Any links to where Scott Alexander deliberately argues that black people have lower IQs for genetic reasons? I’ve been reading his blog for a decade and I don’t recall any posts on this.
I should probably stop posting on this or reading the comments, for the sake of my mental health (I mean that literally, this is a major anxiety disorder trigger for me.) But I guess I sort of have to respond to a direct request for sources.
However, for years at SSC he put the dreaded neo-reactionaries on his blogroll. And they are definitely race/IQ guys. Meanwhile, he was telling friends privately at the time, that “HBD” (i.e. “human biodiversity”, but generally includes the idea that black people are genetically less intelligent) is “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct”: https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001 . That is technically still leaving some room for agnosticism, but it’s pretty clear which way he’s leaning. Meanwhile, he also was saying in private not to tell anyone he thinks this (I feel like I figured out his view was something like this anyway though? Maybe that’s hindsight bias): ‘NEVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THIS, not even in confidence’. And he was also talking about how publicly declaring himself to be a reactionary was bad strategy for PR reasons (“becoming a reactionary would be both stupid and decrease my ability to spread things to non-reactionary readers”). (He also discusses how he writes about this stuff partly because it drives blog traffic. Not shameful in itself, but I think people in EA sometimes have an exaggerated sense of Scott’s moral purity and integrity that this sits a little awkwardly with.) Overall, I think his private talk on this paints a picture of someone who is too cautious to be 100% sure that Black people have genetically lower IQs, but wants other people to increase their credence in that to >50%, and is thinking strategically (and arguably manipulatively) about how to get them to do so. (He does seem to more clearly reject the anti-democratic and the most anti-feminist parts of Neo-Reaction.)
I will say that MOST of what makes me angry about this, is not the object-level race/IQ beliefs themselves, but the lack of repulsion towards the Reactionaries as a (fascist) political movement. I really feel like this is pretty damning (though obviously Scott has his good traits too). The Reactionaries are known for things like trolling about how maybe slavery was actually kind of good: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters/ Scott has never seemed sufficiently creeped out by this (or really, at all creeped out by it in my experience). But he has been happy to get really, really angry about feminists who say mean things about nerds**, or in one case I remember, stupid woke changes to competitive debate. (I couldn’t find that one by googling, so you’ll have to trust my memory about it; they were stupid, just not worth the emotional investment.) Personally, I think fascism should be more upsetting than woke debate! (Yes, that is melodramatic phrasing, but I am trying to shock people out what I think is complacency on this topic.)
I think people in EA have a big blind-spot about Scott’s fairly egregious record on this stuff, because it’s really embarrassing for the community to admit how bad it is, people (including me often; I feel like I morally ought to give up ACX, but I still check it from time to time) like his writing for other reasons. And frankly, there is also a certain amount of (small-r) reactionary white male backlash in the community. Indeed, I used to enjoy some of Scott’s attacks on wokeness myself; I have similar self-esteem issues around autistic masculinity issues as I think many anti-woke rationalists do. The currently strongly negative position is one I’ve come to slowly over many years of thinking about this stuff, though I was always uncomfortable with his attitude towards the Reactionaries.
*[Quoting Scott] ’Earlier this week, I objected when a journalist dishonestly spliced my words to imply I supported Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. Some people wrote me to complain that I handled this in a cowardly way—I showed that the specific thing the journalist quoted wasn’t a reference to The Bell Curve, but I never answered the broader question of what I thought of the book. They demanded I come out and give my opinion openly. Well, the most direct answer is that I’ve never read it. But that’s kind of cowardly too—I’ve read papers and articles making what I assume is the same case. So what do I think of them?
This is far enough from my field that I would usually defer to expert consensus, but all the studies I can find which try to assess expert consensus seem crazy. A while ago, I freaked out upon finding a study that seemed to show most expert scientists in the field agreed with Murray’s thesis in 1987 - about three times as many said the gap was due to a combination of genetics and environment as said it was just environment. Then I freaked out again when I found another study (here is the most recent version, from 2020) showing basically the same thing (about four times as many say it’s a combination of genetics and environment compared to just environment). I can’t find any expert surveys giving the expected result that they all agree this is dumb and definitely 100% environment and we can move on (I’d be very relieved if anybody could find those, or if they could explain why the ones I found were fake studies or fake experts or a biased sample, or explain how I’m misreading them or that they otherwise shouldn’t be trusted. If you have thoughts on this, please send me an email). I’ve vacillated back and forth on how to think about this question so many times, and right now my personal probability estimate is “I am still freaking out about this, go away go away go away”. And I understand I have at least two potentially irresolvable biases on this question: one, I’m a white person in a country with a long history of promoting white supremacy; and two, if I lean in favor then everyone will hate me, and use it as a bludgeon against anyone I have ever associated with, and I will die alone in a ditch and maybe deserve it. So the best I can do is try to route around this issue when considering important questions. This is sometimes hard, but the basic principle is that I’m far less sure of any of it than I am sure that all human beings are morally equal and deserve to have a good life and get treated with respect regardless of academic achievement.
(Hopefully I’ve given people enough ammunition against me that they won’t have to use hallucinatory ammunition in the future. If you target me based on this, please remember that it’s entirely a me problem and other people tangentially linked to me are not at fault.)’
** Personally I hate *some* of the shit he complains about there too, although in other cases I probably agree with the angry feminist takes and might even sometimes defend the way they are expressed. I am autistic and have had great difficulties attracting romantic interest. (And obviously, as my name indicates I am male. And straight as it happens.) But Scott’s two most extensive blogposts on this are incredibly bare of sympathetic discussion of why feminists might sometimes be a bit angry and insensitive on this issue.
Personally, I think fascism should be more upsetting than woke debate!
I’m not very familiar with Reactionary philosophy myself, but was suspicious of your use of “fascism” here. Asked Copilot (based on GPT-4) and it answered:
As an AI, I don’t form personal opinions. However, I can share that Reactionary philosophy and Fascism are distinct ideologies, even though they might share some common elements such as a critique of modernity and a preference for traditional social structures.
Fascism is typically characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which is not necessarily present in Reactionary philosophy. Reactionaries might advocate for a return to older forms of governance, but this does not inherently involve the authoritarian aspects seen in Fascism.
(Normally I wouldn’t chime in on some topic I know this little about, but I suspect others who are more informed might fear speaking up and getting associated with fascism in other people’s minds as a result.)
Also, I’m not Scott but I can share that I’m personally upset with wokeness, not because of how it changed debate, but based on more significant harms to my family and the community we live in (which I described in general terms in this post), to the extent that we’re moving half-way across the country to be in a more politically balanced area, where hopefully it has less influence. (Not to mention damage to other institutions I care about, such as academia and journalism.)
(Yes, that is melodramatic phrasing, but I am trying to shock people out what I think is complacency on this topic.)
Not entirely sure what you’re referring to by “melodramatic phrasing”, but if this is an excuse for using “fascism” to describe “Reactionary philosophy” in order to manipulate people’s reactions to it and/or prevent dissent (I’ve often seen “racism” used this way in other places), I think I have to stand against that. If everyone started excusing themselves from following good discussion norms when they felt like others were complacent about something, that seems like a recipe for disaster.
Two major themes of neo-reactionary ideology seem to be authoritarianism and white supremacy.
There is definitely some overlap between people who identify with neo-reactionary ideas and people who identify with explicitly neo-Nazi/neo-fascist ideas.
Just to reiterate your original claim, you said that Scott “has done a lot, entirely deliberately in my view, to spread that view [that black people have lower IQs for genetic reasons].”
And your evidence for this claim is that:
He linked to neo-reactionaries on his blogroll who hold this view.
He privately told friends that HBD (which isn’t exclusively about the causes of racial IQ differences) is “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct.” And he demanded they never reveal this publicly.
He isn’t “repulsed” or “creeped out” or “upset” by reactionaries.
I find this extremely unpersuasive and misleading.
I don’t know which neo-reactionaries you’re referring to when you say he linked to them on his blogroll, but he very clearly doesn’t agree with everything they say. He has explicitly disagreed with the neo-reactionary movement at length.
Telling something to friends in private and demanding secrecy seems like the exact opposite of trying to spread a view. And saying a view is “probably partially correct or at least non-provably non-correct” is hardly a ringing endorsement of the view.
Come on… He doesn’t have the right emotional vibes, therefore he must be deliberately spreading the view?? I’m personally a vegan for ethical reasons. In fact, I think factory farming is among the worst things humanity has ever done. But I’m not “creeped out” or “repulsed” by people who eat meat.
Your evidence is extremely weak, and it’s disappointing that as of my response, it has 18 upvotes.
I think he is spreading the view because he strategizes about doing so in the quoted email (though it’s a bit hard to specify what the view is, since it’s not clear what probability “probably” amounts to.)
I should probably stop posting on this or reading the comments, for the sake of my mental health (I mean that literally, this is a major anxiety disorder trigger for me.)
I am with you on this. I have had to disengage for mental health reasons. This stuff affects me quite seriously. I may or may not check back in on this post again. I may have to go as far as completely disengaging from the EA Forum on both this alt and my main account for an indefinite period, maybe forever.
i don’t know your specific situation, but I will speak on a general dynamic.
The psychologist Elaine Aron has a hypothesis that there is a neurological subtype called the Highly Sensitive Person that is unusually sensitive to sensory and emotional stimuli. This can include being unusually unsettled if other people appear to be in pain or discomfort or unusually disturbed by depictions of violence or suffering in TV or movies.
Some have suggested that Aron is describing autism or a form of autism. I’m not sure what’s true. Some people and some psychometric tests have told me that I’m a Highly Sensitive Person and that I’m autistic.
Aggressive environments or aggressive subcultures can shake out people who are particularly sensitive in this way. When that happens, I believe a certain kind of wisdom and temperance is lost. The soft, gentle side of people must be preserved and a community should be such that particularly soft, gentle people can be included and welcomed without losing their softness and gentleness.
Aristotle talked about practical wisdom (phronêsis). “Practical wisdom” makes me think about the contrast between my analytic philosophy courses in ethics and the social work elective I took in undergrad. First, the atmosphere of the courses was just so different. The philosophy classes usually felt kind of cold, sometimes kind of mean. Social work was a culture shock for me because the people were so palpably kind and warm. Second, my social work professor had been involved in real moral issues deeply and directly. Those included HIV/AIDS activism, dealing with violence in schools, and counselling couples navigating infidelity. I was so impressed with his practical wisdom. How do I assess that he had practical wisdom? I don’t really know. How do I decide when an ethical argument seems rational? I don’t really know, either.
The contrast between my ethics courses and that social work course is a microcosm of so much for me. It’s that same contrast you see in the EA movement where, for example, you have the absurd situation where people take the principle of impartiality or equal consideration of interests so seriously that they concern themselves with shrimp welfare but, in practical terms, their moral circle doesn’t fully include women.
Tying it all back together, a movement that can’t align itself:
with democracy, against fascism
with women, against sexism
with people of colour, against white supremacy
with core moral decency, against Nazis
is morally bankrupt, has lost the plot, jumped the shark, utterly, disastrously failed.
One part of the causal story of how that could happen is if you have an influential element of the subculture that disdains softness and gentleness and disdains soft, gentle people. I don’t think you can have future-proof ethics if you don’t, like, care about people’s feelings.
Going a step deeper, I think people’s disdain for empathy and sensitivity often involves a wounded, tragic history of other people not treating their feelings and experiences with empathy and sensitivity and an ongoing sense of grievance about that continuing to be the case. A lot more could be written on this topic, but I don’t have the time right now and this comment has already gotten quite long.
Any links to where Scott Alexander deliberately argues that black people have lower IQs for genetic reasons? I’ve been reading his blog for a decade and I don’t recall any posts on this.
I should probably stop posting on this or reading the comments, for the sake of my mental health (I mean that literally, this is a major anxiety disorder trigger for me.) But I guess I sort of have to respond to a direct request for sources.
Scott’s official position on this is agnosticism, rather than public endorsement*. (See here for official agnosticism: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-cult-of-smart)
However, for years at SSC he put the dreaded neo-reactionaries on his blogroll. And they are definitely race/IQ guys. Meanwhile, he was telling friends privately at the time, that “HBD” (i.e. “human biodiversity”, but generally includes the idea that black people are genetically less intelligent) is “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct”: https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001 . That is technically still leaving some room for agnosticism, but it’s pretty clear which way he’s leaning. Meanwhile, he also was saying in private not to tell anyone he thinks this (I feel like I figured out his view was something like this anyway though? Maybe that’s hindsight bias): ‘NEVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THIS, not even in confidence’. And he was also talking about how publicly declaring himself to be a reactionary was bad strategy for PR reasons (“becoming a reactionary would be both stupid and decrease my ability to spread things to non-reactionary readers”). (He also discusses how he writes about this stuff partly because it drives blog traffic. Not shameful in itself, but I think people in EA sometimes have an exaggerated sense of Scott’s moral purity and integrity that this sits a little awkwardly with.) Overall, I think his private talk on this paints a picture of someone who is too cautious to be 100% sure that Black people have genetically lower IQs, but wants other people to increase their credence in that to >50%, and is thinking strategically (and arguably manipulatively) about how to get them to do so. (He does seem to more clearly reject the anti-democratic and the most anti-feminist parts of Neo-Reaction.)
I will say that MOST of what makes me angry about this, is not the object-level race/IQ beliefs themselves, but the lack of repulsion towards the Reactionaries as a (fascist) political movement. I really feel like this is pretty damning (though obviously Scott has his good traits too). The Reactionaries are known for things like trolling about how maybe slavery was actually kind of good: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters/ Scott has never seemed sufficiently creeped out by this (or really, at all creeped out by it in my experience). But he has been happy to get really, really angry about feminists who say mean things about nerds**, or in one case I remember, stupid woke changes to competitive debate. (I couldn’t find that one by googling, so you’ll have to trust my memory about it; they were stupid, just not worth the emotional investment.) Personally, I think fascism should be more upsetting than woke debate! (Yes, that is melodramatic phrasing, but I am trying to shock people out what I think is complacency on this topic.)
I think people in EA have a big blind-spot about Scott’s fairly egregious record on this stuff, because it’s really embarrassing for the community to admit how bad it is, people (including me often; I feel like I morally ought to give up ACX, but I still check it from time to time) like his writing for other reasons. And frankly, there is also a certain amount of (small-r) reactionary white male backlash in the community. Indeed, I used to enjoy some of Scott’s attacks on wokeness myself; I have similar self-esteem issues around autistic masculinity issues as I think many anti-woke rationalists do. The currently strongly negative position is one I’ve come to slowly over many years of thinking about this stuff, though I was always uncomfortable with his attitude towards the Reactionaries.
*[Quoting Scott] ’Earlier this week, I objected when a journalist dishonestly spliced my words to imply I supported Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. Some people wrote me to complain that I handled this in a cowardly way—I showed that the specific thing the journalist quoted wasn’t a reference to The Bell Curve, but I never answered the broader question of what I thought of the book. They demanded I come out and give my opinion openly. Well, the most direct answer is that I’ve never read it. But that’s kind of cowardly too—I’ve read papers and articles making what I assume is the same case. So what do I think of them?
This is far enough from my field that I would usually defer to expert consensus, but all the studies I can find which try to assess expert consensus seem crazy. A while ago, I freaked out upon finding a study that seemed to show most expert scientists in the field agreed with Murray’s thesis in 1987 - about three times as many said the gap was due to a combination of genetics and environment as said it was just environment. Then I freaked out again when I found another study (here is the most recent version, from 2020) showing basically the same thing (about four times as many say it’s a combination of genetics and environment compared to just environment). I can’t find any expert surveys giving the expected result that they all agree this is dumb and definitely 100% environment and we can move on (I’d be very relieved if anybody could find those, or if they could explain why the ones I found were fake studies or fake experts or a biased sample, or explain how I’m misreading them or that they otherwise shouldn’t be trusted. If you have thoughts on this, please send me an email). I’ve vacillated back and forth on how to think about this question so many times, and right now my personal probability estimate is “I am still freaking out about this, go away go away go away”. And I understand I have at least two potentially irresolvable biases on this question: one, I’m a white person in a country with a long history of promoting white supremacy; and two, if I lean in favor then everyone will hate me, and use it as a bludgeon against anyone I have ever associated with, and I will die alone in a ditch and maybe deserve it. So the best I can do is try to route around this issue when considering important questions. This is sometimes hard, but the basic principle is that I’m far less sure of any of it than I am sure that all human beings are morally equal and deserve to have a good life and get treated with respect regardless of academic achievement.
(Hopefully I’ve given people enough ammunition against me that they won’t have to use hallucinatory ammunition in the future. If you target me based on this, please remember that it’s entirely a me problem and other people tangentially linked to me are not at fault.)’
** Personally I hate *some* of the shit he complains about there too, although in other cases I probably agree with the angry feminist takes and might even sometimes defend the way they are expressed. I am autistic and have had great difficulties attracting romantic interest. (And obviously, as my name indicates I am male. And straight as it happens.) But Scott’s two most extensive blogposts on this are incredibly bare of sympathetic discussion of why feminists might sometimes be a bit angry and insensitive on this issue.
I’m not very familiar with Reactionary philosophy myself, but was suspicious of your use of “fascism” here. Asked Copilot (based on GPT-4) and it answered:
(Normally I wouldn’t chime in on some topic I know this little about, but I suspect others who are more informed might fear speaking up and getting associated with fascism in other people’s minds as a result.)
Also, I’m not Scott but I can share that I’m personally upset with wokeness, not because of how it changed debate, but based on more significant harms to my family and the community we live in (which I described in general terms in this post), to the extent that we’re moving half-way across the country to be in a more politically balanced area, where hopefully it has less influence. (Not to mention damage to other institutions I care about, such as academia and journalism.)
Not entirely sure what you’re referring to by “melodramatic phrasing”, but if this is an excuse for using “fascism” to describe “Reactionary philosophy” in order to manipulate people’s reactions to it and/or prevent dissent (I’ve often seen “racism” used this way in other places), I think I have to stand against that. If everyone started excusing themselves from following good discussion norms when they felt like others were complacent about something, that seems like a recipe for disaster.
Neo-reactionary ideology seems like a close match for fascism. The Wikipedia article on it discusses whether it is or isn’t fascism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
Two major themes of neo-reactionary ideology seem to be authoritarianism and white supremacy.
There is definitely some overlap between people who identify with neo-reactionary ideas and people who identify with explicitly neo-Nazi/neo-fascist ideas.
Just to reiterate your original claim, you said that Scott “has done a lot, entirely deliberately in my view, to spread that view [that black people have lower IQs for genetic reasons].”
And your evidence for this claim is that:
He linked to neo-reactionaries on his blogroll who hold this view.
He privately told friends that HBD (which isn’t exclusively about the causes of racial IQ differences) is “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct.” And he demanded they never reveal this publicly.
He isn’t “repulsed” or “creeped out” or “upset” by reactionaries.
I find this extremely unpersuasive and misleading.
I don’t know which neo-reactionaries you’re referring to when you say he linked to them on his blogroll, but he very clearly doesn’t agree with everything they say. He has explicitly disagreed with the neo-reactionary movement at length.
Telling something to friends in private and demanding secrecy seems like the exact opposite of trying to spread a view. And saying a view is “probably partially correct or at least non-provably non-correct” is hardly a ringing endorsement of the view.
Come on… He doesn’t have the right emotional vibes, therefore he must be deliberately spreading the view?? I’m personally a vegan for ethical reasons. In fact, I think factory farming is among the worst things humanity has ever done. But I’m not “creeped out” or “repulsed” by people who eat meat.
Your evidence is extremely weak, and it’s disappointing that as of my response, it has 18 upvotes.
I think he is spreading the view because he strategizes about doing so in the quoted email (though it’s a bit hard to specify what the view is, since it’s not clear what probability “probably” amounts to.)
I am with you on this. I have had to disengage for mental health reasons. This stuff affects me quite seriously. I may or may not check back in on this post again. I may have to go as far as completely disengaging from the EA Forum on both this alt and my main account for an indefinite period, maybe forever.
i don’t know your specific situation, but I will speak on a general dynamic.
The psychologist Elaine Aron has a hypothesis that there is a neurological subtype called the Highly Sensitive Person that is unusually sensitive to sensory and emotional stimuli. This can include being unusually unsettled if other people appear to be in pain or discomfort or unusually disturbed by depictions of violence or suffering in TV or movies.
Some have suggested that Aron is describing autism or a form of autism. I’m not sure what’s true. Some people and some psychometric tests have told me that I’m a Highly Sensitive Person and that I’m autistic.
Aggressive environments or aggressive subcultures can shake out people who are particularly sensitive in this way. When that happens, I believe a certain kind of wisdom and temperance is lost. The soft, gentle side of people must be preserved and a community should be such that particularly soft, gentle people can be included and welcomed without losing their softness and gentleness.
Aristotle talked about practical wisdom (phronêsis). “Practical wisdom” makes me think about the contrast between my analytic philosophy courses in ethics and the social work elective I took in undergrad. First, the atmosphere of the courses was just so different. The philosophy classes usually felt kind of cold, sometimes kind of mean. Social work was a culture shock for me because the people were so palpably kind and warm. Second, my social work professor had been involved in real moral issues deeply and directly. Those included HIV/AIDS activism, dealing with violence in schools, and counselling couples navigating infidelity. I was so impressed with his practical wisdom. How do I assess that he had practical wisdom? I don’t really know. How do I decide when an ethical argument seems rational? I don’t really know, either.
The contrast between my ethics courses and that social work course is a microcosm of so much for me. It’s that same contrast you see in the EA movement where, for example, you have the absurd situation where people take the principle of impartiality or equal consideration of interests so seriously that they concern themselves with shrimp welfare but, in practical terms, their moral circle doesn’t fully include women.
Tying it all back together, a movement that can’t align itself:
with democracy, against fascism
with women, against sexism
with people of colour, against white supremacy
with core moral decency, against Nazis
is morally bankrupt, has lost the plot, jumped the shark, utterly, disastrously failed.
One part of the causal story of how that could happen is if you have an influential element of the subculture that disdains softness and gentleness and disdains soft, gentle people. I don’t think you can have future-proof ethics if you don’t, like, care about people’s feelings.
Going a step deeper, I think people’s disdain for empathy and sensitivity often involves a wounded, tragic history of other people not treating their feelings and experiences with empathy and sensitivity and an ongoing sense of grievance about that continuing to be the case. A lot more could be written on this topic, but I don’t have the time right now and this comment has already gotten quite long.