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)
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)