly deniable way by saying many little things which are more likely if he was a secret hereditarian, but any individual instance of which is not so damning. So I feel it’s total BS to then complain about how tenuous the individual instances Metz brought up are—he’s using it as an example or a larger trend, which is inevitable given the strategy Scott was using.
(This is not to say that I think Scott should be “canceled” for these views or whatever, not at all, but at this stage the threat of cancelation seems to have passed and we can at least be honest about what actually happened)
“For my friends, charitability—for my enemies, Bayes Rule”
Just because the defendant is actually guilty, doesn’t mean the prosecutor should be able to get away with making a tenuous case! (I wrote more about this in my memoir.)
It feels like bad praxis to punish people for things they got right!
But was Metz acting as a “prosecutor” here? He didn’t say “this proves Scott is a hereditarian” or whatever, he just brings up two instances where Scott said things in a way that might lead people to make certain inferences....correct inferences, as it turns out. Like yeah, maybe it would have been more epistemically scrupulous if he said “these articles represent two instances of a larger pattern which is strong Bayesian evidence even though they are not highly convincing on their own” but I hardly think this warrants remaining outraged years after the fact.
On the one hand you say
but also
which seems like a double standard. E.g. assume the consequence of the NYT article had actually lead to Scott’s cancellation. Which wasn’t an implausible thing for Metz to expect.
(On a historical analogy, Scott’s case seems quite analogous to the historical case of Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza could be (and was) accused of employing a similar strategy to get, with his pantheist philosophy, the highly taboo topic of atheism into the mainstream philosophical discourse. If so, the strategy was successful.)
I mean it’s epistemically legitimate for him to bring them up. They are in fact evidence that Scott holds hereditarian views.
Now, regarding the “overall” legitimacy of calling attention to someone’s controversial views, it probably does have a chilling effect, and threatens Scott’s livelihood which I don’t like. But I think that continuing to be mad at Metz for his sloppy inference doesn’t really make sense here. Sure, maybe at the time it was tactically smart to feign outrage that Metz would dare to imply Scott was a hereditarian, but now that we have direct documentation of Scott admitting exactly that, it’s just silly. If you’re still worried about Scott getting canceled (seems unlikely at this stage tbh) it’s better to just move on and stop drawing attention to the issue by bringing it up over and over.
Beliefs can only be epistemically legitimate, actions can only be morally legitimate. To “bring something up” is an action, not a belief. My point is that this action wasn’t legitimate, at least not in this heavily abridged form.
Statements can be epistemically legit or not. Statements have content, they aren’t just levers for influencing the world.
If you mean by “statement” an action (a physical utterance) then I disagree. If you mean an abstract object, a proposition, for which someone could have more or less evidence, or reason to believe, then I agree.