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.
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.
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.