Thank you for that explanation, Nathan. There’s one statement I don’t understand: you say “Whenever I meet someone who holds these views...” but what view(s) are we talking about, and why do some people to think that Nick holds them?
I suspect that people who feel this way get so offended by being asked this kind of question that they simply downvote + disagree without answering.
That populations vary significantly on IQ. Someone I talked to said that they had found correlation between people who held these views and who treated them as if they were less intelligent.
So — this person believes IQ cannot vary significantly by population? Or that one mustn’t say so?
In the Flynn effect, populations vary significantly on IQ depending on when they were born. So, assuming the Flynn effect isn’t controversial, I suppose you meant “populations grouped by skin color”. But, I would ask, if timing of birth is correlated with IQ, then couldn’t location of birth be correlated with IQ? Or poverty, or education?
I could continue this line of reasoning, but.. somehow it doesn’t feel useful. Positions people take on this can be arbitrarily extreme, e.g. some people object to any attempt to measure intelligence. If such a person sees the Bostrom “apology”, they could be mad that he hasn’t denounced these so-called “IQ tests” as illegitimate.
And I guess your point wasn’t about logic, after all, but about feelings. So let me share my feeling: I find it extremely threatening and scary when people in/around EA — you know, EA, the concept I am building my whole life around — are vaguely treating someone who (to me) is obviously not racist as if he were a racist. It’s like suddenly my neighbors joined a mob and are carrying a city councilman toward the giant tree in the town square. I’m alarmed and I say “whoa, why are you acting this way?! I think you’re making a mistake!” and the mob just says “f*** you!” Maybe this is why I’m spending 3AM to 6AM on a Monday writing this.
This makes me want to either shrink away from EA, or take a stand.
Maybe a stand like this: I think if someone is so politicized that they think certain measurements should be ignored and no similar measurements should be done henceforth; or if they can’t discuss correlation as distinct from causation; or if an apology is worthless/insincere because it provides too much context or has too much explanation afterward or because of a reason they aren’t willing to explain; or if they like downvoting people who question their opinion without defending or explaining their own position; or if they are a conflict theorist; then I actually think maybe EA isn’t for them. By all means, donate to help the poor. Donate to prevent biological weapons and so on. But in this neighborhood we like measurements and explanations and charitable interpretations. And we believe in “innocent until, on the balance of probabilities, probably guilty”.
EAs decided pretty quickly that an EA-affiliated person, SBF, had acted appallingly badly and ought to be disowned. I trusted that judgement because it had a different flavor to it. In this link you will see, in tweets two and three, a series of links to evidence that support the position Robert is taking. Evidence! Think what you want about Bostrom, but if you’re going to make a case against him here, don’t just say he was “mealy mouthed” and conclude that he believes bad and false things, without attempting to demonstrate it. I could and should read Rohit’s article more charitably, especially since he says he’s not an EA, but when the parade of downvotes rolled in, that became impossible on an emotional level.
Rohit could have referred to the Wikipedia summary of the scientific consensus on race and IQ like the GCRI did in their statement here along with other scholarship, as Torres also does here. I can understand how some would prefer not further to dignify racialism as a legitimate topic of scientific debate as it can genuflect a bothsideist dynamic that serves neo-Nazis, etc. But I can also understand why some would, in good faith, find the omission questionable.
However, the problem with Bostrom’s statements that I haven’t always seen clarified in the limited EA discourse I’ve personally observed isn’t acknowledging mere differences measured by IQ between groups or that IQ reflects the psychometric construct “g ” more than a measure or estimate of general intellectual potential. Instead, the issue is that he did not (seem bothered to know or workshop his apology draft with others to know and therefore) recognize that the case for a biological or genetic basis for that differential is not supported by scientific consensus. Nor did it acknowledge that race, as a supposed biological construct, does not map onto genetic population structures, making the evidentiary case for the inherent intellectual inferiority of people with darker or “black” skin (like myself) empirically highly questionable.
But since we have feelings and thoughts, I find it extremely (as well as credibly and existentially) threatening, and quite frightening that an exalted leader in a movement that I believe (believed?) in, commanding billions of dollars in funding to shape human and posthuman futures holds these historically dangerous (read: not safe) and empirically unsupported beliefs about my intrinsic inferiority and subsequent negligible value to futures that matter, while being supported by a non-trivial subset of the EA/rationalist community who also holds these beliefs, or in “HBD” (which itself is an attempt to push white supremacy into the mainstream anti/woke culture war under the veneer of scientific objectivity but that’s another discussion).
This is also particularly disturbing as I try to convince myself and others, including and especially humans who look like me, that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change to build a better world for future generations rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
I find it extremely [...] threatening, and quite frightening that an exalted leader [...] holds these [...] beliefs
You haven’t said what “these beliefs” refers to, but given the preceding context, you seem to be strongly objecting not to any belief Bostrom holds, but to his lack of belief. In other words, it is threatening and frightening (in context) that Bostrom said: “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”.
You mention a Wikipedia article that you don’t link to directly. I think you mean this one. Perhaps the most notable thing in this article is the following:
The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.[148][149][150][147][151][152][153][52][154] Growing evidence indicates that environmental factors, not genetic ones, explain the racial IQ gap.[37][147][155][151]
I suppose you believe either (1) that it was completely unacceptable that Bostrom did not study up on this topic before writing an apology, or (2) that there is no need to study up because scientific study is not required to make a determination. Either way, I don’t agree. Please let me know whether I have understood your position correctly.
Bostrom did not take a position on the contribution of genes to group differences in his apology. However, I suspect he believes there is a non-zero genetic contribution.
Regardless, your justification for your feelings is aided by rephrasing the hereditarian position in an extremely inflammatory and morally-loaded way. It makes your opponent look worse than they are when you phrase it in such a provocative and somewhat misleading way.
I think people with Down syndrome, severe traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer’s have lower average cognitive ability when compared with the population at large. And yet, I don’t go around saying that these groups have “inherent intellectual inferiority.” Talking like that makes you seem like a jerk.
If you think that genetic differences in IQ immediately imply inferiority, then unless you deny that individuals have different levels of cognitive ability because of genetic differences, you must be committed to thinking you are “intellectually superior” than a bunch of people. But you probably don’t talk like that because it makes you seem like a jerk. (which I don’t think you are).
What do you mean by EA is focusing on “direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.” Do you mean to say that discussing these topics literally directly threatens your life? I think hyperbolic statements like this are detrimental to openly reasoning about topics because someone can claim “this discourse is going to get people killed” and calling this sort of thing out as hyperbolic makes one look insensitive to your emotional concerns, and people do not want to look insensitive.
Edit: Striking my interpretation and critical response. Disregard if I misunderstood.
This is also particularly disturbing as I try to convince myself and others, including and especially humans who look like me, that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change to build a better world for future generations rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
Was that Chris finds it difficult to justify devoting effort/time/money to EA causes (and convincing others to do so) instead of focusing “on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties” (presumably in the context of black Americans?) because of EA’s lack of diversity and willingness to discuss this topic.
While I believe that this is a nonsensical argument against a social movement with nearly all of its attention to global health being dedicated to saving (mostly black) lives as efficiently as possible, I want to try to understand the argument as best as possible, and think you may have misinterpreted.
If one truly believes in maximizing human welfare in a rigorous and evidence-based fashion, the suggestion that these two modes of intervention (ie EA Global Health vs. USA Domestic political activism) are comparable in the saving of black lives does not add up. One can always give to the actual effective causes without aligning or identifying with EA.
Thanks for the pushback. I crossed out my interpretation. I’ll await an answer. Perhaps I should’ve waited for clarification before responding.
I’ll explain why I interpretted it the way I did:
This is also particularly disturbing as I try to convince myself and others, including and especially humans who look like me, that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change to build a better world for future generations rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
I parsed it as EA is unwilling to change and would rather focus on direct threats. And since there was a “rather” I thought it was constrasting building a better world with with focusing on threats. So, I interpretted the threat to be Bostrom’s views/these discussions.
...I try to convince myself and others, … , that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change … rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
Note: If I had more than 10 minutes to make an extended comment or post that was less likely to be tone-police bait and properly formatted, I would have. That was my first EA forum comment and it came after a few emotionally exhausting days reviewing this discourse. I frankly just needed to get my thoughts off my chest.
But! Now for my second EA forum comment ever:
Was that Chris finds it difficult to justify devoting effort/time/money to EA causes (and convincing others to do so) instead of focusing “on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties” (presumably in the context of black Americans?) because of EA’s lack of diversity and willingness to discuss this topic.
Thank you for the clarification, Anon Rationalist. That is, in large part, what I meant. But the willingness to discuss this topic is not my main issue, and neither is how tactfully people can make statements that I believe are still at odds with the basic empirics of how clinal traits like skin color work.
My point is that by subjecting oneself to conversations (particularly like this) with people who a) strongly align with HBD (and the HBD Institute) and b) may be more concerned with being perceived as non-racist/EA value-aligned than updating priors on possible externalities, one faces an increased risk of epistemic exploitation (not losing my life directly).
My point is not to be combative or inflammatory, but the direction longtermism appears to be taking suggests that this occupational hazard will be less likely in other social movements. And as others have noted , longtermism has “brought a shift of funding away from causes such as global health and poverty which greatly benefitted the residents of nonwestern nations, including many women and people of color, towards funding research in North America and Western Europe, to the benefit of a small number of highly-educated and highly-paid researchers, often white men.” I agree with him that this is likely unintentional but it’s notable regardless if you/we want to do the most good.
While I believe that this is a nonsensical argument against a social movement with nearly all of its attention to global health being dedicated to saving (mostly black) lives as efficiently as possible, I want to try to understand the argument as best as possible, and think you may have misinterpreted.
This reaction pattern-matches with some of my individual impressions of some push-back I’ve received from a variety of people to EA’s messaging, or when I say we should help them help the African diaspora. I’ve often defended EA, Game B, and other movements associated with x-risk as not immediately dismissible sci-fi-laced navel-gazing, jargon-spewing crypto-bros and doomers who care more about good epistemics than base reality. Natheless, I still applaud the work EA has accomplished, in promoting the importance of long-term thinking (because important it is), and its members’ commitment to combating biases.
However, I also have an increasingly hard time picturing how I might sustainably, in good conscience, decouple links the Human Biodiversity Institute has to the alt-right and how promoting and normalizing HBD has psychosocial externalities that include making those who peddle pseudoscience more acceptable. It’s quite hard when seeing the tangible harms these consequences can cause in e.g. the NFL or authoritarian jerks in office who don’t mince their bigotry or unintentionally do so covertly as Bostrom suggests.
I understand that it is not many folks here’s intention. I stronglywant to believe that EA is different and will be better but I had to take a break from reading the forums after seeing the posts.
Now back to Ivan’s comment:
If you think that genetic differences in IQ immediately imply inferiority, then unless you deny that individuals have different levels of cognitive ability because of genetic differences, you must be committed to thinking you are “intellectually superior” than a bunch of people. But you probably don’t talk like that because it makes you seem like a jerk. (which I don’t think you are).
I don’t think (genetic) differences in IQ imply inferiority. My point is that my anticipated experience suggests that people have and do immediately make that jump to justify illiberal policies in the name of reason, science and evidence—even when it completely wrong.
I’m not trying to make people look worse than they are, I’m just baffled by holding up a mirror to what EA looks like to the very people they say they/we are advocating for, and wondering who EA wants to be.
I am confused by this post. Bostrom never claimed a genetic basis for observed differences in IQ between races. He specifically did not address that and deferred to the experts in his apology. The Wikipedia page you reference supports his statement, charitably rephrased as “On average, white people score higher on IQ tests than black people.”
Is your displeasure that he did not specifically disavow potential genetic explanations, because the Wikipedia article on the topic says they are not empirically supported? (It should be noted here that all conducted surveys of intelligence researchers, though they have their problems, have found that a supermajority of experts believe at least some of the gap is genetic). Additionally, I am unaware of any transracial adoption studies or admixture studies (which, to my understanding, would be the most relevant experiments) that have not suggested at least a partial genetic explanation.
I think this is the issue that DPiepgrass highlighted. If one does not believe in rigorous empirical study of issues that could potential address human welfare, I don’t think EA is for them.
Thank you for that explanation, Nathan. There’s one statement I don’t understand: you say “Whenever I meet someone who holds these views...” but what view(s) are we talking about, and why do some people to think that Nick holds them?
I suspect that people who feel this way get so offended by being asked this kind of question that they simply downvote + disagree without answering.
That populations vary significantly on IQ. Someone I talked to said that they had found correlation between people who held these views and who treated them as if they were less intelligent.
So — this person believes IQ cannot vary significantly by population? Or that one mustn’t say so?
In the Flynn effect, populations vary significantly on IQ depending on when they were born. So, assuming the Flynn effect isn’t controversial, I suppose you meant “populations grouped by skin color”. But, I would ask, if timing of birth is correlated with IQ, then couldn’t location of birth be correlated with IQ? Or poverty, or education?
I could continue this line of reasoning, but.. somehow it doesn’t feel useful. Positions people take on this can be arbitrarily extreme, e.g. some people object to any attempt to measure intelligence. If such a person sees the Bostrom “apology”, they could be mad that he hasn’t denounced these so-called “IQ tests” as illegitimate.
And I guess your point wasn’t about logic, after all, but about feelings. So let me share my feeling: I find it extremely threatening and scary when people in/around EA — you know, EA, the concept I am building my whole life around — are vaguely treating someone who (to me) is obviously not racist as if he were a racist. It’s like suddenly my neighbors joined a mob and are carrying a city councilman toward the giant tree in the town square. I’m alarmed and I say “whoa, why are you acting this way?! I think you’re making a mistake!” and the mob just says “f*** you!” Maybe this is why I’m spending 3AM to 6AM on a Monday writing this.
This makes me want to either shrink away from EA, or take a stand.
Maybe a stand like this: I think if someone is so politicized that they think certain measurements should be ignored and no similar measurements should be done henceforth; or if they can’t discuss correlation as distinct from causation; or if an apology is worthless/insincere because it provides too much context or has too much explanation afterward or because of a reason they aren’t willing to explain; or if they like downvoting people who question their opinion without defending or explaining their own position; or if they are a conflict theorist; then I actually think maybe EA isn’t for them. By all means, donate to help the poor. Donate to prevent biological weapons and so on. But in this neighborhood we like measurements and explanations and charitable interpretations. And we believe in “innocent until, on the balance of probabilities, probably guilty”.
EAs decided pretty quickly that an EA-affiliated person, SBF, had acted appallingly badly and ought to be disowned. I trusted that judgement because it had a different flavor to it. In this link you will see, in tweets two and three, a series of links to evidence that support the position Robert is taking. Evidence! Think what you want about Bostrom, but if you’re going to make a case against him here, don’t just say he was “mealy mouthed” and conclude that he believes bad and false things, without attempting to demonstrate it. I could and should read Rohit’s article more charitably, especially since he says he’s not an EA, but when the parade of downvotes rolled in, that became impossible on an emotional level.
Rohit could have referred to the Wikipedia summary of the scientific consensus on race and IQ like the GCRI did in their statement here along with other scholarship, as Torres also does here. I can understand how some would prefer not further to dignify racialism as a legitimate topic of scientific debate as it can genuflect a bothsideist dynamic that serves neo-Nazis, etc. But I can also understand why some would, in good faith, find the omission questionable.
However, the problem with Bostrom’s statements that I haven’t always seen clarified in the limited EA discourse I’ve personally observed isn’t acknowledging mere differences measured by IQ between groups or that IQ reflects the psychometric construct “g ” more than a measure or estimate of general intellectual potential. Instead, the issue is that he did not (seem bothered to know or workshop his apology draft with others to know and therefore) recognize that the case for a biological or genetic basis for that differential is not supported by scientific consensus. Nor did it acknowledge that race, as a supposed biological construct, does not map onto genetic population structures, making the evidentiary case for the inherent intellectual inferiority of people with darker or “black” skin (like myself) empirically highly questionable.
But since we have feelings and thoughts, I find it extremely (as well as credibly and existentially) threatening, and quite frightening that an exalted leader in a movement that I believe (believed?) in, commanding billions of dollars in funding to shape human and posthuman futures holds these historically dangerous (read: not safe) and empirically unsupported beliefs about my intrinsic inferiority and subsequent negligible value to futures that matter, while being supported by a non-trivial subset of the EA/rationalist community who also holds these beliefs, or in “HBD” (which itself is an attempt to push white supremacy into the mainstream anti/woke culture war under the veneer of scientific objectivity but that’s another discussion).
This is also particularly disturbing as I try to convince myself and others, including and especially humans who look like me, that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change to build a better world for future generations rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
You haven’t said what “these beliefs” refers to, but given the preceding context, you seem to be strongly objecting not to any belief Bostrom holds, but to his lack of belief. In other words, it is threatening and frightening (in context) that Bostrom said: “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”.
You mention a Wikipedia article that you don’t link to directly. I think you mean this one. Perhaps the most notable thing in this article is the following:
I suppose you believe either (1) that it was completely unacceptable that Bostrom did not study up on this topic before writing an apology, or (2) that there is no need to study up because scientific study is not required to make a determination. Either way, I don’t agree. Please let me know whether I have understood your position correctly.
I strong upvoted your comment because I disagreed that it should be at negative forum karma.
I just realized that I forgot to respond earlier, but your consideration and transparent explanation are appreciated.
Bostrom did not take a position on the contribution of genes to group differences in his apology. However, I suspect he believes there is a non-zero genetic contribution.
Regardless, your justification for your feelings is aided by rephrasing the hereditarian position in an extremely inflammatory and morally-loaded way. It makes your opponent look worse than they are when you phrase it in such a provocative and somewhat misleading way.
I think people with Down syndrome, severe traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer’s have lower average cognitive ability when compared with the population at large. And yet, I don’t go around saying that these groups have “inherent intellectual inferiority.” Talking like that makes you seem like a jerk.
If you think that genetic differences in IQ immediately imply inferiority, then unless you deny that individuals have different levels of cognitive ability because of genetic differences, you must be committed to thinking you are “intellectually superior” than a bunch of people. But you probably don’t talk like that because it makes you seem like a jerk. (which I don’t think you are).
What do you mean by EA is focusing on “direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.”
Do you mean to say that discussing these topics literally directly threatens your life? I think hyperbolic statements like this are detrimental to openly reasoning about topics because someone can claim “this discourse is going to get people killed” and calling this sort of thing out as hyperbolic makes one look insensitive to your emotional concerns, and people do not want to look insensitive.Edit: Striking my interpretation and critical response. Disregard if I misunderstood.
My understanding of this section:
Was that Chris finds it difficult to justify devoting effort/time/money to EA causes (and convincing others to do so) instead of focusing “on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties” (presumably in the context of black Americans?) because of EA’s lack of diversity and willingness to discuss this topic.
While I believe that this is a nonsensical argument against a social movement with nearly all of its attention to global health being dedicated to saving (mostly black) lives as efficiently as possible, I want to try to understand the argument as best as possible, and think you may have misinterpreted.
If one truly believes in maximizing human welfare in a rigorous and evidence-based fashion, the suggestion that these two modes of intervention (ie EA Global Health vs. USA Domestic political activism) are comparable in the saving of black lives does not add up. One can always give to the actual effective causes without aligning or identifying with EA.
Thanks for the pushback. I crossed out my interpretation. I’ll await an answer. Perhaps I should’ve waited for clarification before responding.
I’ll explain why I interpretted it the way I did:
I parsed it as EA is unwilling to change and would rather focus on direct threats. And since there was a “rather” I thought it was constrasting building a better world with with focusing on threats. So, I interpretted the threat to be Bostrom’s views/these discussions.
Note: If I had more than 10 minutes to make an extended comment or post that was less likely to be tone-police bait and properly formatted, I would have. That was my first EA forum comment and it came after a few emotionally exhausting days reviewing this discourse. I frankly just needed to get my thoughts off my chest.
But! Now for my second EA forum comment ever:
Thank you for the clarification, Anon Rationalist. That is, in large part, what I meant. But the willingness to discuss this topic is not my main issue, and neither is how tactfully people can make statements that I believe are still at odds with the basic empirics of how clinal traits like skin color work.
My point is that by subjecting oneself to conversations (particularly like this) with people who a) strongly align with HBD (and the HBD Institute) and b) may be more concerned with being perceived as non-racist/EA value-aligned than updating priors on possible externalities, one faces an increased risk of epistemic exploitation (not losing my life directly).
My point is not to be combative or inflammatory, but the direction longtermism appears to be taking suggests that this occupational hazard will be less likely in other social movements. And as others have noted , longtermism has “brought a shift of funding away from causes such as global health and poverty which greatly benefitted the residents of nonwestern nations, including many women and people of color, towards funding research in North America and Western Europe, to the benefit of a small number of highly-educated and highly-paid researchers, often white men.” I agree with him that this is likely unintentional but it’s notable regardless if you/we want to do the most good.
This reaction pattern-matches with some of my individual impressions of some push-back I’ve received from a variety of people to EA’s messaging, or when I say we should help them help the African diaspora. I’ve often defended EA, Game B, and other movements associated with x-risk as not immediately dismissible sci-fi-laced navel-gazing, jargon-spewing crypto-bros and doomers who care more about good epistemics than base reality. Natheless, I still applaud the work EA has accomplished, in promoting the importance of long-term thinking (because important it is), and its members’ commitment to combating biases.
However, I also have an increasingly hard time picturing how I might sustainably, in good conscience, decouple links the Human Biodiversity Institute has to the alt-right and how promoting and normalizing HBD has psychosocial externalities that include making those who peddle pseudoscience more acceptable. It’s quite hard when seeing the tangible harms these consequences can cause in e.g. the NFL or authoritarian jerks in office who don’t mince their bigotry or unintentionally do so covertly as Bostrom suggests.
I understand that it is not many folks here’s intention. I strongly want to believe that EA is different and will be better but I had to take a break from reading the forums after seeing the posts.
Now back to Ivan’s comment:
I don’t think (genetic) differences in IQ imply inferiority. My point is that my anticipated experience suggests that people have and do immediately make that jump to justify illiberal policies in the name of reason, science and evidence—even when it completely wrong.
I’m not trying to make people look worse than they are, I’m just baffled by holding up a mirror to what EA looks like to the very people they say they/we are advocating for, and wondering who EA wants to be.
I am confused by this post. Bostrom never claimed a genetic basis for observed differences in IQ between races. He specifically did not address that and deferred to the experts in his apology. The Wikipedia page you reference supports his statement, charitably rephrased as “On average, white people score higher on IQ tests than black people.”
Is your displeasure that he did not specifically disavow potential genetic explanations, because the Wikipedia article on the topic says they are not empirically supported? (It should be noted here that all conducted surveys of intelligence researchers, though they have their problems, have found that a supermajority of experts believe at least some of the gap is genetic). Additionally, I am unaware of any transracial adoption studies or admixture studies (which, to my understanding, would be the most relevant experiments) that have not suggested at least a partial genetic explanation.
I think this is the issue that DPiepgrass highlighted. If one does not believe in rigorous empirical study of issues that could potential address human welfare, I don’t think EA is for them.