I don’t like it when people insist that their favourite interpretation of a vague sentence is the correct one and accuse others of misrepresenting when people complain about other interpretations.
There is a huge difference between these two sentences:
1: “x people are stupid”
2: “The people that we socially ascribe to the race X had lower scores in IQ tests on average the last 70 years”
A lot of people in this forum equivocate the first sentence with the much weaker second one. This is classic motte and bailey.
The sentence 1 is vague and it can be interpreted in a way similar to “copper is conductive”. That interpretation(race pseudoscience) would imply the following:
a. There is a scientifically valid category of the race x.
b. There is a causal relationship(or a law of nature) between the race x and intelligence.
c. Boo x people! (because stupid is a loaded word)
There is also another controversial inference from IQ test scores to intelligence but I’m setting this aside for now.
You can’t blame people for interpreting Bostrom’s original statement in that way. Powerful people advocated for pseudoscientific theories making exactly these claims in the past, and many are still making these claims. Bostrom doesn’t explicitly disavow these claims in his apology either.
Some people here seem to be very concerned about deception by omission. Some say that if Bostrom excluded the paragraph starting by “Are there any genetic contributors to differences between groups in cognitive abilities?” that would be deception. I don’t think that’s true. But more importantly, if we are going to be concerned about omissions, a more misleading omission is him not disavowing race pseudoscience in his apology. I think his apology is currently misleading people into thinking that “race pseudoscience” interpretation of his original statements is the correct interpretation, and he is merely apologising for the slur and using a loaded word like “stupid”. Because of this, his apology provides unwarranted and harmful credibility to a pseudoscientific theory.
“I don’t like it when people insist that their favourite interpretation of a vague sentence is the correct one and accuse others of misrepresenting when people complain about other interpretations”
I definitely acknowledge that ‘X people are stupid’ can have lots of interpretations, and mine was more favourable. But to write a whole blog post assuming a very specific, negative and distinctive explanation seems a lot worse than my response in this respect.
I think rejecting “race pseudoscience” is difficult because it’s surely meaningless to just say: I reject pseudoscience.
He would have to go into all of the messy details about what he considers pseudoscience and doesn’t, which, to be honest, would probably make people even more angry, wherever he chose to draw the line.
I think his apology is currently misleading people into thinking that “race pseudoscience” interpretation of his original statements is the correct interpretation
I find it extremely hard to believe this isn’t the case.
I don’t like it when people insist that their favourite interpretation of a vague sentence is the correct one and accuse others of misrepresenting when people complain about other interpretations.
There is a huge difference between these two sentences:
1: “x people are stupid”
2: “The people that we socially ascribe to the race X had lower scores in IQ tests on average the last 70 years”
A lot of people in this forum equivocate the first sentence with the much weaker second one. This is classic motte and bailey.
The sentence 1 is vague and it can be interpreted in a way similar to “copper is conductive”. That interpretation(race pseudoscience) would imply the following:
a. There is a scientifically valid category of the race x.
b. There is a causal relationship(or a law of nature) between the race x and intelligence.
c. Boo x people! (because stupid is a loaded word)
There is also another controversial inference from IQ test scores to intelligence but I’m setting this aside for now.
You can’t blame people for interpreting Bostrom’s original statement in that way. Powerful people advocated for pseudoscientific theories making exactly these claims in the past, and many are still making these claims. Bostrom doesn’t explicitly disavow these claims in his apology either.
Some people here seem to be very concerned about deception by omission. Some say that if Bostrom excluded the paragraph starting by “Are there any genetic contributors to differences between groups in cognitive abilities?” that would be deception. I don’t think that’s true. But more importantly, if we are going to be concerned about omissions, a more misleading omission is him not disavowing race pseudoscience in his apology. I think his apology is currently misleading people into thinking that “race pseudoscience” interpretation of his original statements is the correct interpretation, and he is merely apologising for the slur and using a loaded word like “stupid”. Because of this, his apology provides unwarranted and harmful credibility to a pseudoscientific theory.
“I don’t like it when people insist that their favourite interpretation of a vague sentence is the correct one and accuse others of misrepresenting when people complain about other interpretations”
I definitely acknowledge that ‘X people are stupid’ can have lots of interpretations, and mine was more favourable. But to write a whole blog post assuming a very specific, negative and distinctive explanation seems a lot worse than my response in this respect.
I think rejecting “race pseudoscience” is difficult because it’s surely meaningless to just say: I reject pseudoscience.
He would have to go into all of the messy details about what he considers pseudoscience and doesn’t, which, to be honest, would probably make people even more angry, wherever he chose to draw the line.
I find it extremely hard to believe this isn’t the case.