Trigger warning: racism.
I personally found this letter incredibly difficult to read. Beyond the content of the email, the apology is also terribly written, and reads like Nick, an intellectual leader in EA and longtermism, might still hold these views today to some degree. It also reads like Nick is primarily just trying to do damage control for using a racial slur, or preemptive PR work for some other reason, as opposed to focusing on the harms he may be contributing to, and the folks he is apologizing to. In this context, this also sounds like a dog-whistle:
Are there any genetic contributors to differences between groups in cognitive abilities? It is not my area of expertise, and I don’t have any particular interest in the question. I would leave to others, who have more relevant knowledge, to debate whether or not in addition to environmental factors, epigenetic or genetic factors play any role.
Myself and other EAs I know are worried about professional reputational risks of continued association with the EA movement or longtermism. This is not just a PR risk, and despite my view that this reflects terribly on Nick and any comms experts who may have been involved in this, I don’t want this to imply that the PR angle is what we should be primarily concerned about here-it isn’t! But whether or not one of the leaders of EA has held racist views for decades, and whether he still basically holds them today is important.
It has real implications for the movement’s future, including selection effects on people who may become more uncertain about the views that intellectual leaders of the EA/longtermism movement hold (and by extension, its intellectual foundations), whether EA is a community for “people like them”, and whether EA is a movement that is well-equipped to preserve a future for all of humanity. Even if they aren’t uncertain, they may be more reluctant to take risks to continue or become more outwardly involved in an increasingly controversial social movement. This may also affect the view of current and prospective donors to EA causes.
These are not concerns held solely by “EA outsiders” or those who are already unsympathetic to EA.
Reactions on Twitter-read on at your own peril!
(The EA forum seems to default to strong-upvotes on your own posts. I don’t know why this is, but I’ll probably change mine to a normal upvote if this post gets some engagement.)
Some historical context on this issue. If Bostrom’s original post was written around 1996 (as I’ve seen some people suggest), that was just after the height of the controversy over ‘The Bell Curve’ book (1994) by Richard Herrnstein & Charles Murray.
In response to the firestorm around that book, the American Psychological Association appointed a blue-ribbon committee of 11 highly respected psychologists and psychometricians to evaluate the Bell Curve’s empirical claims. They published a report in 1996 on their findings, which you can read here, and summarized here. The APA committee affirmed most of the Bell Curve’s key claims, and concluded that there were well-established group differences in average general intelligence, but that the reasons for the differences were not yet clear.
More recently, Charles Murray has reviewed the last 30 years of psychometric and genetic evidence in his book Human Diversity (2020), and in his shorter, less technical book Facing Reality (2021).
This is the most controversial topic in all of the behavioral sciences. EAs might be prudent to treat this whole controversy as an information hazard, in which learning about the scientific findings can be socially and professionally dangerous. But it is worth noting that there is a big gap between what intelligence researchers have actually found, versus what most social scientists, journalists, and activists believe.
Epistemic status: As a psychology professor, I’ve worked on intelligence research for over 20 years, was on the editorial board of the journal Intelligence, and have published 3 books and 11 papers on the evolutionary origins, functions, genetics, and structure of human intelligence, which have been cited a few thousand times. However I’ve never worked directly on, or published on, group differences in intelligence.
A short note as a moderator (echoing a commenter): People (understandably) have strong feelings about discussions that focus on race, and many of us found the linked content difficult to read. This means that it’s both harder to keep to Forum norms when responding to this, and (I think) especially important.
Please keep this in mind if you decide to engage in this discussion, and try to remember that most people on the Forum are here for collaborative discussions about doing good.
If you have any specific concerns, you can also always reach out to the moderation team at forum-moderation@effectivealtruism.org.
The original email (written 26 years ago) was horrible, but Bostrom’s apology seems reasonable.
If you look at the most horrible thing that
everyeach person has done in their entire life, it’s likely that almost everyone (in that age) has done things that are at least as horrible as writing that email.The OP reads as if it was optimized to cause as much drama as possible, rather than for pro-social goals.
First, I don’t think I’ve ever expressed a view as horrible as that. I don’t want to make myself out to be a saint or something, and maybe I’ve done more harmful if less obviously spicy things (e.g., I ate a bunch of animals in my youth). But I’m reflexively sceptical of defences which are like “oh, surely everyone makes mistakes”. I think it’s ok to have high standards, and lots of people get through their youth managing not to make egregiously racist statements.
But this isn’t my crux; my crux is that the apology doesn’t ring sincere to me. He says lots of words about repudiating the email, but like...I don’t understand why he said it at the time, and what changed in his opinions to make him apologize for it at the time, and reject it now. I agree with some other commenters that it’s not clear that he thinks this is object-level bad vs PR-bad.
Doesn’t the first sentence of his old email make this part fairly clear? It sounds like he’s talking about the classic edgelord thing of enjoying the tension between intuitive repugnance and (what he took to be) logical truth on a strictly literal reading, when divorced of all subtext (which is presumably not what any reasonable person would ordinarily take the claims in question to communicate). Perhaps similar to how many philosophers find logical paradoxes invigorating. (Cf. Scott Alexander’s classic post on related issues.)
That’s not to defend it, and I agree his apology isn’t sufficiently clear about why his particular example was so egregiously poorly-chosen. But it does strike me as most likely stemming from neuro-atypicality rather than racist intent, for whatever that’s worth. (Many understandably care more about racist effects than racist intent, but I mention the latter here since you seem be to be asking about Bostrom’s motivations, and that does seem relevant to assessments of blameworthiness.)
(Not sure whether this clarification is needed, but just in case...)
When I wrote “If you look at the most horrible thing that every person has done in their entire life[…]” I meant: “If for every person you look at the most horrible thing that that person has done[…]” (I.e. it can be a completely different thing for each person.) I’ve edited my comment to make that clear.
I believe you when you say that you might not have expressed a thought as horrible as that, but from the opposite end, statements like “racism against people who privileged is impossible” are completely common within the social justice movement and objectively worse, at least from my point of view.
I was disappointed to see that he wrote that he wrote that email, but at least Bostrom was being edgy when arguing that we shouldn’t be edgy. And insofar as we would like there to be less “edge-lording”, if people are going to be edgy in the service of anything, I suppose being edgy as an argument against being edgy is among the less bad reasons to be edgy. Though, of course, it does rather counterproductive.
In any case, his intent—to encourage people to not needlessly offend people—wasn’t horrible—even if the execution was. Intent isn’t everything, but it’s something.
“Racism against people who are privileged is impossible” is objectively worse than what view specifically?
First all, I think it’s clearly much worse than some mentioning the n-word directly rather than replacing it with the string “n-word”, especially in the 90s social context.
Secondly, I think that the focus on labeling people who lean towards there being a genetic difference in population means as bad is mistaken given that the threat is actually people who try to leverage this claimed difference politically or attempt to inject their belief in this difference into as many conversations as possible. I think once we have in mind precisely which subset of people we should be worried about, then my position on what is worse ends up being quite natural.
“I don’t think I’ve ever expressed a view as horrible as that”
Count yourself lucky that you don’t hold any heretical beliefs.
”the apology doesn’t ring sincere to me”
He apologized for his offensive wording and nothing more because he understands that that’s all he has to apologize for.
I disagree with this, I think the apology, presumably carefully considered, is as bad as, if not worse, than the original email (at least, the apology contributes to a larger proportion of my negative update than the email written 26 years ago). I also think the apology was poorly written, and I would be surprised if this was signed off by a PR or comms expert.
Happy to hear constructive feedback, and am curious about what gives you this impression. I think there are clear ways this post could have been worded and framed in a way that would cause more drama. I’m sharing in part because I care about the EA community, and I think this may be useful information for the EA community to know about and engage with, and in part because the individual who shared this post with me found it disconcerting that no one had spoken out against it yet. I resonated with this, and didn’t want other community members to feel similarly.
The people who I discussed this with prior to posting agreed that we didn’t want this post to prompt object level IQ debates, which are usually unproductive, but also not highlight the PR angle too much, since as other commenters alluded to, this isn’t and shouldn’t be seen as the primary concern.
To add one more person’s impression, I agree with ofer that he apology was “reasonable,” I disagree with him that your post “reads as if it was optimized to cause as much drama as possible, rather than for pro-social goals,” and I agree with Amber Dawn that the original email is somewhat worse than something I’d have expected most people to have in their past. (That doesn’t necessarily mean it deserves any punishment decades later and with the apology –non-neurotyptical people can definitely make a lot of progress between, say, early twenties and later in life, in understanding how their words affect others and how edginess isn’t the same as being sophisticated.)
I think this is one of these “struggles of norms” where you can’t have more than one sacred principle, and ofer’s and my position is something like “it should be okay to say ‘I don’t know what’s true’ on a topic where the truth seems unclear ((but not, e.g., something like Holocaust denial)).” Because a community that doesn’t prioritize truth-seeking will run into massive troubles, so even if there’s a sense in which kindness is ultimately more important than truth-seeking (I definitely think so!), it just doesn’t make sense as an instrumental norm to treat it as sacred (so that one essentially forces people to say things that might be false or else they are punished).
Separately from that, I think it’s bad to reinforce the idea that group averages have any normative relevance whatsoever. If we speak as though the defence against racism is empirically finding that all intelligence differences for group averages are at most environmentally-caused, then that’s a weak defence against racism! It’s “weak” because it could turn out to be false. But in reality, I don’t think there’s any possible finding that could make us think “racism is okay.” In my view, not being racist – in the sense that has moral significance for me – means that (1) you’re not more inclined to falsely reach a conclusion about people from a different ethnicity than you’d reach the same conclusion about (e.g.) your own ethnicity and (2) when you consider “candidates” (in whatever context) with equal characteristics/interests/qualifications, etc., you’re not more inclined to treat some worse than others based solely on their ethnicity. If we hold this view, we get to relax to about what could be found out about group averages.
That said, I do agree that there’s very little, if anything, to gain from discussions about group averages, and that the people who are eager to bring up the topic seem morally suspicious. (In this specific case of Bostrom_2023 writing the apology, it’s not like he could have chosen to avoid the topic entirely – so given the mistakes he made 26 years ago, he had to address it again.)
When I wrote “If you look at the most horrible thing that every person has done in their entire life[…]” I meant: “If for every person you look at the most horrible thing that that person has done[…]” (I.e. it can be a completely different thing for each person.) I’ve edited my comment to make that clear.
How does this change the meaning? (Genuine question) You’re still saying it’s likely almost everyone has done things like that email or worse, which seems unlikely to me.
It changes the emphasis a bit from “written evidence” (and “expressed worldviews”) to “anything whatsoever.”
E.g., if classrooms in 2005 had CCTV, you could find a video of my 14-year-old self deliberately mispronouncing someone else’s name to make it sound dumb and making a comment about them having “girly” hair after someone else had already started making fun of him. I think that video would be similarly hard to watch as the original Bostrom email is hard to read.
edit: At least on some dimensions of “hard to watch”? I understand the view that Bostrom’s comments were much worse, but I think there’s something especially jarring about expressed lack of empathy when the person who’s being hurt is right in front of you, as opposed to saying dumb stuff in a small/closed setting to be intellectually edgy.
Unless people here have a far better story than “Eugenics is horrible because eugenics!” behind their usage of the word ‘horrible’ with respect to Bostrom’s words I suggest they stop using it. This is the EA forum after all and we ought to do better here than circular logic.
Consider a random human who spent about 278,860 hours as an adult person on earth (as Bostrom has, according to Wikipedia). Let’s label that random person as “extremely morally robust” if during those 278,860 hours they have not once done something at least as horrible as writing that email (as a philosophy student, in a discussion about offending people, in 1995).
Suppose someone is robust to the point that the chance of them doing something at least as horrible in a random hour of their adult life is like the chance to flip a coin and get heads 15 times in a row. Even that hypothetical human is very unlikely (~0.02% chance) to get the “extremely morally robust” label as defined above.
Racial disparities are a key political/culture wars topic. There’s nothing suspicious about enumerating regressors.
Skimming the comments so far, I’d appreciate if people would keep the “Be kind” part of the forum norm trifecta more in front of their minds:
This post touches on topics that are very emotionally difficult and controversial for many. I tentatively recommend that if you’re very angry or upset, it might be sufficiently difficult to be civil and charitable such that you might want to hold off on immediately engaging a lot in the comments here. Maybe first:
share your thoughts and feelings with friends,
write down your thoughts and what you want to share in this forum privatly, and
wait at least a couple hours until you feel less urgently angry and indignant and only then share your thoughts here.
(I downvoted a few comments because I think they failed to be charitable and/or civil. But as I think this specific topic is very difficult to deal with, I hope the downvotes will not generally discourage people from engaging in this forum as I believe they generally come with good intentions.)
I agree with the vibe of this but disagree with the specific advice, maybe? I think if we discourage people from commenting when they’re feeling strong emotions, we miss out on valuable information. You suggest waiting for a few hours, but first, I think emotional first reactions are information (it’s information if something makes people angry! info about the values of the EA movement, or about how bad Bostrom’s comments are, for example); and secondly, some people might just not come back, or they might never cease to be emotional about the issue. Communicating in the standard detached Forum way might just feel dishonest to them. This means that the consensus becomes skewed to those who are less emotionally-activated by the issue. So in situations like this, people who are more forgiving or who think it’s not that bad or who just have more muted emotions or more reserved communication styles will dominate the discussion.
Amber—I strongly disagree with this take. Almost everything that EAs try to talk about dispassionately and objectively could be talked about reactively and emotionally with great intensity, if we didn’t show enormous self-control and self-awareness -- and that would ruin the entire ethos and culture of EA Forum.
Everyone who really, deeply values animal welfare could react emotionally to every discussion of that topic. Every who really, deeply dreads global thermonuclear war could react emotionally to every discussion of that topics. And so on. The whole point of the EA movement is to try to grapple with extremely large-scale, high-stakes problems that most people can’t think about rationally or empirically, using reason and evidence as best we can.
There’s nothing intrinsically or uniquely emotional about race differences issues, apart from the current cultural context that racism in Western liberal academic cultures is uniquely stigmatized compared to every other moral failing in modern life.
“racism in Western liberal academic cultures is uniquely stigmatized compared to every other moral failing in modern life.”
According to the Collins Dictionary: “If someone or something is stigmatized, they are unfairly regarded by many people as being bad or having something to be ashamed of.” In essence, when you argue that racism is being unjustly singled out among a myriad of other moral failings, you are suggesting that it is not as important or as bad as it is made to be.
However, it’s crucial to understand the gravity and the pervasive nature of racism. Racism is not just a moral failing; it is a systemic issue that has been deeply ingrained in societies for centuries. It has tangible and detrimental effects on the lives of individuals, communities, and entire societies. It affects access to resources, opportunities, and justice, and it perpetuates inequality and division.
While it’s true that there are many other moral failings that deserve attention and rectification, the focus on racism does not imply that these other issues are less important or less harmful. Rather, the emphasis on racism is a reflection of its widespread impact and the urgent need for change.
Therefore, it’s not accurate or fair to say that racism is being unjustly singled out or stigmatized. Instead, the spotlight on racism is a necessary and justified part of the broader struggle for justice, equality, and moral integrity.
Racism’s Historical and Ongoing Impact: Racism has had a profound and lasting impact on marginalized communities, from slavery and colonization to modern-day systemic racism. Its effects are pervasive and long-lasting, affecting every aspect of life, from education and employment to health and housing. This is not to say that other moral failings are not important, but the scope and scale of racism’s impact make it a particularly urgent issue to address.
Racism is Systemic: Unlike many other moral failings, racism is not just an individual failing but a systemic one. It is embedded in our institutions, policies, and practices, making it much more difficult to eradicate. This systemic nature of racism makes it unique and requires a unique response.
Racism Affects a Large Number of People: Racism affects entire racial and ethnic groups, not just individuals. This means that the number of people affected by racism is potentially much larger than the number of people affected by many other moral failings.
Racism is Often Invisible to Those Not Affected: Unlike many other moral failings, racism can often be invisible to those who are not directly affected by it. This can make it more difficult to recognize and address, and may also contribute to the perception that it is being “uniquely stigmatized.”
Addressing Racism is a Matter of Justice: Given the historical and ongoing harm caused by racism, addressing it is a matter of justice. This is not about “stigmatizing” racism more than other moral failings, but about seeking to right historical wrongs and create a more equitable society.
Racism’s Intersectionality: Racism often intersects with other forms of discrimination, such as sexism, classism, and homophobia. This intersectionality means that addressing racism can also help to address these other forms of discrimination.
Discriminatory Lending Practices: Systemic racism is evident in the financial sector, where discriminatory lending practices have historically disadvantaged racial minorities, particularly Black communities. This practice, known as redlining, was a systemic way to enforce economic disparities that are still felt today.
These examples underscore the systemic nature of racism and its long-term impacts. It’s not just about individual acts of prejudice, but about systems and policies that perpetuate racial disparities. Therefore, the focus on racism in academic discussions and policies is not an unfair concentration, but a necessary effort to address these deeply ingrained injustices.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_mayer_racial-discrimination-in-the-auto-loan-market.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiWyoKan4uAAxVPjokEHZu3A40QFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1LcOmY7hyAvTSzFwLX6qwf
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/fair_lend_fhact.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiCvcKV9IuAAxXUJ0QIHQeCChMQFnoECA8QBg&usg=AOvVaw052K3my-40HyxPrS_Cqf6t
I find this comment pretty patronising, and echo Amber Dawn’s point about this leading to discussion only being accepted by those who are sufficiently emotionally detached from an issue (which tends to be people who aren’t directly impacted).
To me, this comment sounds like it is saying that if you are angry about this then you are being irrational, and should wait to calm down before commenting. Anger can be a perfectly rational response, and excessive tone policing can suppress marginalised voices from the conversation.
Thanks for the pushback (I also appreciated Amber’s response). I agree that there’s a risk of taking the direction of my comment too far, and I agree that anger is a fully valid emotion and it’s fully valid and informative/useful to communicate it here.
What I do still believe is that anger makes productive discourse more difficult, and I think that many comments here are cases of that happening. When I get angry, I’m less patient, I feel more like I’m in a fight and that I want to win an argument as opposed to understand the situation better and contribute my perspective to a shared process of understanding and decision-making. In case you’re familiar, in EA terms I think that anger moves me away from a “scout mindset” and towards a “soldier mindset”.
I’m currently not convinced that in this discussion, and in the EA forum in general, sharing emotions is discouraged to a degree that is worrying and discourages affected groups and individuals, and I’d be sad if that impression is false. What I see as discouraged is uncivility, uncharitability and snark, and I suspect it only seems like there are more downvotes for emotional comments because of the “anger → impatience” mechanism.
As you’re reading this old email and the ‘apology’, instead of diving into debates about race, IQ, consequentialism, reputation and PR, please think about how black EAs and longtermists are feeling reading all of this.
What could EA do to try to heal the hurt that this is going to cause to black EAs?
We need prominent EAs to publicly condemn Bostrom’s language, publicly reject race science, and reaffirm EA’s aim to be welcoming to black people.
Also frankly, the comments here show some ridiculous failures of empathy. This needs to be worked on as a community.
I don’t really like this thing where you speak on behalf of black EAs.
I think you should let black EAs speak for themselves or not comment on it.
In my experience, there seems to be distortionary epistemic effects when someone speaks on behalf of a minority group. Often, the person so speaking assigns them harms, injustices or offenses that the relevant members of those groups may not actually endorse.
When it’s done on my behalf, I find it pretty patronising, and it’s annoying/icky?
I don’t want to speak for black EAs but it’s not clear to me that the “hurt” you mention is actually real.
I’m shocked by how much disagreement this has. This is the bare minimum if you ask me
A few points that I think are important to make anytime conversation gets anywhere near the object level on this topic:
No one’s moral worth is determined by their performance on an IQ test
Black people face significant amount of adversity
This adversity explains a great deal of measured IQ disparities
IQ disparities have been used as an excuse to justify racism and to avoid properly addressing racism of all forms
Being told that a group you identify with has a lower than average IQ feels really shitty
With all that being said, is there any place at all for the object level question in our discourse? I don’t know.
Yes.
I haven’t had a chance to read the whole blog post, but note for general information David Thorstad’s blog post on this, which alleges:
Unfortunately, Bostrom’s email was not an isolated incident. The Extropians were widely involved in a number of explicitly racist, sexist and otherwise lamentable incidents that Bostrom cannot possibly have failed to be aware of at the time, and many of their former members occupy high positions within the effective altruism movement today.
https://ineffectivealtruismblog.com/2023/01/12/off-series-that-bostrom-email/
(apologies for formatting, on mobile)
I think it’s worth posting this as a top-level linkpost if it hasn’t been already.
I’ll defer to someone else as I’m at work and not in a position to carefully read the long blog post and then say something meaningful about the whole.
Thanks for linking to that information about the history of the Extropians. Very informative and provides helpful context.
agree with this (and with the other comment that this could warrant a separate linkpost), have strong-upvoted the comment in the meantime.
Want to note on this thread that CEA has published a statement on this: “Effective altruism is based on the core belief that all people count equally. We unequivocally condemn Nick Bostrom’s recklessly flawed and reprehensible words. We reject this unacceptable racist language, and the callous discussion of ideas that can and have harmed Black people. It is fundamentally inconsistent with our mission of building an inclusive and welcoming community.”
So CEA’s gone off the deep end into left wing political partisanship over object level discussion too. At least it is out now.
Ugh. Painful to read.
Here as everywhere the key, to keep sane, is to hold a number of thoughts simultaneously:
1) The original email is horribly racist and indefensible. Just awful.
2) The author seems to have evolved since and should be given the benefit of the doubt.
3) Sincerely apologizing for past misdeeds is good in and of itself.
4) Descending on anyone who attempts to apologize without crediting them for the apology only emboldens those who will see the outcome and conclude that it is better not to apologize at all.
5) Thinkers are not gods or saints and should not be treated as such .
6) There is no “original sin”. It is good for you to hold ideas that are good for the world. If someone else who holds ideas that are good for the world also holds ideas that are bad for the world, you are not responsible and should not feel guilty about it.
7) It is unproductive to think of “intellectual leaders”, ther status, and their reputation in general. Intellectual leaders gain their status from pushing ideas that you find convincing. It is the ideas that you should focus on. Your duty is to keep and promote the ones that work, get rid of the ones that don’t.
8) Because people hold a mix of contradictory ideas, if you focus on the people, you will find yourself tied to ideas you disagree with and make yourself vulnerable to guilt-by-association.
9) Ideas held by the same people are not necessarily correlated in the realm of ideas. If they are, there must be a demonstrable rational mechanism by which they are. (If, for instance, this email had been written by a far right anti-immigration politician who spends his time writing about the “great replacement”, you could find a clear intellectual connection.)
10) In fact, people often hold two ideas that seem negatively correlated in the rational realm. For example, many Christians are in favour of violent retaliation, even as a concept (not to mention in practice).
11) Can you find a mechanism by which EA ideas correlate with racism? They would seem to be at complete odds. One of the central moral premises of EA is cosmopolitanism and the impartial good, the idea that human beings have inherent moral worth and dignity regardless of where they come from. Which is why, for example, EAs often get accused of trying to prioritize “the far” over “the near”.
12) What about rationalism? In principle, rationalism has less of an inherent defense mechanism against racism than EA ideas. In particular, there is a form of adolescent rationalism which goes something like this: a) it is good to be intelligent and rational b) not all people are similarly intelligent and rational c) find a reason why the other people are the ones who are dumb (in fact, the more different, the dumber) and I am smart. There is an idea of ranking in b) which does have some idea-level correlation with elitism, solipsism, condescension, and various dehumanizing worldviews. However, rationalism also has a natural counter against racism which is that c) in that adolescent version is pure irrational silliness—the idea collapses on itself. Therefore embracing the adolescent version tells more about your character than it does about rationalism itself.
TDLR : That Bostrom used to be racist does not mean that it is a bad idea to give money to help the global poor in effective ways or to try to prevent nuclear wars from happening
I, for one, see that longtermism is animated by the same cosmopolitanism that motivates EA in general. But Emile Torres and co. don’t see it that way. Torres thinks that longtermism itself is linked to white supremacist and rich-world supremacist beliefs. Since many people nowadays first hear about longtermism from Emile Torres’s hit pieces, they are likely to conclude that longtermism is racist and rich-worldist.
EA has become big enough to weather such a storm, especially since stemming against the ever-increasing number of calls for struggle sessions should become a central EA cause area. People need to be able to speak their minds and be judged by their deeds and impact, not by some demonstrably uncharitable reading of their thoughts. The latter seems motivated mainly by an attempt to stir up a denunciation rally, likely because somebody didn’t like the intellectual content Bostrom is known for.
It is also important to keep adult public discourse policing sane enough that no one gets lambasted for saying or writing something like “People seem to react equally enraged by someone wondering aloud about specific IQ differences in populations, as by someone shouting ‘I hate those bloody n-words!!!‘”. People get riled up over this as if this was some teenage utterance of the form “I know I am not supposed to say ‘n-word’, and therefore I would never say ‘n-word’, even if someone, whom others might call a ‘n-word’ were to walk by and complain to me that people often call him a ‘n-word’, especially since his grandmother has been called ‘n-word’, much like his mother who has also been called ‘n-word’ …” and so forth, specially compiled to strafe a taboo. Obviously one should intervene in such a case. Doesn’t mean adults shouldn’t be able to spell out the term when they talk about it while not using it as a slur. Preemptively treating people like children is what ruins modern discourse.
And the musings on population differences, well, a lot has been said and written about those. Concluding they may very well exist isn’t necessarily malevolent. Instead, an honest discussion about this might be the key to solving the genuine problems of those populations in a way that affirmative action and explaining away certain facts haven’t. The intellectual dishonesty on this topic runs incredibly deep and is far more expansive than just population differences and race. Think a politician talking about ‘the uneducated’ as a social class, that’s pretty much acceptable. Speaking about the ‘intellectually challenged’ however is wrongthink, the overlap between these two groups equally in the realm of career-ending topics for all but the most established scientists. The missteps science in its infancy made with these topics cannot be grounds to suppress a rational discussion of how to deal with inherent human differences for the benefit of all forever.
(this comment previously got deleted by the moderators because it contained ‘n-word’ several times, a decision with which I vigorously disagree)
Bostrom is claiming the right to not engage with a subject, and this right is a necessity to have an inclusive EA-movement.
I downvoted this post because it is propagating a norm that I expect to be damaging.
What’s the damaging norm this post is propagating? I’m not asking Bostrom to engage with this subject.
The current norm is that people have a right to not engage with a subject. It looks to me like this post disagrees with this norm. I base this on the following quotes:
Bostrom: It is not my area of expertise, and I don’t have any particular interest in the question. I would leave to others...
pseudonym: …this reflects terribly on Nick...
People can lose their “right to not engage” by previously engaging and causing associated harms.
At a bare minimum, that section of the apology can be read as implying that both sides of a debate have valid points. But if you’re claiming non-engaged status, you should be careful to avoid giving both sides the aura of legitimacy without having done your due diligence.
To be clear, that part of the comment was talking about how I think the apology seems pretty poorly written as a PR statement, and not because I think Nick broke some norm I feel strongly about upholding.
That said, even if I take the view (that others do), that Nick should engage with the subject when he is making a public apology about the subject matter at hand, I don’t think it propagates the norm in a general context.
I basically agree with Jason here, and don’t understand why he’s being downvoted, even if people disagree.
If you are apologizing for a statement that is easily read to mean you believe white people are superior to black people (“I like this comment and think it is true”), and then in your apology you say something that’s easily read to mean:
“Well, are black people actually worth the same as white people? I leave that to experts to debate the question”
It’s not going to be interpreted as non-engagement.
Some thoughts:
Totally agree that this “has real implications for the movement’s future, including selection effects on people who may become more uncertain about the views that intellectual leaders of the EA/longtermism movement hold (and by extension, its intellectual foundations), whether EA is a community for ‘people like them’, and whether EA is a movement that is well-equipped to preserve a future for all of humanity.” I’m worried that this statement will deter people from collaborating with or joining AI labs, for example.
I think this could have been avoided if more EA orgs, including FHI, had some kind of PR function instead of leaving all the heavy lifting to CEA. I’ve said as much here.
Why is this comment being downvoted? I can understand the disagree votes, I’m uncertain whether I agree myself, but it doesn’t seem to disrespect any forum norms or to be argued in bad faith.
I didn’t downvote, but I think it’s bad to focus on the optical concerns over the object level concerns about the statement. “This statement if bad because it might reduce engagement with EA” may be true but it’s probably not the first order badness, just like the first order badness of FTX was fraud and not the harms to EA.
There is the other side as well: not only is this bad because one person expressed racist sentiment, but it is particularly bad because that person is considered a thought leader in EA and so this could make the EA community a considerably less welcoming environment for black people ( although I wouldn’t like to speak on their behalf)
Correct. It seems strange to me that there’s a lot of whitewashing happening here. Instead of viewing the situation through an objective lens, some are glossing over the fact that he didn’t truly apologize.
He began his letter with “But I fear that selected pieces of the most offensive stuff will be extracted, maliciously framed and interpreted, and used in smear campaigns,” expressing a wish that this email had remained buried, rather than taking responsibility and not blaming the messenger. This is not an admission of wrongdoing; instead, it shows contempt for anyone asking him to take responsibility for his actions as an adult.
I think the point about PR resources was helpful (although I think they should not be paid by the organization in a case like this). This apology could have been done much better, in a way that would have been more effective in mitigating the harm Bostrom caused to Black people here. I don’t know him at all, but most people who just learned that someone is about to publish an expose about past misbehavior would benefit from someone to help them express their apology more effectively.
Many of us like to criticize PR as an industry, including me, but one of its benefits is that it gets someone who is not emotionally invested in the room in situations with high emotion and time pressure. That can help someone write the statement that they would have written if they had time and space to regain control of their emotions, which the modern news/info cycle does not allow.
I think this could have been avoided if more EA orgs, including FHI, had some kind of PR function instead of leaving all the heavy lifting to CEA. I’ve said as much here.
Bostrom works for Oxford University who have a PR department. From his statement is seems unlikely to me, though that he asked them (or any other PR experts) for advice.
I am not sure I see running PR for something like this as a valid use of organizational resources. To use lawyer-speak, these Internet postings were way outside Bostrom’s scope of employment both substantively and temporally. It’s unclear why FHI or any other organization should have to devote resources to cleaning up after employees for non-work situations where the employee was clearly at fault.
I do think it would be helpful for there to be a list of various professionals, including PR folks, for EAs to call in various sorts of situations. But Bostrom should be paying for any PR help out of pocket.
Or, alternatively, if EAs stopped prioritising “openness to all ideas” above “disavowing people with hurtful and dangerous views”.
While I agree that these kinds of “bad EA optics” posts are generally unproductive and it makes sense for them to get downvoted, I’m surprised that this specific one isn’t getting more upvoted? Unlike most links to hit pieces and criticisms of EA, this post actually contains new information that has changed my perception of EA and EA leadership.
If the post had just been making the forum readers aware of the controversy and added some commentary along the lines “this was really hard to read and was really disappointing,” then I would’ve upvoted it (I see it the same way.)
However, the OP also highlights a particular paragraph in the apology (about the cause of differences in group averages) and implies that Bostrom’s uncertainty about it and his statement “and I don’t have any particular interest in the question” means that he holds morally repugnant views or at least doesn’t sufficiently condemn them.
I explained here why I don’t agree with this. To quote from that comment:
This makes more sense. I still feel a bit irked by the downvotes though—I would like people to be aware of the email, and feel much more strongly about this than about not wanting people to see some of pseudonym’s takes about the apology.
I appreciated your original comment and upvoted it. I’ll just add something now in response to this pushback.
I’m not suggesting that Nick should claim that all groups no matter what have identical results in IQ tests, or that there’s zero genetic contribution to IQ.
If you are apologizing for a statement that is easily read to mean you believe white people are superior to black people (“I like this comment and think it is true”), and then in your apology you say something like:
“Well, are black people actually worth the same as white people? I leave that to experts to debate the question”
Then it’s very reasonably going to be interpreted as not a genuine apology for holding harmful views, and “primarily just trying to do damage control for using a racial slur, or preemptive PR work for some other reason, as opposed to apologizing for actually holding those views.”, which is why I linked that quote.
Even in the original email, Bostrom makes clear that differences in intelligence do not alter the moral value or human dignity of each person.
For him, as for many, the issues of intelligence and moral worth are distinct; he never claims that black people are worth less, you are ascribing your own notion that IQ=moral worth, and then blaming him for not responding to it.
“easily read to mean”
Thanks for the reply. That makes sense! I feel like Bostrom said a bit more than you describe here to make it clear that he doesn’t hold the view that white people are superior. So, to me, while “I like this comment” seemed like an extremely unfortunate phrasing on his part, the context at least made clear that he liked how the comment is “bold and edgy” rather than liking something about alleged differences between white and black people.
That said, you’re right that it’s important to make these things really clear in an apology and he could have said more on the topic. Other people have also had negative reactions to the apology (e.g., Habiba here), so maybe I’m in a minority. I read the apology and thought it wasn’t bad. I agree it could’ve been better (e.g., he could have written something like the paragraphs I wrote on how we should be very clear that group averages don’t have moral significance) .
(I’m sometimes not sure whether it’s good to make apologies really long. If I ever had to apologize for something pretty bad, I’d be tempted to write a very long statement – but that may come across as self-absorbed and overly defensive. It just seems hard to get this right and I feel like Bostrom’s apology at least hit a few aspects of what I’d expect an acceptable apology to contain.)
My sense is that many people thought the apology was reasonable. Your comment and Ofer’s comment, both of which defend the apology as reasonable, have both 65 Karma which makes them among the most upvoted comments in this whole discussion (both statements are made Jan 13, 11:23 CET). I also think Bostrom’s apology is reasonable (needless to say, I share your and Ofer’s negative reaction to the original email.)
I think it’s much riskier, reputation-wise, to state that one had a positive reaction to the apology than to state that one had a negative one, so we will see more of the latter. I think votes are in this case a more accurate reflection of people’s views.
Yeah, I basically strongly agree Habiba’s post, thanks for linking it.
This part especially:
“So while it would be okay to say something wrong one time on the internet. It is also okay for me and other people to be upset, uncomfortable, angry, disgusted, or even scared that someone who looks at questions about the future of humanity and writes about morality does not and did not display a sensitivity to this context.
It is pretty reasonable to be mistrustful when someone espouses views (whether callously or even in polite language) that were espoused in much the same way by people throughout history who used those views to justify terrible things.
I would be uncomfortable and upset to be part of a community where discussing issues like race/intelligence was not carried out with the empathy and rigour that the subject requires or where people commonly held views on race/intelligence that I consider to be wrong and extremely harmful.”
Hard to read? Does anyone here face actual adversity anymore?
Btw. even Charles Murray now publicly says the “there’s very little, if anything, to gain from discussions about group averages” line. In my view this is the equivalent to rolling onto one’s back and begging for the mob to harass someone else while hoping the inquisition overlooks that one has not wholly retracted one’s statement.
Apart from racial slurs the original email contained “I like that sentence.” I’m sure that’s explained by not being neurotypical and enjoying being contrarian/edgy (see this comment), but I still find it jarring. I think that’s a natural reaction.
Why is it that people either have to be unreasonable in one direction or the other? In my view, you’re being just as one-sided here as “the mob” if you make it seem like no one is facing racial adversity. Lots of people are facing adversity for all kinds of reasons, racism is some of it, as are other problems (e.g., mental illnesses are a big problem that’s arguably underrated and happens to affect people from all kinds of backgrounds).
When you imagine the Venn diagram of people who talk a lot about group averages vs people who have actively sought to improve the situation of socio-economically disadvantaged groups, I’d say the intersection isn’t that large. Charles Murray happens to be in the intersection (and it’s awful and unfair how people have shunned him), but this doesn’t change that the intersection is rather small according to my perception.
Him writing he likes the sentence is in no way equivalent to writing he likes the fact. The sentiment obviously stems from the fact that is rather difficult to publicize such a thought and hence having ‘come out’ comes along with some ‘pride’. But yes, cretain religious conservatives might find the other metaphorial jarring as well. So what.
People have been amplified in victimising themselves by a tidal wave of you-know-what for more than a decade now, despite the things being complained about being in decline ever since the sixties. People face all kinds of adversity in the modern world, most of outweight racial adversity by far.
Yeah, so let’s not make decent people shy away from discussing these matters publicly with a problem solving mindset any more than we already do. Character assassination by Venn diagramm helps no one but the baddies, both on the left and on the right.
Bostrom appears not to realise that “I hate these bloody [racial slur]s!” is not the only form racism can take. Believing that black people are more stupid than white people is also racist. I am not convinced that he no longer believes this. I am deeply disappointed by his apology (more than I am by his original email).
IQ distributions differ across races. IQ proxies a general factor of intelligence. Afaik intelligence researchers believe both sentences are correct. I care more about being correct than about being culturally compliant, and I expect Bostrom feels similarly. So I don’t expect him to disavow claims that seem to be correct.
Your blanket statement about what “intelligence researchers” believe is misleading and implies a level of consensus that does not exist in the field (see for example https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/23/intelligent-argument-race). I am aware of the empirical evidence purporting to show ethnic differences in intelligence; I simply think it is low-quality and unconvincing.
No one mentioned in the article you linked disputes either of these sentences: “(1) IQ distributions differ across races. (2) IQ proxies a general factor of intelligence.” Their discussion addresses “Why is (1) the case.”
Had Bostrom left out the paragraph quoted by the OP, the apology would read very differently. In the prior paragraph he wrote:
This, if left to its own, would have stood as a strong statement on equity.
By adding the following paragraph on genetics, Bostrom implies the opposite of his claimed indifference to the genetics of race. Announcing that you ” leave to others” the question of genetic factors in intelligence by race, rings of an invitation to weigh this matter.
It is surprising to see a community of rationalists so opposed to Bostrom’s original point, which is that object level discussions of potentially uncomfortable truths are best avoided in general company, but useful among rationalists.
I am especially disappointed in Bostrom himself, who seems to hedge on a belief he still clearly believes to be empirically valid.
Genetic differences in intelligence are certainly an impolite discussion, but Bostrom’s original framing coincides with my view; intelligence is not tied to moral worth or human dignity, but, for a moral philosophy focused on improving wellbeing, the topic is worth exploring.
Blank slate naivety should not have a home in a rationalist community, and we should embrace evidence regardless of what truths it leads to. I would be much more comfortable with a debate on the merits of evidence and ramifications than dismissal on aesthetic grounds of “racism.” At the least, we could discuss hereditarianism as in information hazard, but the outright dismissal of a strongly supported position seems at odds with the principles of this community.
This is clearly absolutely awful. The reality is there is little that most people can do about it because EA is a set of principles not an organisation. There is no membership and no elections, which I think is for the best. It is up to a handful of organizations where Bostrum is involved to make decisions about what to do in response to this. I hope they make the decision with the reputation of the broader EA movement in mind and free from personal biases.
The way he is speaking in the email is offensive, and good that he has apologized for it.
The finding that generally many groups of black people have on average lower IQ than than the median is pretty robust, and he does make it clear even in the initial emailthat he doesn’t think they are morally inferior or that he doesn’t hold the actual negative views about them that one might associate with this language.
Taking a statement like “there are currently differences in average IQ test score between races, for a variety of reasons, primarily racism and it’s legacy”, and reducing it to “blacks are stupider than whites” is not brave truth telling. It’s stripping away all the context from a complex issue into a gross simplification with a negative spin that furthers a racist narrative. The original email was not racist because it used a slur, it was racist to the core, and very idiotic to boot.
It’s not brave truth telling, it’s unnecessarily rude and not remotely helpful to put it that way.
For the record , however, there’s little reason to think racism is the primary cause for the disparity given that it holds nearly everywhere. As it is important not to be disparaging or straight racist it’s also important to actually hold accurate beliefs and not just convenient or good sounding ones.
For starters, this is a very weak rebuttal. Racism also holds nearly everwhere.
But in general, what I mean by racism is both present racism and, perhaps more importantly, the legacy of past instutional racism. IQ is affected by nutrition, socieconomic status, prenatal environment, etc, all of which are disadvantaged in minority groups as a result of past and present racism.
As just one example, minority groups in the US are far more likely to be exposed to toxic waste and pollutants, and it’s been extensively proven that poor health has a detrimental effect on IQ scores.
To be fair, it’s very hard in sociological studies to attribute causation. But it’s hard to see what else would be causing the large environmentally caused differences in IQ. If I wanted to be as precise as possible, I would state “At least some differences in IQ between black and white people are due to past and present institutional racism, and I would personally guess that practically all of it is”.
But that seems to be begging the question? The empirical question is whether or not all/most differences are caused by environmental factors.
The IQ gap dropped 5 points in 30 years. That drop was undeniably caused by environmental factors.
Environmental factors have been demonstrated to have huge effects on IQ. A poor person adopted into a rich family will have their IQ boosted by 15 points. The flynn effect shows a ~15 point gap between the average person now and the average person a mere 60 years ago. In other words, there is no gap between the average black person now and the average white person from the 1920′s or whatever.
There is zero evidence that the remaining 10 point IQ gap is not environmental in nature. Given how small the gap is, and the continued disparities in health and socioeconomic status between the races, I personally find it unlikely that genetics plays any significant part, although the claim is very difficult to conclusively disprove, because, again, sociology is hard.
There are, however, opinions on this matter which go in a very different direction than the pieces you have cited. For example, the various studies referenced in this thread of threads.
For instance, the author mentions researchers saying there is no evidence for the narrowing of the substantial 15-point IQ gap for people born after the 1960s, and that there was no gap-narrowing for other education-related tests (SAT, ACT, GRE) for the last three decades. (He also mantions similar finding about consistently higher IQ scores for northeast Asians compared to whites.) Or that in a survey more than 60% of intelligence researchers estimated that genetic differences account for half or more of the gap. He also cites evidence on twin and adoption studies supporting the large heritability of IQ. Adoption studies also support black-white-East Asian score-gaps. Additionally, admixture studies found that black-white mixed-race populations have, on average, IQs between the averages of white and black populations. There is also various other data supporting the heritability of the gap. Moreover, he references various studies and experts who point out that the Flynn effect is not evidence against IQ gaps being largely heritable, even if the Flynn effect itself is mainly caused by non-heritable factors. The reason is that the Flynn effect was not accompanied by a narrowing of those gaps.
To go back to the original topic: From the above and your referenced posts it is apparent that there are substantial disagreements between intelligence researchers in these matters. Non-experts should not be chastised for regarding this as an open empirical question. Nor is it acceptable that only defending one side of the debate is allowed, at pain of risking severe social repercussions.
I am merely stating some facts, and my own opinion on the matter, which remains unchanged.
That twitter thread you linked (from a self described “hereditarian”), is very obviously a biased gish-gallop of cherrypicked data. I’m not going to waste my time debunking it all, but to pick one example, he picks exactly one survey which supports his position, while other surveys exist that put the majority against his position. This is why I don’t derive my scientific positions from random twitter threads.
As an addendum, I’m frankly sick of people pretending that there is no reason for people to biased in favour of believing in genetic IQ gaps. Any defender of the status quo will be biased towards this position, because it allows them to argue that the status quo can’t be changed.
I think Michael Dennis makes some good points in this thread. He says there are some hypotheses you just don’t explore, for consequentialist reasons. Infohazards, essentially.
I agree that the original email (from 26 years ago) was very bad, but that tweet seems harmful on multiple fronts. Also, I think Bostrom’s apology is reasonable.
I don’t agree with Michael that the apology was “horrible, awful, and ugly”. But it’s still possible to find good points in the tweets of people you have disagreements with.
I hate those words, it is not me.
Look how much I have done for black people.
But are black people genetically inferior? I don’t know, I am not an expert. I am just asking the question.
Donald Trump could have published this. I don’t know if Bostrom understands this, but this formulation is practically a textbook racist dogwhistle .
It does seem clear though that Bostrom is not apologizing for his views, he just regrets getting caught using a slur, and is upset people might actually judge him.
At the very least, it’s weird to call someone proactively highlighting something they said in the past, which no-one has highlighted previously, as “he just regrets getting caught.”
From the apology:
It does seems plausible that this was prompted by someone finding this email and pointing it out, or asking him to comment on it (e.g. an author of a hit piece asking him for comments). It sounds like he is at least worried about this possibility. In any case, given this was in response to an event, I don’t think this is what most people would interpret as “proactively highlighting”, unless you meant proactively reacting to a PR risk. He could also be acting proactively by some definition of that word but still doing so primarily because he regrets getting caught.
Update: Torres was indeed going to write some thing about it.
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1613585031850786816
[This comment has been removed by the moderation team.]
The moderation team has removed the contents of this comment, as we found it to be needlessly offensive (which goes against Forum norms). We’ve sent the contents to the poster; they can repost the comment without the slurs in it. If you have any concerns, you can reach out to forum-moderation@effectivealtruism.org.
(The comment used the n-word a lot. While all instances of the word were in quotes or used as hypothetical quotations, we don’t think that this necessarily protects it from being uncivil.)
@Lizka Not the case, I haven’t received any message from you.
I’ve just resent the message. I think there’s some chance it’ll send twice if it didn’t send properly the first time. Regardless, please let me know if you still don’t see it, and I’ll just send it via email.
Could you confirm that you got my most recent message? I can see both messages I sent, which worries me about whether the second one went through, given that the first one didn’t.
Got both, my bad, was only looking in my email inbox, not in pms from this forum.
Scientific Racism is definitely considered acceptable in the EA community and lots of the leadership support it. I would bet Bostrom still supports HBD. He doesn’t even deny this in his apology!
If that is the case, then this ideology is doomed. It would be a shame because the positive ideas that EA represents are the exact opposite of what HDB stands for.