Small note (while not endorsing the NGO), I struggle to see how “Project Prevention” could be considered a “slide into open Eugenics” just because they wanted to move into Haiti. Are EA Family planning organisations similar because they want to work in Africa? Of course not.
From wikipedia looking at their clientelle “As of May 2022, out of 7,833 clients it had paid: 4,791 (61.3%) were white; 1,626 (20.8%) black; 830 (10.6%) Hispanic; 572 (7.3%) other.” which seems like a fairly representative mix among the people groups they work with.
The founder has been interviewed on Radiolab and the guardian has written a fairly reasonable article on it (ages ago) which was fairly even handed while mentioning that her work has been “compared with Nazi Eugenics”.
I’d say an obvious difference is that EA family planning orgs aren’t doing permanent sterilization.
I’d also say that the reason Thorstad is upset is probably mostly because he sees Scott’s support for the org as “let’s get rid of drug addicts children from the next generation because they have bad genes”, and-rightly in my view-worries that this is the sort of logic that the Nazis used to justify genocide of the “wrong sort” of people, and that if HBD becomes widely believed people might turn this logic against Black people. Scott could (and would) reasonably protest that there is a big difference between being prepared to use violence for eugenic goals, and merely incentivizing people towards them in non-coerceive ways. But if you apply this to race rather than drug addicts “we should try and make there be less Black people, non-coercively” is still Nazi and awful.
This sort of eugenic reasoning doesn’t actually seem to be what’s going on with Project Prevention itself, incidentally. From the Guardian article, it seems like the founder genuinely values the children of drug addicts as human beings, given she adopted them and is just trying to stop them being hurt. From that point of view, I’d say she is probably a bit confused though: it’s not clear most children of addicts have lives that are worse than nothing, even though they will be worse than average. So it’s not clear it actually helps them to prevent them being born.
I agree with your comment about Scott’s support for the org, but I think he unnecessarily sullies and misrepresents the org along the way. Why not just explain what the org does and then tell about Alexander’s response to it, as the focus is on Alexander.
Like your say regardless of what you think about the orgs methods, they aren’t an org which has eugenic intentions and shouldn’t be tarred by that brush in the article.
Again to say I probably don’t agree with what the org does, but have a lot of compassion for her founder because she has genuinely given much of her life towards looking after children others don’t want, and this org came out of trying to solve that issue.
You’re correct I missed that! Have edited. The point I was trying to make is that it was a fairly even handed article though, coming from a fairly left wing source, so it’s hardly a consensus.
Small note (while not endorsing the NGO), I struggle to see how “Project Prevention” could be considered a “slide into open Eugenics” just because they wanted to move into Haiti. Are EA Family planning organisations similar because they want to work in Africa? Of course not.
From wikipedia looking at their clientelle “As of May 2022, out of 7,833 clients it had paid: 4,791 (61.3%) were white; 1,626 (20.8%) black; 830 (10.6%) Hispanic; 572 (7.3%) other.” which seems like a fairly representative mix among the people groups they work with.
The founder has been interviewed on Radiolab and the guardian has written a fairly reasonable article on it (ages ago) which was fairly even handed while mentioning that her work has been “compared with Nazi Eugenics”.
I’d say an obvious difference is that EA family planning orgs aren’t doing permanent sterilization.
I’d also say that the reason Thorstad is upset is probably mostly because he sees Scott’s support for the org as “let’s get rid of drug addicts children from the next generation because they have bad genes”, and-rightly in my view-worries that this is the sort of logic that the Nazis used to justify genocide of the “wrong sort” of people, and that if HBD becomes widely believed people might turn this logic against Black people. Scott could (and would) reasonably protest that there is a big difference between being prepared to use violence for eugenic goals, and merely incentivizing people towards them in non-coerceive ways. But if you apply this to race rather than drug addicts “we should try and make there be less Black people, non-coercively” is still Nazi and awful.
This sort of eugenic reasoning doesn’t actually seem to be what’s going on with Project Prevention itself, incidentally. From the Guardian article, it seems like the founder genuinely values the children of drug addicts as human beings, given she adopted them and is just trying to stop them being hurt. From that point of view, I’d say she is probably a bit confused though: it’s not clear most children of addicts have lives that are worse than nothing, even though they will be worse than average. So it’s not clear it actually helps them to prevent them being born.
I agree with your comment about Scott’s support for the org, but I think he unnecessarily sullies and misrepresents the org along the way. Why not just explain what the org does and then tell about Alexander’s response to it, as the focus is on Alexander.
Like your say regardless of what you think about the orgs methods, they aren’t an org which has eugenic intentions and shouldn’t be tarred by that brush in the article.
Again to say I probably don’t agree with what the org does, but have a lot of compassion for her founder because she has genuinely given much of her life towards looking after children others don’t want, and this org came out of trying to solve that issue.
Puzzled by your last paragraph. The Guardian article explicitly says that in the US their work has been compared to Nazi eugenics.
You’re correct I missed that! Have edited. The point I was trying to make is that it was a fairly even handed article though, coming from a fairly left wing source, so it’s hardly a consensus.