I’m a male senior in high school. I found this site in November or so, and started reading the sequences voraciously.
I feel like I might be a somewhat atypical LessWrong reader. For one, I’m on the young side. Also, if you saw me and talked to me, you would probably not guess that I was a “rationalist” from the way I act/dress but, I don’t know, perhaps you might. When I first found this website, I was pretty sure I wanted to be an art major, now I’m pretty sure I want to be an art/comp sci double major and go into indie game development (correlation may or may not imply causation). I also love rap music (and not the “good” kind like Talib Kweli) and I read most of the sequences while listening to Lil Wayne, Lil B, Gucci Mane, Future, Young Jeezy, etc. I occasionally record my own terrible rap songs with my friends in my friend’s basement. Before finding this site, the word “rational” had powerful negative affect around it. Science was far and away my least favorite subject in school. I have absolutely no interest at the moment in learning any science or anything about science, except for maybe neuroscience, and maybe metaphysics. I’ve always found the humanities more interesting, although I do enjoy some abstract math stuff. I’m somewhat of an emotional Luddite—whenever a new technology like Google Glass or something comes out I groan and I think about all the ways it’s going to further detach people from reality. Transhumanism was disgusting to me before I found this site, while reading the sequences I started to buy into the philosophy, now a few months after reading the sequences for the first time I rationally know it is a very very good thing but still emotionally find it a little unappealing.
After finding this site, I have gone from having a vaguely confused worldview to completely “buying into” most of the philosophy espoused here and on on other sites in the rationalist-sphere such as Overcoming Bias, blogs of top contributors, etc. (I’m not a racist yet though), and constantly thinking throughout my day about things like utility functions, sunken cost fallacies, mind projection fallacy, etc. I feel like finding this website has immeasurably improved my life, which I know might be a weird thing to say, but I do think this is true. First of all, my thinking is so much clearer, and moral/philosophical/political questions that seemed like a paradox before now seem to have obvious solutions. More importantly, after being inspired by stuff like The Science of Winning at Life, I now spend several hours a day on self-improvement projects, which I never would have thought to do without first becoming a rationalist. This community also lead me to vipassana meditation, the practice of which I think has improved my life so far. I feel like this new focus on rational thinking and self improvement will only continue to pay dividends in the future, as it’s only been a few months since I developed this new attitude towards life. It may be overly optimistic, but I really do see finding this site and becoming a rationalist as a major turning point in my life and I’m very grateful to Eliezer and co. for revealing to me the secrets of the universe.
You sound like quite an intelligent and awesome person. (bad rap, art, rationality. only an interesting person could have such a nonstandard combination of interests. Boring people come prepackaged...)
Glad to have you around.
(I’m not a racist yet though)
It’s only a matter of time ;)
I feel like finding this website has immeasurably improved my life … and moral/philosophical/political questions that seemed like a paradox before now seem to have obvious solutions.
I remember that feeling. I’m more skeptical now, but I can’t help but notice more awesomeness in my life due to LW. It really is quite cool isn’t it?
spend several hours a day on self-improvement projects
This is the part that’s been elusive to me. What kind of things are you doing? How do you knwo you are actually getting benefits and not just producing that “this is awesome” feeling which unfortunately often gets detached from realty?
You sound like quite an intelligent and awesome person. (bad rap, art, rationality. only an interesting person could have such a nonstandard combination of interests. Boring people come prepackaged...)
Thank you :)
This is the part that’s been elusive to me. What kind of things are you doing? How do you knwo you are actually getting benefits and not just producing that “this is awesome” feeling which unfortunately often gets detached from realty?
I guess essentially what I do is try to read self-help stuff. I try to spend half my “work time”, so to speak, doing this, and half working on creative projects. I’ve read both books and assorted stuff on the internet. My goal for April is to read a predetermined list of six self-help books. I’m currently on track for this goal.
So far I’ve read
Part of the massive tome that is Psychological Self Help by Clayton Tucker-Ladd
Success—How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Halverson
How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes
59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman
Thinking Things Done by PJ Eby
the first 300 pages of Feeling Good by David Burns, the last 200 seem to be mostly about the chemical nature of depression and have little practical value, so I’m saving them for later
If meditation books count
Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana
most of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram
I also have been keeping a diary, which is something I’ve wanted to get in the habit of all my life but have never been able to do. Every day, in addition to summarizing the day’s events, I rate my happiness out of ten, my productivity out of ten, and speculate on how I can do better.
I’ve only been keeping the diary a month, which is too small of a sample size. However, during this time, I had three weeks off for spring break, and I told myself that I would work as much as I could on self-improvement and personal projects. I ended up not really getting that much done, unfortunately. However, I managed to put in a median of… probably about five hours every day, and more importantly, I was in a fantastic mood the whole break. It might even have been the best mood I’ve been in for an extended time in the last few years. In the past, every time I have had a break from school, I ended up in a depressed, lonely, lethargic state, where I surfed the internet for hours on end, in which I paradoxically want to go back to school knowing that as soon as I do, I’ll want to go back on break. The fact that I avoided this state for the first time I can remember since middle school is a major improvement for me. Additionally, the fact that I have managed to keep up the habit of diary-writing and meditating for a month so far is an achievement, knowing my past.
Also, even though I found How to Talk to Anyone mostly useless (it’s written in a very white-collar, “how to network with the big winners” mindset that doesn’t apply to my life), the one major Obvious In Retrospect thing I got from it was that in general I should never complain or criticize anyone. I used to think I was charmingly cynical. Since finishing it about four days ago, I have applied this advice, and I think, although it’s very hard to tell, that I have made a person who previously harbored dislike for me view me as a someone pleasant to be around. Only one data point, but still.
I will admit that it is very possible that I am merely cultivating the “this is awesome” feeling. However, if reading scientifically minded self-help books isn’t the solution, then what could possibly be? Meditation, but then what if that turns out to be a sham too? Therefore, I feel like it’s rational to at least try the tactics that seem to have the highest chance of success before concluding that self-improvement is hopeless. Plus, I enjoy doing it.
Where do you live? Do you attend meetups?
I live in Columbus, OH, but I go to boarding school in a rural area. I will probably go to college in St. Louis next year. If there’s ever a meetup nearby me, I would love to go.
I think you need to talk to daenerys, IIRC, she runs the Ohio stuff.
if reading scientifically minded self-help books isn’t the solution, then what could possibly be?
Actually doing, for one, though it sounds like you’re doing that too.
that doesn’t apply to my life
yet. Some day you will want to take over the world, and then you will need to talk to big winners.
I ended up not really getting that much done, unfortunately. However, I managed to put in a median of… probably about five hours every day
I’ve had this problem, too (I’ve got so much free time, why is it all getting pissed away?). Have you tried beeminder? I cannot overstate how much that site is just conscientiousness in a can, so to speak.
So far I’ve read
Thanks for the list. A variety of evidence is making me want to check out the self-help community more closely.
Actually doing, for one, though it sounds like you’re doing that too.
I have yet to read a self-help book that doesn’t emphatically state “If you do not take care to apply these principles as much as you can in your daily life, you will not gain anything from reading this book.” So, yeah, I agree, and by “reading self-help” I mean “reading self-help and applying the knowledge”.
Have you tried beeminder? I cannot overstate how much that site is just conscientiousness in a can, so to speak.
I’ve seen it, and checked it out a little, but I can’t think of any way to quantify the stuff that I have problems getting done. Also I wish there was an option to donate money to charity, but I guess they have to make money somehow.
I have gone from having a vaguely confused worldview to completely “buying into” most of the philosophy espoused here and on on other sites in the rationalist-sphere such as Overcoming Bias, blogs of top contributors, etc. (I’m not a racist yet though)
I have yet to see this. Which major LW contributor is advocating racism, and where can I read about it?
I’m sorry, I can’t really remember any specific links to discussions, and I don’t really know exactly who believes in what ideas, but I feel like there are a lot of people here, and especially people who show up in the comments, who believe that certain races are inherently more or less intelligent/violent/whatever on average than others. I specifically remember nyan_sandwich saying that he believes this, calling himself a “proto-racist” but that’s the only example I can recall.
The one basically follows from the other, I think. This isn’t a reactionary site by any means; the last poll showed single-digit support for the philosophy here, if it’s fair to consider it a political philosophy exclusive with liberalism, libertarianism, and/or conservatism. However, neoreaction/Moldbuggery gets a less hostile reception here than it does on most non-reactionary sites, probably because it’s an intensely contrarian philosophy and LW seems to have a cultural fondness for clever contrarians, and we have do have several vocal reactionaries among our commentariat. Among them, perhaps unfortunately, are most of the people talking about race.
It’s also pretty hard to dissociate neoreaction from… let’s say “certain hypotheses concerning race”, since “racism” is too slippery and value-laden a term and most of the alternatives are too euphemistic. The reasons for this seem somewhat complicated, but I think we can trace a good chunk of them to just how much of a taboo race is among what Moldbug calls the Cathedral; if your basic theory is that there’s this vast formless cultural force shaping what everyone can and can’t talk about without being branded monstrous, it looks a little silly if that force’s greatest bugbear turns out to be right after all.
(There do seem to be a few people who gravitate to neoreaction as an intellectual framework that justifies preexisting racism, but I don’t think Moldbug—or most of the neoreactionary commentators here—fall into that category. I usually start favoring this theory when someone seems to be dwelling on race to the exclusion of even other facets of neoreaction.)
If someone were to correctly point out genetic differences between groups (let’s assume correctness as a hypothetical), would that be—in your opinion − 1) racist and reprehensible, 2) racist but not reprehensible, or (in the hypothetical) 3) not racist?
Would your opinion differ if those genetic differences were relating to a) IQ, or b) lactose intolerance?
Yes to the second question, in that I would give the answer of 2 for A and 3 for B.
Racism has at least three definitions colloquially that I can think of
1: A belief that there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races, and that certain races have more or less desirable characteristics than others. This is the definition that Wikipedia uses. Not that many educated people are racist according to this definition, I think.
2: The tendency to jump to conclusions about people based on their skin color, which can manifest as a consequence of racism-1, or unconsciously believing in racism-1. Pretty much everyone is racist to some extent according to this definition.
3: Contempt or dislike of people based on their skin color, i.e. “I hate Asians”. You could further divide this into consciously and unconsciously harboring these beliefs if you wanted.
In the sexism debate, these three definitions are sort of given separate names: “belief in differences between the sexes”, “sexism”, and “misogyny” respectively.
Racism-3 seems to be pretty clearly evil, and racism-2 causes lots of suffering, but racism-1 basically by definition cannot be evil if it is a true belief and you abide by the Litany of Tarski or whatever. But because they have the same name, it gets confusing.
Some people might object to calling racism-1 racism, and instead will decide to call it “human biodiversity” or “race realism”. I think this is bullshit. Just fucking call it what it is. Own up to your beliefs.
Some people might object to calling racism-1 racism, and instead will decide to call it “human biodiversity” or “race realism”. I think this is bullshit. Just fucking call it what it is.
“What it fucking is” is a straw man. ie. “and that certain races have more or less desirable characteristics than others” is not what the people you are disparaging are likely to say, for all that it is vaguely related.
Own up to your beliefs.
Seeing this exhortation used to try to shame people into accepting your caricature as their own position fills me with the same sort of disgust and contempt that you have for racism. Failure to “own up” and profess their actual beliefs is approximately the opposite of the failure mode they are engaging in (that of not keeping their mouth shut when socially expedient). In much the same way suicide bombers are not cowards.
According to Wikipedia, “racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.”
This definition appears to exactly match the beliefs of the people I am talking about. I guess it’s all in how you define superior, inferior, more desirable, etc. But most of the discourse revolves around intelligence which is a pretty important trait and I don’t think these people believe that black people, for example, have traits that make up for their supposed lack of intelligence, or that Asians have flaws that make up for their supposed above-average intelligence (and no, dick size doesn’t count). In particular, these people seem to believe that an innate lack of intelligence is to blame for the fact that so many African countries are in total chaos and unless you believe in a soul or something, it’s hard to imagine that a race physically incapable of sustaining civilization is not in some meaningful way “inferior”.
If you hold a belief that is described with a name that has negative connotations, you have two options. You can either hide behind some sort of euphemism, or you can just come out and say “yes I do believe that, and I am proud of it”. I think the second choice is much more noble, and if I were to adopt these beliefs, I would just go ahead and describe myself as a racist. It’s not really a major issue though and I probably shouldn’t have used the word “fucking” in my previous post.
But anyway, since the term is completely accurate, the only reason I can think of to not call the people I’m describing racists is because it might offend them, which is deeply ironic.
If you hold a belief that is described with a name that has negative connotations, you have two options. You can either hide behind some sort of euphemism, or you can just come out and say “yes I do believe that, and I am proud of it”.
There is also a third option: Keep your identity small and pick your battles. Just because the society happens to disagree with you in one specific topic, that is no reason to make that one topic central to your life, and to let all other people define you by that one topic regardless of what other traits or abilities you have—which will probably happen if you are open about that disagreement.
Imagine that you live in a society where people believe that 2+2=5, and they also believe that anyone who says 2+2=4 is an evil person and must be killed. (There seems to be a good reason for that. Hundred years ago there was an evil robot who destroyed half of the planet, and it is know that the robot believed that 2+2=4. Because this is the most known fact about the robot, people concluded that beliving that 2+2=4 must be the source of all evil, and needs to be eradicated from the society. We don’t want any more planetary destruction, do we?) What are your choices? You could say that 2+2=4 and get killed. Or you could say that 2+2=4.999, avoid being killed, only get a few suspicious looks and be rejected at a few job interviews; and hope that if people keep doing that long enough, at one moment it will become acceptable to say that 2+2=4.9, or even 4.5, and perhaps one day no one will be killed for saying that it equals 4.
The third option is to enjoy food and wine, and refuse to comment publicly on how much 2+2 is. Perhaps have a few trusted friends you can discuss maths with.
Okay, but all I’m saying is that if you do decide to talk about your beliefs, you should use a more honest term for your belief system. I definitely agree with you that racists should not go around talking publicly about their beliefs! You seem to have inferred something from my post that I didn’t mean, sorry about that.
Okay, but all I’m saying is that if you do decide to talk about your beliefs, you should use a more honest term for your belief system.
Interesting. I’m fond of using a negative-connotation framing of myself and my beliefs, but I wouldn’t call it “honest”.
In general, socially admitted “beliefs” are actually actions. I see no reason to optimize them for anything other than effectiveness.
(LW is different. There is enough openness here and epistemic rationality norms that it’s actually a good idea to share your beliefs and get criticism.)
Of course, what I usually do is saying “2+2>3” when I want to sound politically correct and “2+2<6” when I want to sound meta-contrarian. (Translating back from the metaphor, those would be “for all we know, achievement gaps may be at least partly caused by nurture” and “for all we know, achievement gaps may be at least partly caused by nature” respectively.)
According to Wikipedia, “racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.”
I think that “group as a whole” is the key word. Men are taller than women in average, and being tall is usually considered desirable; is pointing that out sexist? I’d say that until you treat that fact as a reason to consider a gender “as a whole” more desirable than another, it isn’t.
Doesn’t contradict what I said, because I never claimed that most people aren’t sexist. (And BTW, I’m not sure whether what you mean by “desirable” is what was meant in WP’s definition of racism. I’m not usually sexually attracted to males or Asians, but I consider this a fact about me, not about males or Asians, and I don’t consider myself sexist or racist for that.)
(EDIT: to be more pedantic, one could say that the fact that I’m normally only attracted to people with characteristics X, Y, and Z is a fact about me and that the fact that males/Asians seldom have characteristics X, Y and Z is a fact about them, though.)
the only reason I can think of to not call the people I’m describing racists is because it might offend them
If they believed you, consistency bias might make them lean more toward racist-2 and racist-3. Or it might shame them into lowering their belief in the entire reactionary memeplex, which would be epistemically sub-optimal. It might lower their status, or even their earning ability if justified accusations of racism became associated with their offline identities. There’s many ways leveraging emotionally loaded terms can have negative effects.
It is known that human populations separately evolved for at least 15000 years, facing different selection pressures that have produced many differences in physiology, appearance, size, prevalence to deseises, even what foods are edible. It would take some serious reasoning to postulate that these differences are magically limited to things that don’t affect people’s abilities and quality of life.
It is generally accepted that ethiopians (or is it kenyans?) are good at marathons, and that ashkenazi jews have higher average IQ scores and win more nobel prizes. There’s two well accepted racial differences in desirable traits right there, so we know it’s possible. Unless there’s some way to explain ashkenazi genius that removes the correlation with race?
Further, there’s quite a variety of IQ surveys, life outcome data, and other such that seems to self-correlate really well and hold up under various controls, and correlates quite mysteriously with race.
So there’s a-priori reason to believe in racial differences, and such differences are in fact observed.
If I left it at this, what would your response be? Would it be to dispute that such differences are innate and caused by genetics, as opposed to cultural forces? Forgive me if that’s not your response; it’s usually a good bet. If that is your response, note that the conversation is now about the details of the corellation, not whether it exists.
That is, the whether question is resolved in favor of racism. The open question is now how:
It could be genetic.
It could be cultural.
It could be imposed by expectations.
But whether some kid is smart because his ancestors are smart, or because he caught a memetic smartness in childhood, or because society tells him he should be smart because of his skin color, is irrelevant to someone who is simply wondering if a sample of kids who have the same background will be smart or not on average.
So why reject the above racism-1; that different races have different prevalence of desirable traits, so that learning about race can tell you about such traits? Racial differences are an observation to be explained, not even a question that could go either way.
As far as racism-1 goes, I am told that high levels of melanin in the skin lead to an immunity to sunburn. So black people can’t get sunburnt—that’s a desirable characteristic, to my mind. (There’s still negative effects—such as a headache—from being in the sun too long. Just not sunburn).
Human skin is repeatedly exposed to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) that influences the function and survival of many cell types and is regarded as the main causative factor in the induction of skin cancer. It has been traditionally believed that skin pigmentation is the most important photoprotective factor, since melanin, besides functioning as a broadband UV absorbent, has antioxidant and radical scavenging properties. Besides, many epidemiological studies have shown a lower incidence for skin cancer in individuals with darker skin compared to those with fair skin. Skin pigmentation is of great cultural and cosmetic importance, yet the role of melanin in photoprotection is still controversial. This article outlines the major acute and chronic effects of UV radiation on human skin, the properties of melanin, the regulation of pigmentation and its effect on skin cancer prevention.
Sunburn results when the amount of exposure to the sun or other ultraviolet light source exceeds the ability of the body’s protective pigment, melanin, to protect the skin. Sunburn in a very light-skinned person may occur in less than 15 minutes of midday sun exposure, while a dark-skinned person may tolerate the same exposure for hours.
That doesn’t say “immunity to sunburn” (it also doesn’t say much about “a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races”, since the variable “levels of melanin in the skin” screens off the variable “race”).
Fact-checking, via sources similar to Kawoomba’s, leads to the milder claim that melanin in the skin merely provides protection against sunburn, and not immunity. Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race; though it is not strictly equivalent (albinism is possible among black people) it is reasonable to say that black people, in general, are more resistant to sunburn than white people.
Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
There is a largish argumentative gap from “some genes confer a desirable resilience to sunburn” (possibly conferring some less desirable traits at the same time) to “some races enjoy unalloyed advantages over others by virtue of heredity”.
Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
What about this: levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with the geographic provenance of one’s ancestors in the late 15th century?
Somewhat more specific; still not enough to support a coherent notion of “race”, as geographic latitude becomes a confounder. For instance, there’s mounting evidence that “similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness” (from WP).
Classifiers such as “black”, “white”, and so on do not carve nature at its joints.
“similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness”
Well… duh. I don’t think anyone would have expected that the reason sub-Saharan Africans, south Indians, and Australian Aborigines are all dark-skinned, or Europeans, Ainu and Inuit are all pale-skinned, is that they’re closely related.
Classifiers such as “black”, “white”, and so on do not carve nature at its joints.
Those labels aren’t intended to be literal. Colin Powell is still generally considered “black”, despite being pale-ish.
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
Well, there have been such categorisations in the past. Consider, for example, Apartheid—the entire legal system enshrined under that name depended on a categorisation along racial lines. However, it was far from a perfect classification; to quote from the linked section of the article:
The Apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was Coloured. … Different members of the same family found themselves in different race groups.
(What was then done with that classification was racism in an extremely negative sense, a very conscious and institutionalised form of racism-3; however, the point of the citation is merely that there were laws laid down that served as a racial categorisation, however flawed).
There is a largish argumentative gap from “some genes confer a desirable resilience to sunburn” (possibly conferring some less desirable traits at the same time) to “some races enjoy unalloyed advantages over others by virtue of heredity”.
Oh yes. Agreed. One very minor desirable feature does not make an unalloyed advantage, especially when paired with an unknown number of other traits, which may be positive or negative.
I was only responding to what you quoted, which is that “high levels of melanin in the skin lead to an immunity to sunburn”. Immunity is—as could be expected—a poor choice of words and strictly speaking wrong, but “high degree of resilience / protection” would be valid.
a poor choice of words and strictly speaking wrong
That’s the point of a fact-check—saying things that are strictly speaking true, rather than things that are strictly speaking wrong.
If you’ll forgive me for quoting chapter and verse, “In argument strive for exact honesty, for the sake of others and also yourself: the part of yourself that distorts what you say to others also distorts your own thoughts.”
One of life’s crazy coincidences: I just at this very moment looked at that same page and took a quote from it for another comment I just now submitted, before reading yours.
That aside, my “strictly speaking wrong” was, unfortunately, also strictly speaking wrong. For example, the jargon “x gene variant confers a certain immunity versus y disease” is also in good use—otherwise the word “immunity” could never be used period. Vaccinations wouldn’t be described by conferring immunity, when sometimes they just limit the extent of the infection to a subclinical level. So in some sense, “immunity to sunburn” isn’t even wrong, strictly speaking, just an unfortunately chosen phrase in a forum such as this (which always checks for boundary cases and not for “true in a more general sense”, a habit I myself indulge in too much).
I’d normally agree, but in this case CCC explicitly said “black people can’t get sunburnt”.
OTOH, I only get sunburnt if I do something deliberate such as sunbathing for an hour around noon in July in Italy, and even then it’s relatively mild, and I’m not quite black; I’d expect darker-skinned people to be even more resistant than that. So I’d say that whereas black people can get sunburnt in principle, for all practical purposes they can’t. This is still a hell of an advantage compared to the pale northern Europeans I knew who got sunburned by walking around in November in Ireland.
Some people might object to calling racism-1 racism, and instead will decide to call it “human biodiversity” or “race realism”. I think this is bullshit. Just fucking call it what it is. Own up to your beliefs.
Well, if you think races are a real thing, then calling this belief race realism seems fairly clear, and helps distinguish your belief from type-3 racism. Human biodiversity implies something more like support for eugenics, to me, since you’re saying that humans are diverse, not that race is a functional Schelling point.
Stripped of connotations, “race realism” to me implies the belief that empirical clusters exist within the space of human diversity and that they map to the traditional racial classifications, but not necessarily that those clusters affect intellectual or ethical dimensions to any significant degree. I’m not sure if there’s an non-euphemistic value-neutral term for racism-1 in the ancestor’s typology, but that isn’t it.
(The first thing that comes to mind is “scientific racism”, which I’d happily use for ideas like this in a 19th- or early 20th-century context, but I have qualms about using it in a present-day context.)
Stripped of connotations, “race realism” to me implies the belief that empirical clusters exist within the space of human diversity and that they map to the traditional racial classifications, but not necessarily that those clusters affect intellectual or ethical dimensions to any significant degree.
I share considerably more of my heritage with Asians than I do with Caucasians. However, I do not have the same coloration.
So, if one is racist-1, how would one treat me? Am I white, for appearing white? Am I Asian, for the overwhelming number of my ancestors’ coloration? In other words, what makes race? My genetics, or my skin? If it is my skin, then it would appear race is nothing more than a bit of culture, with no real advantages or disadvantages attached save those given by appearance.
For the record, I consider myself of no race save human, and expect others to see me as a human being.
Racist-1 reporting in. Believing that ethnicity is correlated with desirable or undesirable traits does not in itself warrant any particular kind of behavior. So how would I treat you? Like a person. If I had more evidence about you (your appearance, time spent with you, your interests, your abilities, etc), that would become more refined.
Am I white, for appearing white? Am I Asian, for the overwhelming number of my ancestors’ coloration? In other words, what makes race? My genetics, or my skin? If it is my skin, then it would appear race is nothing more than a bit of culture, with no real advantages or disadvantages attached save those given by appearance.
Taboo “race”. Categories aren’t really meaningful in edge cases.
You are who you are, and there are many facts entangled with who you are.
expect others to see me as a human being.
Does this have any actual meaning? How does it square with the virtue of narrowness (a lot more can be said about this particular semi-Asian LWer called Osiris than can be said about “a human”)?
How do you exclude race and stuff from what we are allowed to consider, without excluding things like your name and personality?
That said, were someone to describe Eugine Nier or their positions as “racist,” I suspect they would respond that “racist” means lots of different things to different people and is not a useful descriptor.
You and I both participated in a thread Eugine Nier about the dynamics involved in talking about race and sex differences two weeks ago—link although we didn’t debate the issue itself. (I’m not sure so I’ll ask—are we discouraged from debating so-called “mindkilling” topics here?)
anyway, I had assumed he was an outlier on lesswrong, and that most folks here would take an agnostic-leaning-not-racist stance in the issue.
I wonder if we can cram this question into the next demographic poll?
There is a strong local convention against discussing topics for which certain positions are strongly enough affiliated with tribal identities that the identity-signalling aspects of arguments for/against those positions can easily interfere with the evidence-exploring aspects of those arguments. (Colloquially, “mindkilling” topics. as you say.)
That said, there’s also a strong local convention against refraining from discussing topics just because such identity-signalling aspects exist.
So mostly, the tradition is we argue about what the tradition is.
For my own part, I prefer to avoid partisan-political discussions (sometimes “Blue/Green discussions” colloquially) here, but I don’t mind policy-political discussions. In the US, race is more typically the former than the latter.
I had assumed he was an outlier on lesswrong,
I certainly agree that he’s an outlier.
that most folks here would take an agnostic-leaning-not-racist stance in the issue.
There are interpretations of this sentence I would agree with, and interpretations I would not agree with, and I would expect the exercise of disentangling the various interpretations to be difficult.
Analogous to “agnostic atheist”. A person who, in absence of compelling evidence for or against the claim that racial differences in intelligence are genetic in origin, prefers to refrain from opining on the issue. If pressed for an answer such a person would guess that racial differences are probably not genetic, because they judge this to be the more parsimonious answer.
Well...on one hand, mindkilling, strong social pressure to signal non-racism, political undertones, potentially triggering topic for people on the receiving end of racism, etc.
On the other hand, working through this practical question is a great way to learn about a variety of topics which are of interest to this forum (factors which contribute to the traits we associate with intelligence, how we test intelligence, etc).
I suppose this is largely a question of how dispassionately people can handle this sort of issue. I think a early teenage version of me would probably have have gotten defensive at the allegation that my ethnic group was genetically inferior, but I think most people on Lesswrong seem to be able to maintain a level of abstraction that keeps things from getting heated. Although, I’m not sure that people could resist the temptation to debate, rather than to contribute relevant information and update accordingly.
My general impression is that there actually two different fault-lines about race -related questions on Lesswrong.
One is: Are there biologically-determined differences in politically-sensitive traits like intelligence between races? (One should note here that a) there is more to biology than genes and b) “race” is an amorphous term and the layman’s use of it based on a rough eyeballing of skin color doesn’t necessarily line up well with “genetic cohort”; a desire not to have to explain these nuances over and over again is another reason for people to take the agnostic-leaning against position.)
The second fault line I’ve observed is about statistical discrimination—given an individual from a supposedly “inferior” cohort who has nevertheless provided independent bits of information about their intelligence (e.g. scored far above the mean on an IQ test) , should one argue that the more individualized bits screen off whatever information one might have argued just based on their cohort, or should one privilege the cohort information and assume the individual bits of information would just regress to the mean on further investigation. (Someone who is less inclined to the former position than I am might do a better job phrasing the latter; I suspect I’m strawmanning it somewhat but I leave it to its advocates to articulate it better.)
Confirming: the question you’re referring to is “are racial differences in intelligence genetic in origin?”
is a great way to learn about a variety of topics which are of interest to this forum (factors which contribute to the traits we associate with intelligence, how we test intelligence, etc).
It would surprise me if the differential benefits to be gained from this, relative to instead exploring some other question with fewer mindkilling, signalling, blue/green, etc, aspects, was worth the differential costs.
and yes, I think you’re right. Although in any study of intelligence, cultural differences will inevitably become involved, and someone is eventually going to bring up population-level genetic differences as a confounding factor. Preferably, it’s kept as a side issue, rather than the main one.
I know of at least three possible minds for this. Pretty sure we all assumed we were typical until talking about it.
One friend of mine is like you, and finds music horribly distracting to reading.
Another friend becomes practically deaf while reading, so music is just irrelevant.
I, on the third hand, can sing along to songs I know, while reading. I can possibly even do this for simple songs I don’t know. I would suspect this is not optimal reading from a comprehension or speed perspective, but it’s a lot of fun.
Pretty much the same here. I can only read when I tune out the lyrics. Well, not quite true, I can certainly read, but the content just doesn’t register.
I’m somewhat of an emotional Luddite—whenever a new technology like Google Glass or something comes out I groan and I think about all the ways it’s going to further detach people from reality. Transhumanism was disgusting to me before I found this site, while reading the sequences I started to buy into the philosophy, now a few months after reading the sequences for the first time I rationally know it is a very very good thing but still emotionally find it a little unappealing.
Interesting. If I may; what is it about technology/futurism you find so unappealing?
Interesting. If I may; what is it about technology/futurism you find so unappealing?
I think it would take a very long response to truly answer this, unfortunately. A lot of it has to do with exposing myself in the past through friends, media, and my surroundings to hippie-ish memeplexes that sort of reinforce this view. (Right now I go to school on a dairy farm, for example). Also in the past I had extremely irrational views on a lot of issues, one of which was a form of neo-luddism, and that idea is still in my brain somewhere.
Also, I have to ask: why the username?
I find it amusing, I guess. I use it on a few sites. It does sort of clash with the writing style I’m using here, I’ll admit.
I’m a male senior in high school. I found this site in November or so, and started reading the sequences voraciously.
I feel like I might be a somewhat atypical LessWrong reader. For one, I’m on the young side. Also, if you saw me and talked to me, you would probably not guess that I was a “rationalist” from the way I act/dress but, I don’t know, perhaps you might. When I first found this website, I was pretty sure I wanted to be an art major, now I’m pretty sure I want to be an art/comp sci double major and go into indie game development (correlation may or may not imply causation). I also love rap music (and not the “good” kind like Talib Kweli) and I read most of the sequences while listening to Lil Wayne, Lil B, Gucci Mane, Future, Young Jeezy, etc. I occasionally record my own terrible rap songs with my friends in my friend’s basement. Before finding this site, the word “rational” had powerful negative affect around it. Science was far and away my least favorite subject in school. I have absolutely no interest at the moment in learning any science or anything about science, except for maybe neuroscience, and maybe metaphysics. I’ve always found the humanities more interesting, although I do enjoy some abstract math stuff. I’m somewhat of an emotional Luddite—whenever a new technology like Google Glass or something comes out I groan and I think about all the ways it’s going to further detach people from reality. Transhumanism was disgusting to me before I found this site, while reading the sequences I started to buy into the philosophy, now a few months after reading the sequences for the first time I rationally know it is a very very good thing but still emotionally find it a little unappealing.
After finding this site, I have gone from having a vaguely confused worldview to completely “buying into” most of the philosophy espoused here and on on other sites in the rationalist-sphere such as Overcoming Bias, blogs of top contributors, etc. (I’m not a racist yet though), and constantly thinking throughout my day about things like utility functions, sunken cost fallacies, mind projection fallacy, etc. I feel like finding this website has immeasurably improved my life, which I know might be a weird thing to say, but I do think this is true. First of all, my thinking is so much clearer, and moral/philosophical/political questions that seemed like a paradox before now seem to have obvious solutions. More importantly, after being inspired by stuff like The Science of Winning at Life, I now spend several hours a day on self-improvement projects, which I never would have thought to do without first becoming a rationalist. This community also lead me to vipassana meditation, the practice of which I think has improved my life so far. I feel like this new focus on rational thinking and self improvement will only continue to pay dividends in the future, as it’s only been a few months since I developed this new attitude towards life. It may be overly optimistic, but I really do see finding this site and becoming a rationalist as a major turning point in my life and I’m very grateful to Eliezer and co. for revealing to me the secrets of the universe.
lulz. You have my attention.
You sound like quite an intelligent and awesome person. (bad rap, art, rationality. only an interesting person could have such a nonstandard combination of interests. Boring people come prepackaged...)
Glad to have you around.
It’s only a matter of time ;)
I remember that feeling. I’m more skeptical now, but I can’t help but notice more awesomeness in my life due to LW. It really is quite cool isn’t it?
This is the part that’s been elusive to me. What kind of things are you doing? How do you knwo you are actually getting benefits and not just producing that “this is awesome” feeling which unfortunately often gets detached from realty?
keep your identity small.
Where do you live? Do you attend meetups?
Thank you :)
I guess essentially what I do is try to read self-help stuff. I try to spend half my “work time”, so to speak, doing this, and half working on creative projects. I’ve read both books and assorted stuff on the internet. My goal for April is to read a predetermined list of six self-help books. I’m currently on track for this goal.
So far I’ve read
Part of the massive tome that is Psychological Self Help by Clayton Tucker-Ladd
Success—How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Halverson
How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes
59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman
Thinking Things Done by PJ Eby
the first 300 pages of Feeling Good by David Burns, the last 200 seem to be mostly about the chemical nature of depression and have little practical value, so I’m saving them for later
If meditation books count
Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana
most of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram
I also have been keeping a diary, which is something I’ve wanted to get in the habit of all my life but have never been able to do. Every day, in addition to summarizing the day’s events, I rate my happiness out of ten, my productivity out of ten, and speculate on how I can do better.
I’ve only been keeping the diary a month, which is too small of a sample size. However, during this time, I had three weeks off for spring break, and I told myself that I would work as much as I could on self-improvement and personal projects. I ended up not really getting that much done, unfortunately. However, I managed to put in a median of… probably about five hours every day, and more importantly, I was in a fantastic mood the whole break. It might even have been the best mood I’ve been in for an extended time in the last few years. In the past, every time I have had a break from school, I ended up in a depressed, lonely, lethargic state, where I surfed the internet for hours on end, in which I paradoxically want to go back to school knowing that as soon as I do, I’ll want to go back on break. The fact that I avoided this state for the first time I can remember since middle school is a major improvement for me. Additionally, the fact that I have managed to keep up the habit of diary-writing and meditating for a month so far is an achievement, knowing my past.
Also, even though I found How to Talk to Anyone mostly useless (it’s written in a very white-collar, “how to network with the big winners” mindset that doesn’t apply to my life), the one major Obvious In Retrospect thing I got from it was that in general I should never complain or criticize anyone. I used to think I was charmingly cynical. Since finishing it about four days ago, I have applied this advice, and I think, although it’s very hard to tell, that I have made a person who previously harbored dislike for me view me as a someone pleasant to be around. Only one data point, but still.
I will admit that it is very possible that I am merely cultivating the “this is awesome” feeling. However, if reading scientifically minded self-help books isn’t the solution, then what could possibly be? Meditation, but then what if that turns out to be a sham too? Therefore, I feel like it’s rational to at least try the tactics that seem to have the highest chance of success before concluding that self-improvement is hopeless. Plus, I enjoy doing it.
I live in Columbus, OH, but I go to boarding school in a rural area. I will probably go to college in St. Louis next year. If there’s ever a meetup nearby me, I would love to go.
I think you need to talk to daenerys, IIRC, she runs the Ohio stuff.
Actually doing, for one, though it sounds like you’re doing that too.
yet. Some day you will want to take over the world, and then you will need to talk to big winners.
I’ve had this problem, too (I’ve got so much free time, why is it all getting pissed away?). Have you tried beeminder? I cannot overstate how much that site is just conscientiousness in a can, so to speak.
Thanks for the list. A variety of evidence is making me want to check out the self-help community more closely.
I have yet to read a self-help book that doesn’t emphatically state “If you do not take care to apply these principles as much as you can in your daily life, you will not gain anything from reading this book.” So, yeah, I agree, and by “reading self-help” I mean “reading self-help and applying the knowledge”.
I’ve seen it, and checked it out a little, but I can’t think of any way to quantify the stuff that I have problems getting done. Also I wish there was an option to donate money to charity, but I guess they have to make money somehow.
I have yet to see this. Which major LW contributor is advocating racism, and where can I read about it?
I’m sorry, I can’t really remember any specific links to discussions, and I don’t really know exactly who believes in what ideas, but I feel like there are a lot of people here, and especially people who show up in the comments, who believe that certain races are inherently more or less intelligent/violent/whatever on average than others. I specifically remember nyan_sandwich saying that he believes this, calling himself a “proto-racist” but that’s the only example I can recall.
The “reactionary” philosophy is discussed a lot here too, and I feel like most people who subscribe to this philosophy are racist. Mencius Moldbug is the biggest name in this, I believe. Also I’ve seen a lot of links to this site http://isteve.blogspot.com/ which seems to basically be arguing in favor of racism. This blog post http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/ contains a discussion of these issues.
The one basically follows from the other, I think. This isn’t a reactionary site by any means; the last poll showed single-digit support for the philosophy here, if it’s fair to consider it a political philosophy exclusive with liberalism, libertarianism, and/or conservatism. However, neoreaction/Moldbuggery gets a less hostile reception here than it does on most non-reactionary sites, probably because it’s an intensely contrarian philosophy and LW seems to have a cultural fondness for clever contrarians, and we have do have several vocal reactionaries among our commentariat. Among them, perhaps unfortunately, are most of the people talking about race.
It’s also pretty hard to dissociate neoreaction from… let’s say “certain hypotheses concerning race”, since “racism” is too slippery and value-laden a term and most of the alternatives are too euphemistic. The reasons for this seem somewhat complicated, but I think we can trace a good chunk of them to just how much of a taboo race is among what Moldbug calls the Cathedral; if your basic theory is that there’s this vast formless cultural force shaping what everyone can and can’t talk about without being branded monstrous, it looks a little silly if that force’s greatest bugbear turns out to be right after all.
(There do seem to be a few people who gravitate to neoreaction as an intellectual framework that justifies preexisting racism, but I don’t think Moldbug—or most of the neoreactionary commentators here—fall into that category. I usually start favoring this theory when someone seems to be dwelling on race to the exclusion of even other facets of neoreaction.)
If someone were to correctly point out genetic differences between groups (let’s assume correctness as a hypothetical), would that be—in your opinion − 1) racist and reprehensible, 2) racist but not reprehensible, or (in the hypothetical) 3) not racist?
Would your opinion differ if those genetic differences were relating to a) IQ, or b) lactose intolerance?
Yes to the second question, in that I would give the answer of 2 for A and 3 for B.
Racism has at least three definitions colloquially that I can think of
1: A belief that there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races, and that certain races have more or less desirable characteristics than others. This is the definition that Wikipedia uses. Not that many educated people are racist according to this definition, I think.
2: The tendency to jump to conclusions about people based on their skin color, which can manifest as a consequence of racism-1, or unconsciously believing in racism-1. Pretty much everyone is racist to some extent according to this definition.
3: Contempt or dislike of people based on their skin color, i.e. “I hate Asians”. You could further divide this into consciously and unconsciously harboring these beliefs if you wanted.
In the sexism debate, these three definitions are sort of given separate names: “belief in differences between the sexes”, “sexism”, and “misogyny” respectively.
Racism-3 seems to be pretty clearly evil, and racism-2 causes lots of suffering, but racism-1 basically by definition cannot be evil if it is a true belief and you abide by the Litany of Tarski or whatever. But because they have the same name, it gets confusing.
Some people might object to calling racism-1 racism, and instead will decide to call it “human biodiversity” or “race realism”. I think this is bullshit. Just fucking call it what it is. Own up to your beliefs.
(I am not racist-1, for the record.)
“What it fucking is” is a straw man. ie. “and that certain races have more or less desirable characteristics than others” is not what the people you are disparaging are likely to say, for all that it is vaguely related.
Seeing this exhortation used to try to shame people into accepting your caricature as their own position fills me with the same sort of disgust and contempt that you have for racism. Failure to “own up” and profess their actual beliefs is approximately the opposite of the failure mode they are engaging in (that of not keeping their mouth shut when socially expedient). In much the same way suicide bombers are not cowards.
According to Wikipedia, “racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.”
This definition appears to exactly match the beliefs of the people I am talking about. I guess it’s all in how you define superior, inferior, more desirable, etc. But most of the discourse revolves around intelligence which is a pretty important trait and I don’t think these people believe that black people, for example, have traits that make up for their supposed lack of intelligence, or that Asians have flaws that make up for their supposed above-average intelligence (and no, dick size doesn’t count). In particular, these people seem to believe that an innate lack of intelligence is to blame for the fact that so many African countries are in total chaos and unless you believe in a soul or something, it’s hard to imagine that a race physically incapable of sustaining civilization is not in some meaningful way “inferior”.
If you hold a belief that is described with a name that has negative connotations, you have two options. You can either hide behind some sort of euphemism, or you can just come out and say “yes I do believe that, and I am proud of it”. I think the second choice is much more noble, and if I were to adopt these beliefs, I would just go ahead and describe myself as a racist. It’s not really a major issue though and I probably shouldn’t have used the word “fucking” in my previous post.
But anyway, since the term is completely accurate, the only reason I can think of to not call the people I’m describing racists is because it might offend them, which is deeply ironic.
There is also a third option: Keep your identity small and pick your battles. Just because the society happens to disagree with you in one specific topic, that is no reason to make that one topic central to your life, and to let all other people define you by that one topic regardless of what other traits or abilities you have—which will probably happen if you are open about that disagreement.
Imagine that you live in a society where people believe that 2+2=5, and they also believe that anyone who says 2+2=4 is an evil person and must be killed. (There seems to be a good reason for that. Hundred years ago there was an evil robot who destroyed half of the planet, and it is know that the robot believed that 2+2=4. Because this is the most known fact about the robot, people concluded that beliving that 2+2=4 must be the source of all evil, and needs to be eradicated from the society. We don’t want any more planetary destruction, do we?) What are your choices? You could say that 2+2=4 and get killed. Or you could say that 2+2=4.999, avoid being killed, only get a few suspicious looks and be rejected at a few job interviews; and hope that if people keep doing that long enough, at one moment it will become acceptable to say that 2+2=4.9, or even 4.5, and perhaps one day no one will be killed for saying that it equals 4.
The third option is to enjoy food and wine, and refuse to comment publicly on how much 2+2 is. Perhaps have a few trusted friends you can discuss maths with.
Okay, but all I’m saying is that if you do decide to talk about your beliefs, you should use a more honest term for your belief system. I definitely agree with you that racists should not go around talking publicly about their beliefs! You seem to have inferred something from my post that I didn’t mean, sorry about that.
Interesting. I’m fond of using a negative-connotation framing of myself and my beliefs, but I wouldn’t call it “honest”.
In general, socially admitted “beliefs” are actually actions. I see no reason to optimize them for anything other than effectiveness.
(LW is different. There is enough openness here and epistemic rationality norms that it’s actually a good idea to share your beliefs and get criticism.)
Of course, what I usually do is saying “2+2>3” when I want to sound politically correct and “2+2<6” when I want to sound meta-contrarian. (Translating back from the metaphor, those would be “for all we know, achievement gaps may be at least partly caused by nurture” and “for all we know, achievement gaps may be at least partly caused by nature” respectively.)
I think that “group as a whole” is the key word. Men are taller than women in average, and being tall is usually considered desirable; is pointing that out sexist? I’d say that until you treat that fact as a reason to consider a gender “as a whole” more desirable than another, it isn’t.
Most people do consider a gender as a whole more desirable than another … (and can also supply some “facts” on which that preference is based).
Possibly related: Overcoming Bias : Mate Racism.
Doesn’t contradict what I said, because I never claimed that most people aren’t sexist. (And BTW, I’m not sure whether what you mean by “desirable” is what was meant in WP’s definition of racism. I’m not usually sexually attracted to males or Asians, but I consider this a fact about me, not about males or Asians, and I don’t consider myself sexist or racist for that.)
(EDIT: to be more pedantic, one could say that the fact that I’m normally only attracted to people with characteristics X, Y, and Z is a fact about me and that the fact that males/Asians seldom have characteristics X, Y and Z is a fact about them, though.)
If they believed you, consistency bias might make them lean more toward racist-2 and racist-3. Or it might shame them into lowering their belief in the entire reactionary memeplex, which would be epistemically sub-optimal. It might lower their status, or even their earning ability if justified accusations of racism became associated with their offline identities. There’s many ways leveraging emotionally loaded terms can have negative effects.
I LOL’ed at that.
Why not?
Are you allowed to ask “why not”?
Isn’t this one of those situations where the burden of proof lies on the claim?
It is known that human populations separately evolved for at least 15000 years, facing different selection pressures that have produced many differences in physiology, appearance, size, prevalence to deseises, even what foods are edible. It would take some serious reasoning to postulate that these differences are magically limited to things that don’t affect people’s abilities and quality of life.
It is generally accepted that ethiopians (or is it kenyans?) are good at marathons, and that ashkenazi jews have higher average IQ scores and win more nobel prizes. There’s two well accepted racial differences in desirable traits right there, so we know it’s possible. Unless there’s some way to explain ashkenazi genius that removes the correlation with race?
Further, there’s quite a variety of IQ surveys, life outcome data, and other such that seems to self-correlate really well and hold up under various controls, and correlates quite mysteriously with race.
So there’s a-priori reason to believe in racial differences, and such differences are in fact observed.
If I left it at this, what would your response be? Would it be to dispute that such differences are innate and caused by genetics, as opposed to cultural forces? Forgive me if that’s not your response; it’s usually a good bet. If that is your response, note that the conversation is now about the details of the corellation, not whether it exists.
That is, the whether question is resolved in favor of racism. The open question is now how:
It could be genetic.
It could be cultural.
It could be imposed by expectations.
But whether some kid is smart because his ancestors are smart, or because he caught a memetic smartness in childhood, or because society tells him he should be smart because of his skin color, is irrelevant to someone who is simply wondering if a sample of kids who have the same background will be smart or not on average.
So why reject the above racism-1; that different races have different prevalence of desirable traits, so that learning about race can tell you about such traits? Racial differences are an observation to be explained, not even a question that could go either way.
As far as racism-1 goes, I am told that high levels of melanin in the skin lead to an immunity to sunburn. So black people can’t get sunburnt—that’s a desirable characteristic, to my mind. (There’s still negative effects—such as a headache—from being in the sun too long. Just not sunburn).
Science:
Race isn’t exactly the same as skin colour. I wouldn’t expect Colin Powell to be much more resistant to sunburn than myself.
Did you fact-check that?
Source
That doesn’t say “immunity to sunburn” (it also doesn’t say much about “a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races”, since the variable “levels of melanin in the skin” screens off the variable “race”).
Fact-checking, via sources similar to Kawoomba’s, leads to the milder claim that melanin in the skin merely provides protection against sunburn, and not immunity. Levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with race; though it is not strictly equivalent (albinism is possible among black people) it is reasonable to say that black people, in general, are more resistant to sunburn than white people.
This smacks of circular reasoning—for a correlation to be demonstrated, you’d have to know that “there is a meaningful way to categorize human beings into races ” to start with. So, this too needs a citation.
There is a largish argumentative gap from “some genes confer a desirable resilience to sunburn” (possibly conferring some less desirable traits at the same time) to “some races enjoy unalloyed advantages over others by virtue of heredity”.
What about this: levels of melanin in the skin are very strongly correlated with the geographic provenance of one’s ancestors in the late 15th century?
Somewhat more specific; still not enough to support a coherent notion of “race”, as geographic latitude becomes a confounder. For instance, there’s mounting evidence that “similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness” (from WP).
Classifiers such as “black”, “white”, and so on do not carve nature at its joints.
Well… duh. I don’t think anyone would have expected that the reason sub-Saharan Africans, south Indians, and Australian Aborigines are all dark-skinned, or Europeans, Ainu and Inuit are all pale-skinned, is that they’re closely related.
Those labels aren’t intended to be literal. Colin Powell is still generally considered “black”, despite being pale-ish.
Well, there have been such categorisations in the past. Consider, for example, Apartheid—the entire legal system enshrined under that name depended on a categorisation along racial lines. However, it was far from a perfect classification; to quote from the linked section of the article:
(What was then done with that classification was racism in an extremely negative sense, a very conscious and institutionalised form of racism-3; however, the point of the citation is merely that there were laws laid down that served as a racial categorisation, however flawed).
Oh yes. Agreed. One very minor desirable feature does not make an unalloyed advantage, especially when paired with an unknown number of other traits, which may be positive or negative.
I was only responding to what you quoted, which is that “high levels of melanin in the skin lead to an immunity to sunburn”. Immunity is—as could be expected—a poor choice of words and strictly speaking wrong, but “high degree of resilience / protection” would be valid.
That’s the point of a fact-check—saying things that are strictly speaking true, rather than things that are strictly speaking wrong.
If you’ll forgive me for quoting chapter and verse, “In argument strive for exact honesty, for the sake of others and also yourself: the part of yourself that distorts what you say to others also distorts your own thoughts.”
One of life’s crazy coincidences: I just at this very moment looked at that same page and took a quote from it for another comment I just now submitted, before reading yours.
That aside, my “strictly speaking wrong” was, unfortunately, also strictly speaking wrong. For example, the jargon “x gene variant confers a certain immunity versus y disease” is also in good use—otherwise the word “immunity” could never be used period. Vaccinations wouldn’t be described by conferring immunity, when sometimes they just limit the extent of the infection to a subclinical level. So in some sense, “immunity to sunburn” isn’t even wrong, strictly speaking, just an unfortunately chosen phrase in a forum such as this (which always checks for boundary cases and not for “true in a more general sense”, a habit I myself indulge in too much).
I’d normally agree, but in this case CCC explicitly said “black people can’t get sunburnt”.
OTOH, I only get sunburnt if I do something deliberate such as sunbathing for an hour around noon in July in Italy, and even then it’s relatively mild, and I’m not quite black; I’d expect darker-skinned people to be even more resistant than that. So I’d say that whereas black people can get sunburnt in principle, for all practical purposes they can’t. This is still a hell of an advantage compared to the pale northern Europeans I knew who got sunburned by walking around in November in Ireland.
Well, if you think races are a real thing, then calling this belief race realism seems fairly clear, and helps distinguish your belief from type-3 racism. Human biodiversity implies something more like support for eugenics, to me, since you’re saying that humans are diverse, not that race is a functional Schelling point.
Stripped of connotations, “race realism” to me implies the belief that empirical clusters exist within the space of human diversity and that they map to the traditional racial classifications, but not necessarily that those clusters affect intellectual or ethical dimensions to any significant degree. I’m not sure if there’s an non-euphemistic value-neutral term for racism-1 in the ancestor’s typology, but that isn’t it.
(The first thing that comes to mind is “scientific racism”, which I’d happily use for ideas like this in a 19th- or early 20th-century context, but I have qualms about using it in a present-day context.)
Ah, good point.
But lactose intolerance arguably is a less desirable characteristic than lactose tolerance! :-)
I share considerably more of my heritage with Asians than I do with Caucasians. However, I do not have the same coloration.
So, if one is racist-1, how would one treat me? Am I white, for appearing white? Am I Asian, for the overwhelming number of my ancestors’ coloration? In other words, what makes race? My genetics, or my skin? If it is my skin, then it would appear race is nothing more than a bit of culture, with no real advantages or disadvantages attached save those given by appearance.
For the record, I consider myself of no race save human, and expect others to see me as a human being.
Racist-1 reporting in. Believing that ethnicity is correlated with desirable or undesirable traits does not in itself warrant any particular kind of behavior. So how would I treat you? Like a person. If I had more evidence about you (your appearance, time spent with you, your interests, your abilities, etc), that would become more refined.
Taboo “race”. Categories aren’t really meaningful in edge cases.
You are who you are, and there are many facts entangled with who you are.
Does this have any actual meaning? How does it square with the virtue of narrowness (a lot more can be said about this particular semi-Asian LWer called Osiris than can be said about “a human”)?
How do you exclude race and stuff from what we are allowed to consider, without excluding things like your name and personality?
If it helps, the LW user I most consistently associate with the “certain races are inherently more or less intelligent/violent/whatever on average than others” (as gothgirl420666 says below) is Eugine Nier. A quick Google search (“site:http://lesswrong.com Eugine_Nier rac intelligence”) turns up just about any proxy measure of intelligence, from SAT scores, to results of IQ tests, to crime rates, will correlate with race, for example.
That said, were someone to describe Eugine Nier or their positions as “racist,” I suspect they would respond that “racist” means lots of different things to different people and is not a useful descriptor.
You and I both participated in a thread Eugine Nier about the dynamics involved in talking about race and sex differences two weeks ago—link although we didn’t debate the issue itself. (I’m not sure so I’ll ask—are we discouraged from debating so-called “mindkilling” topics here?)
anyway, I had assumed he was an outlier on lesswrong, and that most folks here would take an agnostic-leaning-not-racist stance in the issue.
I wonder if we can cram this question into the next demographic poll?
There is a strong local convention against discussing topics for which certain positions are strongly enough affiliated with tribal identities that the identity-signalling aspects of arguments for/against those positions can easily interfere with the evidence-exploring aspects of those arguments. (Colloquially, “mindkilling” topics. as you say.)
That said, there’s also a strong local convention against refraining from discussing topics just because such identity-signalling aspects exist.
So mostly, the tradition is we argue about what the tradition is.
For my own part, I prefer to avoid partisan-political discussions (sometimes “Blue/Green discussions” colloquially) here, but I don’t mind policy-political discussions. In the US, race is more typically the former than the latter.
I certainly agree that he’s an outlier.
There are interpretations of this sentence I would agree with, and interpretations I would not agree with, and I would expect the exercise of disentangling the various interpretations to be difficult.
Analogous to “agnostic atheist”. A person who, in absence of compelling evidence for or against the claim that racial differences in intelligence are genetic in origin, prefers to refrain from opining on the issue. If pressed for an answer such a person would guess that racial differences are probably not genetic, because they judge this to be the more parsimonious answer.
Well...on one hand, mindkilling, strong social pressure to signal non-racism, political undertones, potentially triggering topic for people on the receiving end of racism, etc.
On the other hand, working through this practical question is a great way to learn about a variety of topics which are of interest to this forum (factors which contribute to the traits we associate with intelligence, how we test intelligence, etc).
I suppose this is largely a question of how dispassionately people can handle this sort of issue. I think a early teenage version of me would probably have have gotten defensive at the allegation that my ethnic group was genetically inferior, but I think most people on Lesswrong seem to be able to maintain a level of abstraction that keeps things from getting heated. Although, I’m not sure that people could resist the temptation to debate, rather than to contribute relevant information and update accordingly.
My general impression is that there actually two different fault-lines about race -related questions on Lesswrong.
One is: Are there biologically-determined differences in politically-sensitive traits like intelligence between races? (One should note here that a) there is more to biology than genes and b) “race” is an amorphous term and the layman’s use of it based on a rough eyeballing of skin color doesn’t necessarily line up well with “genetic cohort”; a desire not to have to explain these nuances over and over again is another reason for people to take the agnostic-leaning against position.)
The second fault line I’ve observed is about statistical discrimination—given an individual from a supposedly “inferior” cohort who has nevertheless provided independent bits of information about their intelligence (e.g. scored far above the mean on an IQ test) , should one argue that the more individualized bits screen off whatever information one might have argued just based on their cohort, or should one privilege the cohort information and assume the individual bits of information would just regress to the mean on further investigation. (Someone who is less inclined to the former position than I am might do a better job phrasing the latter; I suspect I’m strawmanning it somewhat but I leave it to its advocates to articulate it better.)
Confirming: the question you’re referring to is “are racial differences in intelligence genetic in origin?”
It would surprise me if the differential benefits to be gained from this, relative to instead exploring some other question with fewer mindkilling, signalling, blue/green, etc, aspects, was worth the differential costs.
confirmed.
and yes, I think you’re right. Although in any study of intelligence, cultural differences will inevitably become involved, and someone is eventually going to bring up population-level genetic differences as a confounding factor. Preferably, it’s kept as a side issue, rather than the main one.
Me! In this very thread!
Welcome! I’m unable to read while listening to music with words in it. I wonder how universal that is.
I know of at least three possible minds for this. Pretty sure we all assumed we were typical until talking about it.
One friend of mine is like you, and finds music horribly distracting to reading.
Another friend becomes practically deaf while reading, so music is just irrelevant.
I, on the third hand, can sing along to songs I know, while reading. I can possibly even do this for simple songs I don’t know. I would suspect this is not optimal reading from a comprehension or speed perspective, but it’s a lot of fun.
Pretty much the same here. I can only read when I tune out the lyrics. Well, not quite true, I can certainly read, but the content just doesn’t register.
Similarly. I find myself following along to the words in the song instead of the words on the page.
Welcome to LessWrong!
Interesting. If I may; what is it about technology/futurism you find so unappealing?
Also, I have to ask: why the username?
I think it would take a very long response to truly answer this, unfortunately. A lot of it has to do with exposing myself in the past through friends, media, and my surroundings to hippie-ish memeplexes that sort of reinforce this view. (Right now I go to school on a dairy farm, for example). Also in the past I had extremely irrational views on a lot of issues, one of which was a form of neo-luddism, and that idea is still in my brain somewhere.
I find it amusing, I guess. I use it on a few sites. It does sort of clash with the writing style I’m using here, I’ll admit.