I made the following edit to my comment above-thread:
[Edit: To be clear, by “HBD crowd” I don’t mean people who believe and say things like “intelligence is heritable” or “embryo selection towards smarter babies seems potentially very good if implemented well.” I thought this was obvious, but someone pointed out that people might file different claims under the umbrella “HBD”.]
I’m not sure this changes anything about your response, but my perspective is that a policy of “let’s not get obsessed over mapping out all possible group differences and whether they’re genetic” is (by itself) unlikely to start us down a slippery slope that ends in something like Lyssenkoism.
For illustration, I feel like my social environment has tons of people with whom you can have reasonable discussions about e.g., applications of embryo selection, but they mostly don’t want to associate with people who talk about IQ differences between groups a whole lot and act like it’s a big deal if true. So, it seems like these things are easy to keep separate (at least in some environments).
Also, I personally think the best way to make any sort of dialogue saner is NOT by picking the most controversial true thing you can think of, and then announcing with loudspeakers that you’re ready to die on that hill. (In a way, that sort of behavior would even send an “untrue” [in a “misdirection” sense discussed here] signal: Usually people die on hills that are worthy causes. So, if you’re sending the signal “group differences discourse is worth dying over,” you’re implicitly signalling that this is an important topic. But, as I argued, I don’t think it is, and creating an aura of it being important is part of what I find objectionable and where I think the label “racist” can be appropriate, if that’s the sort of motivation that draws people to these topics. So, even in terms of wanting to convey true things, I think it would be a failure of prioritization to focus on this swamp of topics.)
“group differences discourse is worth dying over,” … implicitly signalling that this is an important topic. But, as I argued, I don’t think it is
Human group differences is probably the most important topic in the world outside of AI/Singularity. The reason people are so keen to censor the topic is because it is important.
I personally think the best way to make any sort of dialogue saner is NOT by picking the most controversial true thing you can think of
Making dialogue saner is a nice goal, but people can unilaterally make dialogue insane by demanding that a topic is banned, or that certain opinions are immoral, etc.
I made the following edit to my comment above-thread:
I’m not sure this changes anything about your response, but my perspective is that a policy of “let’s not get obsessed over mapping out all possible group differences and whether they’re genetic” is (by itself) unlikely to start us down a slippery slope that ends in something like Lyssenkoism.
For illustration, I feel like my social environment has tons of people with whom you can have reasonable discussions about e.g., applications of embryo selection, but they mostly don’t want to associate with people who talk about IQ differences between groups a whole lot and act like it’s a big deal if true. So, it seems like these things are easy to keep separate (at least in some environments).
Also, I personally think the best way to make any sort of dialogue saner is NOT by picking the most controversial true thing you can think of, and then announcing with loudspeakers that you’re ready to die on that hill. (In a way, that sort of behavior would even send an “untrue” [in a “misdirection” sense discussed here] signal: Usually people die on hills that are worthy causes. So, if you’re sending the signal “group differences discourse is worth dying over,” you’re implicitly signalling that this is an important topic. But, as I argued, I don’t think it is, and creating an aura of it being important is part of what I find objectionable and where I think the label “racist” can be appropriate, if that’s the sort of motivation that draws people to these topics. So, even in terms of wanting to convey true things, I think it would be a failure of prioritization to focus on this swamp of topics.)
Human group differences is probably the most important topic in the world outside of AI/Singularity. The reason people are so keen to censor the topic is because it is important.
Making dialogue saner is a nice goal, but people can unilaterally make dialogue insane by demanding that a topic is banned, or that certain opinions are immoral, etc.