Is it okay if I give my personal perspective on those questions?
I suppose I should first state that I don’t expect that skin color has any effect on IQ whatsoever, and so on. But … I feel like the controversy in this case (among EAs) isn’t about whether one believes that or not [as EAs never express that belief AFAIK], but rather it is about whether one should do things like (i) reach a firm conclusion based purely on moral reasoning (or something like that), and (ii) attack people who gather evidence on the topic, just learn and comment about the topic, or even don’t learn much about the topic but commit the sin of not reaching the “right” conclusion within their state of ignorance.
My impression is that there is no scientific consensus on this question, so we cannot defer to it. Also, doesn’t the rationalist community in general, and EA-rationalists in particular, accept the consensus on most topics such as global warming, vaccine safety, homeopathy, nuclear power, and evolution? I wonder if you are seeing the tolerance of skepticism on LW or the relative tolerance of certain ideas/claims and thinking the tolerance is problematic. But maybe I am mistaken about whether the typical aspiring rationalist agrees with various consensuses.
[Whether the purported consensus folks often refer to is actually existent] The only consensus I think exists is that one’s genetic code can, in principle, affect intelligence, e.g. one could theoretically be a genius, an idiot, or an octopus, for genetic reasons (literally, if you have the right genes, you are an octopus, with the intelligence of an octopus, “because of your genes”). I don’t know whether or not there is some further consensus that relates somehow to skin color, but I do care about the fact that even the first matter is scarily controversial. There are cases where some information is too dangerous to be widely shared, such as “how to build an AGI” or “how to build a deadly infectious virus with stuff you can order online”. Likewise it would be terrible to tell children that their skin color is “linked” to lower intelligence; it’s “infohazardous if true” (because it has been observed that children in general may react to negative information by becoming discouraged and end up less skilled). But adults should be mature enough to be able to talk about this like adults. Since they generally aren’t that mature, what I wonder is how we should act given that there are confusing taboos and culture wars everywhere. For example, we can try adding various caveats and qualifications, but the Bostrom case demonstrates that these are often insufficient.
[What the information value of “more accurate [...] views on race” would even be “if true,”] I’d say the information value is low (which is why I have little interest in this topic) but that the disvalue of taboos is high. Yes, bad things are bad, but merely discussing bad things (without elaborate paranoid social protocols) isn’t.
[How Black people and other folks underrepresented [...] might react to seeing people in these communities speaking casually about all of this, and what implications that has for things like recruitment and retention in AI safety.] That’s a great question! I suspect that reactions differ tremendously between individuals. I also suspect that first impressions are key, so whatever appears at the top of this page, for instance, is important, but not nearly as important as whatever page about this topic is most widely circulated. But… am I wrong to think that the average black person would be less outraged by an apology that begins with “I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago” than some people on this very forum?
Is it okay if I give my personal perspective on those questions?
I suppose I should first state that I don’t expect that skin color has any effect on IQ whatsoever, and so on. But … I feel like the controversy in this case (among EAs) isn’t about whether one believes that or not [as EAs never express that belief AFAIK], but rather it is about whether one should do things like (i) reach a firm conclusion based purely on moral reasoning (or something like that), and (ii) attack people who gather evidence on the topic, just learn and comment about the topic, or even don’t learn much about the topic but commit the sin of not reaching the “right” conclusion within their state of ignorance.
My impression is that there is no scientific consensus on this question, so we cannot defer to it. Also, doesn’t the rationalist community in general, and EA-rationalists in particular, accept the consensus on most topics such as global warming, vaccine safety, homeopathy, nuclear power, and evolution? I wonder if you are seeing the tolerance of skepticism on LW or the relative tolerance of certain ideas/claims and thinking the tolerance is problematic. But maybe I am mistaken about whether the typical aspiring rationalist agrees with various consensuses.
[Whether the purported consensus folks often refer to is actually existent] The only consensus I think exists is that one’s genetic code can, in principle, affect intelligence, e.g. one could theoretically be a genius, an idiot, or an octopus, for genetic reasons (literally, if you have the right genes, you are an octopus, with the intelligence of an octopus, “because of your genes”). I don’t know whether or not there is some further consensus that relates somehow to skin color, but I do care about the fact that even the first matter is scarily controversial. There are cases where some information is too dangerous to be widely shared, such as “how to build an AGI” or “how to build a deadly infectious virus with stuff you can order online”. Likewise it would be terrible to tell children that their skin color is “linked” to lower intelligence; it’s “infohazardous if true” (because it has been observed that children in general may react to negative information by becoming discouraged and end up less skilled). But adults should be mature enough to be able to talk about this like adults. Since they generally aren’t that mature, what I wonder is how we should act given that there are confusing taboos and culture wars everywhere. For example, we can try adding various caveats and qualifications, but the Bostrom case demonstrates that these are often insufficient.
[What the information value of “more accurate [...] views on race” would even be “if true,”] I’d say the information value is low (which is why I have little interest in this topic) but that the disvalue of taboos is high. Yes, bad things are bad, but merely discussing bad things (without elaborate paranoid social protocols) isn’t.
[How Black people and other folks underrepresented [...] might react to seeing people in these communities speaking casually about all of this, and what implications that has for things like recruitment and retention in AI safety.] That’s a great question! I suspect that reactions differ tremendously between individuals. I also suspect that first impressions are key, so whatever appears at the top of this page, for instance, is important, but not nearly as important as whatever page about this topic is most widely circulated. But… am I wrong to think that the average black person would be less outraged by an apology that begins with “I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago” than some people on this very forum?