- Why the rationalist community seems to treat race/IQ as an area where one should defer to “the scientific consensus” but is quick to question the scientific community and attribute biases to it on a range of other topics like ivermectin/COVID generally, AI safety, etc.
With ivermectin we had a time where the best meta-analysis were pro-ivermectin but the scientific establishement was against ivermectin. Trusting those meta reviews that were published in reputable peer reviewed is poorly understood as “not defering to the scientific consensus”. Scott also wrote a deep dive on Ivermectin and the evidence in the scientific literature for it.
You might ask yourself “Why doesn’t Scott Alexander write a deep dive on the literature of IQ and race?” Why don’t other rationalists on LessWrong write deep dives on the literature of IQ and race and questions about which hypothesis are supported by the literature an which aren’t.
From a truth seeking perspective it would be nice to have such literature deep dives. From a practical point, writing deep dives on the literature of IQ and race and have indepth discussions about it has a high likelihood to offend people. The effort and risks that come with it are high enough that Scott is very unlikely to write such a post.
One view I hold, though, is something like “the optimal amount of self-censorship, by which I mean not always saying things that you think are true/useful, in part because you’re considering the [personal/community-level] social implications thereof, is non-zero.”
I think that there’s broad agreement on this and that self-censorship is one of the core reasons why rationalists are not engaging as deeply with the literature around IQ and race as we did with Ivermectin or COVID.
On the other hand, there are situation where there are reasons to actually speak about an issue and people still express their views even if they would prefer to just avoid talking about a topic.
With ivermectin we had a time where the best meta-analysis were pro-ivermectin but the scientific establishement was against ivermectin. Trusting those meta reviews that were published in reputable peer reviewed is poorly understood as “not defering to the scientific consensus”. Scott also wrote a deep dive on Ivermectin and the evidence in the scientific literature for it.
You might ask yourself “Why doesn’t Scott Alexander write a deep dive on the literature of IQ and race?” Why don’t other rationalists on LessWrong write deep dives on the literature of IQ and race and questions about which hypothesis are supported by the literature an which aren’t.
From a truth seeking perspective it would be nice to have such literature deep dives. From a practical point, writing deep dives on the literature of IQ and race and have indepth discussions about it has a high likelihood to offend people. The effort and risks that come with it are high enough that Scott is very unlikely to write such a post.
I think that there’s broad agreement on this and that self-censorship is one of the core reasons why rationalists are not engaging as deeply with the literature around IQ and race as we did with Ivermectin or COVID.
On the other hand, there are situation where there are reasons to actually speak about an issue and people still express their views even if they would prefer to just avoid talking about a topic.