It sounds like your friend ended up being attracted (or sucked in) to quite a bad memetic environment!
It seems really off to me to assign much practical relevance to questions of IQ differences between groups because these priors get screened off once we learn new information about individuals. For instance, if we learn that someone works at a “cognitively demanding organization,” that evidence is more direct and more relevant than any prior from group averages.
(Same reasoning: if all we knew about someone is that they don’t have a university degree, then we’d be forgiven to have priors that they’re somewhat likely to be not extremely intelligent or conscientious. [But it still seems important to keep an open mind because priors are very crude – that’s the whole point!] However, once we learn that they work at a cognitively-demanding organization, the prior from the uni degree no longer matters at all!)
Neo-reaction has been close to the EA and rationalist communities for a very large fraction of our history.
I think a lot of this happened before I became active in EA/rationality, but I remember feeling quite puzzled when I read about neoreaction and saw that some people active in that scene had ties to the rationalists in the Bay area. My impression was that this influence has gotten a lot weaker over time, but it sounds like your experience suggests that it’s still a big issue. I find that very unfortunate.
I think the connection is weaker but there is still a lot of really wacky social dynamics.
“In one case I mentioned to someone that i was surprised the SSC subreddit had people posting the white surpremacist 14 words openly with others approving. This person then spent a year+ worried that I was infiltrating their group as a woke sjw so I could get people canceled. They never mentioned it to me but was just very jumpy and kind of unfriendly. Like 2 years later they were like oh ok thanks for not doing that and I was like ??? ”
There are also still quite a few rationalists discussing and promoting legitimately far right sources. Multiple people I met at the NYC rat meetup were literally into Qanon. Almost all the rationalists I know who got involved with the far right started with HBD.
Thanks for posting this account!
It sounds like your friend ended up being attracted (or sucked in) to quite a bad memetic environment!
It seems really off to me to assign much practical relevance to questions of IQ differences between groups because these priors get screened off once we learn new information about individuals. For instance, if we learn that someone works at a “cognitively demanding organization,” that evidence is more direct and more relevant than any prior from group averages.
(Same reasoning: if all we knew about someone is that they don’t have a university degree, then we’d be forgiven to have priors that they’re somewhat likely to be not extremely intelligent or conscientious. [But it still seems important to keep an open mind because priors are very crude – that’s the whole point!] However, once we learn that they work at a cognitively-demanding organization, the prior from the uni degree no longer matters at all!)
I think a lot of this happened before I became active in EA/rationality, but I remember feeling quite puzzled when I read about neoreaction and saw that some people active in that scene had ties to the rationalists in the Bay area. My impression was that this influence has gotten a lot weaker over time, but it sounds like your experience suggests that it’s still a big issue. I find that very unfortunate.
I think the connection is weaker but there is still a lot of really wacky social dynamics.
“In one case I mentioned to someone that i was surprised the SSC subreddit had people posting the white surpremacist 14 words openly with others approving. This person then spent a year+ worried that I was infiltrating their group as a woke sjw so I could get people canceled. They never mentioned it to me but was just very jumpy and kind of unfriendly. Like 2 years later they were like oh ok thanks for not doing that and I was like ??? ”
There are also still quite a few rationalists discussing and promoting legitimately far right sources. Multiple people I met at the NYC rat meetup were literally into Qanon. Almost all the rationalists I know who got involved with the far right started with HBD.