It is commonly theorized that having friends who hold a viewpoint should make one more charitable to that viewpoint. This has not been the case with HBD. I have a close friend of around decade who has gotten increasingly obsessed with HBD. In general they are a smart and friendly person. But the things they has started espousing have become really shocking.
Example of their views: If Black people are not heavily under-represented in a cognitively demanding organization that is strong evidence the organization is racist against White and Asian individuals!
Obviously these points of view are completely at odds with any sort of fair and inclusive community or organization. They have also moved further and further rightwing. This resulted in a lot of personal problems when I came out as trans. They don’t ‘just’ have some abstract objections, they were quite toxic to an old and supportive friend when she was having a hard time. They explicitly admit that a huge driving force for them moving rightward in general is belief in HBD. The logic for why is not hard to see. If you believe in HBD you can start to feel ‘persecuted’ by people on the left or center-left. It’s easy to start sympathizing with the right and far right.
I’ve been in the rationalist community for over a decade and the EA community for a somewhat shorter period. I have seen tons of seemingly kind and reasonable friends become increasingly far-right after they got into HBD. Im honestly not surprised FLI was considering funding an explicit far-right nazi-adjacent group. The sympathies run deep. Neo-reaction has been close to the EA and rationalist communities for a very large fraction of our history.
It would be extremely hypocritical for me to hold people to views they no longer support. I endorsed HBD in 2015 and 2016. Like many rationalists I was introduced to HBD by reading Slatestarcodex. Promoting HBD in anyway, including privately exposing people to the ideas, is one of the biggest regrets of my life. It is a seriously harmful philosophy. Im very, very sorry for any negative impact my actions may have caused. For obvious reasons I have sympathy for people who have gotten into the racist pipeline. I honestly only got out because the right is so shitty to trans people and is pretty anti-vegan. Like many eggs I had a lot of trans friends. Independently I was quite convinced veganism was a positive lifestyle. HBD is a very harmful pseudo-science and it is totally unacceptable that people with power in Effective Altruism believe in it.
I truly hope the EA movement can move toward a better future free from this toxicity.
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.
I guess I’m not that surprised that FLI funded someone bad—many EA grants are quite light on checks and balances, but I don’t think my lack of surprise is from the same direction as you. I would be surprised and upset if Max Tegmark thought that neonazis [had some things right] or [supporting them is an effective thing to do].
I think viewing this as a “random” checks-and-balances failure does not adequately account for (1) the report that Tegmark’s brother wrote for the news outlet and (2) FLI’s stonewalling so far. If there’s an innocent or merely negligent explanation, it is really difficult to understand why it hasn’t been offered.
I’ve seen some posts on this forum discussing HBD as an is/ought issue—something like: HBD is an “is”, racial inegalitarianism is an “ought”, and you can’t derive an ought from an is.
I used to find this argument really compelling, and I still think it’s powerful and underrated. But recently I’ve become more skeptical of it.
I think the is/ought boundary is not actually that firm. For example, consider the statement: “Most communities would be better off if adulterers received severe social sanction.”
You could argue this is an “ought” claim. A person who says “adultery is deeply immoral” is essentially saying we should apply severe social sanction to adulturers.
You could argue this is an “is” claim which is empirically testable. Define a welfare metric, identify some communities, randomly assign half to a “shame adulterers” condition, see how the welfare metric is affected.
In the same vein, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, there’s a good chance you don’t decouple as much as you think. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry even though people claim ads don’t affect them. Humans are vulnerable to biases like the affect heuristic. We aren’t perfect logical reasoners, especially when tribal politics are involved. The “pipeline” you describe may go to show that lots of “high decoupler” types are low-decoupling in practice.
And, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, you have to acknowledge that the world is full of “low decouplers”. I strongly agree with the arguments Coleman Hughes makes in this discussion with Charles Murray, re: negative societal effects of widespread HBD discussion.
I think a reasonable takeaway from the recent SBF tragedy is that on the margin, we should defer more to mainstream elite opinion (in SBF’s case, crypto skepticism). And mainstream elite opinion says you don’t talk about race & IQ. Maybe that’s an adaptive response to an information hazard. Chesterton’s Fence comes to mind.
What follows from a belief about differences depends on a persons moral framework. Most people have reasonable moral frameworks and so nothing heinous follows. And most people without henous beliefs do not want to be lumped in with people with heinous beliefs (as is extremely common). So they just do not talk about this stuff, further skewing the public impression of your average believer in differences.
What I think happens is that some people think that since it would be unjust for genetic disparities to exist, then genetic disparities do not exist. That’s mixing up is and ought. We have no strong reason to think that the world is just. In tons of other domains, the world is incredibly unjust.
The current taboos are not really chesterton’s fense. People used to say all sorts of wildly offensive things not that long ago. Think of how rapidly our culture has come to accept transgenderism and how recently it was acceptable to mock cross-dressing.
If you have the belief that groups are the same, then disparity in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
If you have the belief that groups are different, then equality in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
Obviously these points of view are completely at odds with any sort of fair and inclusive community or organization
A person who believes in disparities would expect a fair organization to have disparity. Many would like college admissions to be race-blind, but in doing so, many suspect this would produce disparate represenation seeing as there are different averages for SAT/ACT/GPA.
I highly doubt you’re a bad person. In fact, I would suspect that even if you believed in HBD, you would still care about the welfare of others of all races. I don’t think you should feel so guilty.
Example of their views: If Black people are not heavily under-represented in a cognitively demanding organization that is very strong evidence the organization is racist against White and Asian individuals!
This is seriously wrong, for some important reasons. A perfectly irrational and racist belief.
If you have the belief that groups are the same, then disparity in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
If you have the belief that groups are different, then equality in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
Whether or not this is “seriously wrong” depends largely on whether or not this persons belief is true. I suppose this could be called “racist” but I think that this term is not particularly useful because it is ambiguous, morally-loaded, and seems to point at the belief being false (does a belief stop being racist if it turns out true? I’m not sure).
Tangent: Out of curiosity, did you/ does your friend typically refer to (belief in meaningful genetically influenced racial IQ differences) as “HBD”, as “part of/under HBD”, or neither?
My impression was the term was mostly used by genetics nerds, with a small number of racists using the term as a fig leaf, causing the internet to think it was a motte-and-bailey in all uses. If people who mostly cared about the IQ thing used it regularly I suppose I was wrong.
(And to be clear since I’m commenting under my own name, meaningful genetically influenced racial IQ differences aren’t plausible. My interest is the old internet drama.)
(reposting from the ‘does it matter’ thread)
It is commonly theorized that having friends who hold a viewpoint should make one more charitable to that viewpoint. This has not been the case with HBD. I have a close friend of around decade who has gotten increasingly obsessed with HBD. In general they are a smart and friendly person. But the things they has started espousing have become really shocking.
Example of their views: If Black people are not heavily under-represented in a cognitively demanding organization that is strong evidence the organization is racist against White and Asian individuals!
Obviously these points of view are completely at odds with any sort of fair and inclusive community or organization. They have also moved further and further rightwing. This resulted in a lot of personal problems when I came out as trans. They don’t ‘just’ have some abstract objections, they were quite toxic to an old and supportive friend when she was having a hard time. They explicitly admit that a huge driving force for them moving rightward in general is belief in HBD. The logic for why is not hard to see. If you believe in HBD you can start to feel ‘persecuted’ by people on the left or center-left. It’s easy to start sympathizing with the right and far right.
I’ve been in the rationalist community for over a decade and the EA community for a somewhat shorter period. I have seen tons of seemingly kind and reasonable friends become increasingly far-right after they got into HBD. Im honestly not surprised FLI was considering funding an explicit far-right nazi-adjacent group. The sympathies run deep. Neo-reaction has been close to the EA and rationalist communities for a very large fraction of our history.
It would be extremely hypocritical for me to hold people to views they no longer support. I endorsed HBD in 2015 and 2016. Like many rationalists I was introduced to HBD by reading Slatestarcodex. Promoting HBD in anyway, including privately exposing people to the ideas, is one of the biggest regrets of my life. It is a seriously harmful philosophy. Im very, very sorry for any negative impact my actions may have caused. For obvious reasons I have sympathy for people who have gotten into the racist pipeline. I honestly only got out because the right is so shitty to trans people and is pretty anti-vegan. Like many eggs I had a lot of trans friends. Independently I was quite convinced veganism was a positive lifestyle. HBD is a very harmful pseudo-science and it is totally unacceptable that people with power in Effective Altruism believe in it.
I truly hope the EA movement can move toward a better future free from this toxicity.
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.
I guess I’m not that surprised that FLI funded someone bad—many EA grants are quite light on checks and balances, but I don’t think my lack of surprise is from the same direction as you. I would be surprised and upset if Max Tegmark thought that neonazis [had some things right] or [supporting them is an effective thing to do].
Wouldn’t you?
I think viewing this as a “random” checks-and-balances failure does not adequately account for (1) the report that Tegmark’s brother wrote for the news outlet and (2) FLI’s stonewalling so far. If there’s an innocent or merely negligent explanation, it is really difficult to understand why it hasn’t been offered.
Thanks for writing this!
I’ve seen some posts on this forum discussing HBD as an is/ought issue—something like: HBD is an “is”, racial inegalitarianism is an “ought”, and you can’t derive an ought from an is.
I used to find this argument really compelling, and I still think it’s powerful and underrated. But recently I’ve become more skeptical of it.
I think the is/ought boundary is not actually that firm. For example, consider the statement: “Most communities would be better off if adulterers received severe social sanction.”
You could argue this is an “ought” claim. A person who says “adultery is deeply immoral” is essentially saying we should apply severe social sanction to adulturers.
You could argue this is an “is” claim which is empirically testable. Define a welfare metric, identify some communities, randomly assign half to a “shame adulterers” condition, see how the welfare metric is affected.
In the same vein, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, there’s a good chance you don’t decouple as much as you think. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry even though people claim ads don’t affect them. Humans are vulnerable to biases like the affect heuristic. We aren’t perfect logical reasoners, especially when tribal politics are involved. The “pipeline” you describe may go to show that lots of “high decoupler” types are low-decoupling in practice.
And, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, you have to acknowledge that the world is full of “low decouplers”. I strongly agree with the arguments Coleman Hughes makes in this discussion with Charles Murray, re: negative societal effects of widespread HBD discussion.
I think a reasonable takeaway from the recent SBF tragedy is that on the margin, we should defer more to mainstream elite opinion (in SBF’s case, crypto skepticism). And mainstream elite opinion says you don’t talk about race & IQ. Maybe that’s an adaptive response to an information hazard. Chesterton’s Fence comes to mind.
What follows from a belief about differences depends on a persons moral framework. Most people have reasonable moral frameworks and so nothing heinous follows. And most people without henous beliefs do not want to be lumped in with people with heinous beliefs (as is extremely common). So they just do not talk about this stuff, further skewing the public impression of your average believer in differences.
What I think happens is that some people think that since it would be unjust for genetic disparities to exist, then genetic disparities do not exist. That’s mixing up is and ought. We have no strong reason to think that the world is just. In tons of other domains, the world is incredibly unjust.
The current taboos are not really chesterton’s fense. People used to say all sorts of wildly offensive things not that long ago. Think of how rapidly our culture has come to accept transgenderism and how recently it was acceptable to mock cross-dressing.
If you have the belief that groups are the same, then disparity in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
If you have the belief that groups are different, then equality in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
A person who believes in disparities would expect a fair organization to have disparity. Many would like college admissions to be race-blind, but in doing so, many suspect this would produce disparate represenation seeing as there are different averages for SAT/ACT/GPA.
I highly doubt you’re a bad person. In fact, I would suspect that even if you believed in HBD, you would still care about the welfare of others of all races. I don’t think you should feel so guilty.
I agree with the top part, but what are you referring to when you say “people with power in Effective Altruism believe in it”?
This is seriously wrong, for some important reasons. A perfectly irrational and racist belief.
It is not irrational given this persons beliefs:
If you have the belief that groups are the same, then disparity in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
If you have the belief that groups are different, then equality in representation points to someone putting their finger on the scale (intentional racial discrimination).
Whether or not this is “seriously wrong” depends largely on whether or not this persons belief is true. I suppose this could be called “racist” but I think that this term is not particularly useful because it is ambiguous, morally-loaded, and seems to point at the belief being false (does a belief stop being racist if it turns out true? I’m not sure).
Tangent: Out of curiosity, did you/ does your friend typically refer to (belief in meaningful genetically influenced racial IQ differences) as “HBD”, as “part of/under HBD”, or neither?
My impression was the term was mostly used by genetics nerds, with a small number of racists using the term as a fig leaf, causing the internet to think it was a motte-and-bailey in all uses. If people who mostly cared about the IQ thing used it regularly I suppose I was wrong.
(And to be clear since I’m commenting under my own name, meaningful genetically influenced racial IQ differences aren’t plausible. My interest is the old internet drama.)