but I think it’s such a misplay from people close to EA to act as if any non-orthodox view on eugenics/crime/immigration is identical to racism.
It’s probably a misplay from people close to EA to act like an article like this can’t be called racist because it contains several graphs, zero instances of the n word and the author denies ownership of the racist troll account linked to his name, home town and life story and the anecdote about how he burst into tears when his genetic tests revealed some level of black ancestry. You can be deeply committed to racism if your public profile doesn’t make Hanania seem like a moderate too .
Whose orthodoxy are we talking about anyway? I mean, the view that the delta between IQ scores of black people and white people is entirely down to genetics and extremely important is pretty unorthodox amongst geneticists and biologists, but it and associated views on immigration, twentieth century racism as rational response to black crime, the great evils of DEI etc are extremely orthodox on the racist right. A genuine heterodox thinker might conclude that racial disparities are unfortunately real and argue for extra DEI to correct for it, especially if they were also into the whole utilitarian EA thing. But even someone like Razib Khan who’s really not well-suited to being a white supremacist trots out the same old tired Charles Murray culture war tropes.
One area I do agree with you is that it would be unfortunate if someone’s vague genetic determinism got confused with the sort of person whose interest in genetic determinism manifests itself in blogging about how mad liberals are not to realise that racism is mainly down to black people’s IQ, simply because they happened to end up on a panel with them at a prediction markets conference. But that’s an argument in favour of generally avoiding platforming the sort of person whose research interests include proving the libs wrong about race and IQ, and especially against platforming mainly that sort of person on the topic of genetics. It’s not like one needs to have spicy views on the impossibility of racial equality (and conformance with the ultraconservative right in most other views) to be interested in biohacking, markets or altruism … if anything quite the opposite.
It’s not like one needs to have spicy views on the impossibility of racial equality (and conformance with the ultraconservative right in most other views) to be interested in biohacking, markets or altruism … if anything quite the opposite.
Yeah this feels kind of a solid point. I’ll think about it.
It’s probably a misplay from people close to EA to act like an article like this can’t be called racist because it contains several graphs, zero instances of the n word and the author denies ownership of the racist troll account linked to his name, home town and life story and the anecdote about how he burst into tears when his genetic tests revealed some level of black ancestry. You can be deeply committed to racism if your public profile doesn’t make Hanania seem like a moderate too .
Whose orthodoxy are we talking about anyway? I mean, the view that the delta between IQ scores of black people and white people is entirely down to genetics and extremely important is pretty unorthodox amongst geneticists and biologists, but it and associated views on immigration, twentieth century racism as rational response to black crime, the great evils of DEI etc are extremely orthodox on the racist right. A genuine heterodox thinker might conclude that racial disparities are unfortunately real and argue for extra DEI to correct for it, especially if they were also into the whole utilitarian EA thing. But even someone like Razib Khan who’s really not well-suited to being a white supremacist trots out the same old tired Charles Murray culture war tropes.
One area I do agree with you is that it would be unfortunate if someone’s vague genetic determinism got confused with the sort of person whose interest in genetic determinism manifests itself in blogging about how mad liberals are not to realise that racism is mainly down to black people’s IQ, simply because they happened to end up on a panel with them at a prediction markets conference. But that’s an argument in favour of generally avoiding platforming the sort of person whose research interests include proving the libs wrong about race and IQ, and especially against platforming mainly that sort of person on the topic of genetics. It’s not like one needs to have spicy views on the impossibility of racial equality (and conformance with the ultraconservative right in most other views) to be interested in biohacking, markets or altruism … if anything quite the opposite.
Yeah this feels kind of a solid point. I’ll think about it.