By the way, the finding of an IQ gap isn’t (or shouldn’t be?) what is under contention/offensive, because that’s a real finding. It’s the idea that it has a significant genetic component.
I think both Bostrom and I claim that he does not believe that idea, but I’ll entertain your hypothetical below.
I think that, in the world where racial IQ gaps are known not to have a significant genetic component, believing so anyway as a layperson makes one very probably a racist (glossed as a person whose thinking is biased by motivated reasoning on the basis of race); and in the world where racial IQ gaps are known to have a significant genetic component, believing so is not strong evidence of being a racist (with the same gloss). There are also worlds in between.
In any of these worlds, and the world where we live, responsible non-experts should defer to the scientific consensus (as Bostrom seems to in 2023), and when they irresponsibly promote beliefs that are extremely harmful and false, through recklessness, they should apologise for that.
I don’t think anyone should apologise for the very act of believing something one still believes, because an apology is by nature a disagreement with one’s past self. But Bostrom in 2023 does not seem to believe any more, if he ever did, that the racial IQ gap is genetically caused, which frees him up to apologise for his 1996 promotion of the belief.
As a reminder, the original description I took issue with was:
Someone who is clearly not racist accidentally said something that sounds pretty racist, decades ago, and then apologized profusely
It ‘sounds pretty racist’ to say “blacks have lower IQ than mankind in general” because that phrasing usually implies it’s congenital. In other words, in 1996, Bostrom (whose status as a racist is ambiguous to me, and I will continue to judge his character based on his actions in the coming weeks and months) said something that communicates a racist belief, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was an accident — a reckless one, but an accident. However, apart from apologising for the n-word slur, I haven’t seen much that can be interpreted as an apology for the harm caused by this accident.
Now, if Bostrom, as a non-expert, in fact is secretly confident that IQ and race correlate because of genetics, I think that his thinking is probably biased in a racist way (that is to say, he is a racist) and he should be suspicious of his own motives in holding that belief. If he then finds his view was mistaken, he may meaningfully apologise for any racist bias that influenced his thinking. Otherwise, an apology would not make any sense as he would not think he’d done anything wrong.
The lack of apology for promulgating accidentally (or deliberately) the racist view is wrong if Bostrom does not hold the view (/any more). He is mistaken when in 2023 he skates over acknowledging the main harm he contributed to, by focusing mostly on his mention of the n-word (a lesser harm, partly due to the use-mention distinction).
By the way, the finding of an IQ gap isn’t (or shouldn’t be?) what is under contention/offensive, because that’s a real finding. It’s the idea that it has a significant genetic component.
I think both Bostrom and I claim that he does not believe that idea, but I’ll entertain your hypothetical below.
I think that, in the world where racial IQ gaps are known not to have a significant genetic component, believing so anyway as a layperson makes one very probably a racist (glossed as a person whose thinking is biased by motivated reasoning on the basis of race); and in the world where racial IQ gaps are known to have a significant genetic component, believing so is not strong evidence of being a racist (with the same gloss). There are also worlds in between.
In any of these worlds, and the world where we live, responsible non-experts should defer to the scientific consensus (as Bostrom seems to in 2023), and when they irresponsibly promote beliefs that are extremely harmful and false, through recklessness, they should apologise for that.
I don’t think anyone should apologise for the very act of believing something one still believes, because an apology is by nature a disagreement with one’s past self. But Bostrom in 2023 does not seem to believe any more, if he ever did, that the racial IQ gap is genetically caused, which frees him up to apologise for his 1996 promotion of the belief.
As a reminder, the original description I took issue with was:
It ‘sounds pretty racist’ to say “blacks have lower IQ than mankind in general” because that phrasing usually implies it’s congenital. In other words, in 1996, Bostrom (whose status as a racist is ambiguous to me, and I will continue to judge his character based on his actions in the coming weeks and months) said something that communicates a racist belief, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was an accident — a reckless one, but an accident. However, apart from apologising for the n-word slur, I haven’t seen much that can be interpreted as an apology for the harm caused by this accident.
Now, if Bostrom, as a non-expert, in fact is secretly confident that IQ and race correlate because of genetics, I think that his thinking is probably biased in a racist way (that is to say, he is a racist) and he should be suspicious of his own motives in holding that belief. If he then finds his view was mistaken, he may meaningfully apologise for any racist bias that influenced his thinking. Otherwise, an apology would not make any sense as he would not think he’d done anything wrong.
The lack of apology for promulgating accidentally (or deliberately) the racist view is wrong if Bostrom does not hold the view (/any more). He is mistaken when in 2023 he skates over acknowledging the main harm he contributed to, by focusing mostly on his mention of the n-word (a lesser harm, partly due to the use-mention distinction).