I feel like listing specific examples is pretty difficult without compromising anonymity, but at least I heard a range of takes between those more mellow examples you gave and a few times even beyond what your more incendiary examples were. There are incentives to leave more shocking views implicit.
To be fair it is pretty difficult to tell to what degree some of the more extreme views were views that the people actually held, and to what degree they were just attempts to be shocking, edgy, and contrarian (or funny). They might work as status signals as well—”I can say this outrageous thing out loud and nothing is going to happen”. If push came to shove I doubt many of people saying these things would say they actually subscribe to these what they imply (I could be wrong about this, though).
It’s pretty damning of an event in my view if people are saying things beyond “some races are worse than others and don’t deserve respect.” (Or indeed, if they are literally saying just that.)
Many not themselves bigoted people in the rationalist community seem to really hate the idea that HBD people are covering up bad intentions with a veneer of just being interested in scientific questions about the genetics of intelligence because they pattern-match it to accusations of “dog-whistling” on twitter and correctly note that such accusations are epistemically dodgy, because they are so hard to disprove even in cases where they are false. (And also, the rationalists themselves I think, often are interested in scientific racist ideas simply because they want to know whether scary taboo things are true.) But these rationalists should in my view remember that:
A) It IS possible for people to “hide their power level” so to speak (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hide-your-power-level) and people on the far-right (amongst others) do do that. (Unsurprisingly, as they have strong incentives to do so.) Part of the reason this sometimes works is because most people understand that accusations that someone is doing this are sometimes made frivolously because they are to disprove.
B) There are people who hate Black people (and in the context of US HBD it usually is about Black people, even if literal Nazis care more about antisemitism), and enjoy participating in groups that are hostile to them. (These people can easily be Jewish or Asian so “but they’re not actually a white supremacist” is not much of a defense here.)
C) For extremely obvious reasons, scientific racism is extremely attractive to people who genuinely hate black people.
D) Scientific racism is extremely unpopular in the wider world of people who don’t hate Black people.
Together, A-D) make it I suspect very easy to attract the kind of people who say things more extreme than “some races are worse than others and don’t deserve respect” if you signal openess to HBD/scientific racism by attracting speakers associated with it. They also mean that some (in my view, probably most, but I can’t prove that) scientists who believe in scientific racism but claim a lack of personal prejudice are just lying about it, and actually are hostile to Black people.
Thank you for clarifying. I would regard Nathan’s first pair of examples as racist and eugenic, but importantly not his second pair. My experience at Summer Camp and Manifest was that I did not hear anything like the first pair or anything more extreme. (I did not attend Less Online or the Curtis Yarvin party so I cannot speak to what happened there). I think I understand why you did not include many concrete examples, but the accusation of racism without concrete examples mostly comes off as name-calling to me. The “HBD” label also comes off to me as name-calling, as I only ever hear it used by people attacking it, and they don’t ever seem to say much more than “racist” in their own definitions of it. I haven’t really seen people say “yes, I believe in HBD and here is what I mean by that”, but maybe I’m just not reading the right people. If you could point me at such a person that might be useful. But now it seems you are claiming to have heard significantly more extreme things than I did. And I’m curious why that is.
I feel like listing specific examples is pretty difficult without compromising anonymity, but at least I heard a range of takes between those more mellow examples you gave and a few times even beyond what your more incendiary examples were. There are incentives to leave more shocking views implicit.
To be fair it is pretty difficult to tell to what degree some of the more extreme views were views that the people actually held, and to what degree they were just attempts to be shocking, edgy, and contrarian (or funny). They might work as status signals as well—”I can say this outrageous thing out loud and nothing is going to happen”. If push came to shove I doubt many of people saying these things would say they actually subscribe to these what they imply (I could be wrong about this, though).
It’s pretty damning of an event in my view if people are saying things beyond “some races are worse than others and don’t deserve respect.” (Or indeed, if they are literally saying just that.)
Many not themselves bigoted people in the rationalist community seem to really hate the idea that HBD people are covering up bad intentions with a veneer of just being interested in scientific questions about the genetics of intelligence because they pattern-match it to accusations of “dog-whistling” on twitter and correctly note that such accusations are epistemically dodgy, because they are so hard to disprove even in cases where they are false. (And also, the rationalists themselves I think, often are interested in scientific racist ideas simply because they want to know whether scary taboo things are true.) But these rationalists should in my view remember that:
A) It IS possible for people to “hide their power level” so to speak (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hide-your-power-level) and people on the far-right (amongst others) do do that. (Unsurprisingly, as they have strong incentives to do so.) Part of the reason this sometimes works is because most people understand that accusations that someone is doing this are sometimes made frivolously because they are to disprove.
B) There are people who hate Black people (and in the context of US HBD it usually is about Black people, even if literal Nazis care more about antisemitism), and enjoy participating in groups that are hostile to them. (These people can easily be Jewish or Asian so “but they’re not actually a white supremacist” is not much of a defense here.)
C) For extremely obvious reasons, scientific racism is extremely attractive to people who genuinely hate black people.
D) Scientific racism is extremely unpopular in the wider world of people who don’t hate Black people.
Together, A-D) make it I suspect very easy to attract the kind of people who say things more extreme than “some races are worse than others and don’t deserve respect” if you signal openess to HBD/scientific racism by attracting speakers associated with it. They also mean that some (in my view, probably most, but I can’t prove that) scientists who believe in scientific racism but claim a lack of personal prejudice are just lying about it, and actually are hostile to Black people.
Yeah i agree it is pretty damning.
Thank you for clarifying. I would regard Nathan’s first pair of examples as racist and eugenic, but importantly not his second pair. My experience at Summer Camp and Manifest was that I did not hear anything like the first pair or anything more extreme. (I did not attend Less Online or the Curtis Yarvin party so I cannot speak to what happened there). I think I understand why you did not include many concrete examples, but the accusation of racism without concrete examples mostly comes off as name-calling to me. The “HBD” label also comes off to me as name-calling, as I only ever hear it used by people attacking it, and they don’t ever seem to say much more than “racist” in their own definitions of it. I haven’t really seen people say “yes, I believe in HBD and here is what I mean by that”, but maybe I’m just not reading the right people. If you could point me at such a person that might be useful. But now it seems you are claiming to have heard significantly more extreme things than I did. And I’m curious why that is.
I’m sorry that happened. Ooof.