This is indeed quite well-written and a helpful summary! One question I have: You write that “Fortunately, Prof. Bostrom’s later comments suggest that he, at least, no longer believes in the first claim to the full extent he once did.” Where are you getting that?
The third claim is indeed what has attracted the most attention and censure, but it’s the interaction with the first that makes it particularly toxic by ruling out many of the more charitable readings. It’s not just that he thinks the sentence “Blacks are more stupid than whites” is factually true but regrettable; he wrote that he “likes” that sentence, particularly because “the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct.”
It would be therefore great if Professor Bostrom explained somewhere why he no longer personally finds repugnant formulations of true statements appealing, but I couldn’t find it in the apology linked above.
This is indeed quite well-written and a helpful summary! One question I have: You write that “Fortunately, Prof. Bostrom’s later comments suggest that he, at least, no longer believes in the first claim to the full extent he once did.” Where are you getting that?
The third claim is indeed what has attracted the most attention and censure, but it’s the interaction with the first that makes it particularly toxic by ruling out many of the more charitable readings. It’s not just that he thinks the sentence “Blacks are more stupid than whites” is factually true but regrettable; he wrote that he “likes” that sentence, particularly because “the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct.”
It would be therefore great if Professor Bostrom explained somewhere why he no longer personally finds repugnant formulations of true statements appealing, but I couldn’t find it in the apology linked above.