Thanks, that’s useful! I guess the surprising thing is maybe just that there still are some fairly prominent names in the rationalist space that express obviously very right wing views and that they are generally almost not seen as such (for example Scott Alexander just wrote a review of Hanania’s new book in which I’d say he almost ends up sounding naive by how much he doesn’t simply acknowledge “well, clearly Hanania is barely stopping shy of saying black people are just stupider”, something that Hanania has said openly elsewhere anyway, so it’s barely a mystery that he believes it).
I would need to dig up specific stuff, but in general I’d suggest to just check out his Twitter/X account https://twitter.com/RichardHanania and see what he says. These days it’s completely dominated by discourse on the Palestine protests so it’s hard to dig out anything on race. Mind you, he’s not one to hold a fully stereotypical GOP-aligned package of ideas—he has a few deviations and is secular (so for example pro-choice on abortion; also he’s definitely not antisemitic, in fact he explicitly called himself prosemitic, as he believes Jews to be smarter). But on race I’m fairly convinced he 100% believes in scientific racism from any time he’s talked about it. I don’t want to link any of the opinion pieces around that argue for this (but there’s a fair deal if you want to check them out and try to separate fact from fiction—many point out that he’s sort of switched to some more defensive “bailey” arguments lately, which he seems to do and explicitly advocate for as a strategy in his latest book “The Origins of Woke” too, again see the ACX review). But for some primary evidence, for example, here’s a tweet about how crime can only be resolved by more incarceration and surveillance of black people:
He used to write more explicitly racist stuff under the pseudonym Richard Hoste until a few years ago. He openly admitted this and wrote an apology blog post in which he basically says that he was young and went a bit too far. Now whether this corresponds to a genuine moderation (from extremely right wing to merely strongly socially conservative and anti-woke) is questionable, because it could just as well be a calculated retreat from a motte to a bailey. It’s not wild to consider this possibility given that, again, he explicitly talks about how certain arguments would scare normies too much so it’s better to just present more palatable ones. And after all that is a pretty sound strategy (and one Torres accused EAs of recently re: using malaria bednets as the bailey to draw people into the motte of AI safety, something that of course I don’t quite see as evil as he implies it to be since I think AI safety absolutely is a concern, and the fact that it looks weird to the average person doesn’t make it not so).
At this point from all I’ve seen my belief is that Hanania mostly is a “race realist” who thinks some races are inherently inferior and thus the correct order of things has them working worse jobs, earning less money etc. and all efforts in the opposite direction are unjust and counterproductive. I don’t think he then moves from that to “and they should be genocided”, but that’s not a lot. He still thinks they should be an underclass and for now thinks that the market left to its own devices would make them so, which would be the rightful order of things. That’s the model of him I built, and I find it hard to believe that Scott Alexander for example hasn’t seen all the same stuff.
Thanks, that’s useful! I guess the surprising thing is maybe just that there still are some fairly prominent names in the rationalist space that express obviously very right wing views and that they are generally almost not seen as such (for example Scott Alexander just wrote a review of Hanania’s new book in which I’d say he almost ends up sounding naive by how much he doesn’t simply acknowledge “well, clearly Hanania is barely stopping shy of saying black people are just stupider”, something that Hanania has said openly elsewhere anyway, so it’s barely a mystery that he believes it).
Could you provide links to those statements by Hanania?
Not a gotcha, I just have barely heard of this guy and from what you say I expect all discourse around him to be a cesspool.
I would need to dig up specific stuff, but in general I’d suggest to just check out his Twitter/X account https://twitter.com/RichardHanania and see what he says. These days it’s completely dominated by discourse on the Palestine protests so it’s hard to dig out anything on race. Mind you, he’s not one to hold a fully stereotypical GOP-aligned package of ideas—he has a few deviations and is secular (so for example pro-choice on abortion; also he’s definitely not antisemitic, in fact he explicitly called himself prosemitic, as he believes Jews to be smarter). But on race I’m fairly convinced he 100% believes in scientific racism from any time he’s talked about it. I don’t want to link any of the opinion pieces around that argue for this (but there’s a fair deal if you want to check them out and try to separate fact from fiction—many point out that he’s sort of switched to some more defensive “bailey” arguments lately, which he seems to do and explicitly advocate for as a strategy in his latest book “The Origins of Woke” too, again see the ACX review). But for some primary evidence, for example, here’s a tweet about how crime can only be resolved by more incarceration and surveillance of black people:
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1657541010745081857?lang=en-GB
His RationalWiki article has obviously opinions about him, but also a bunch of links to primary sources in the bibliography:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Hanania
He used to write more explicitly racist stuff under the pseudonym Richard Hoste until a few years ago. He openly admitted this and wrote an apology blog post in which he basically says that he was young and went a bit too far. Now whether this corresponds to a genuine moderation (from extremely right wing to merely strongly socially conservative and anti-woke) is questionable, because it could just as well be a calculated retreat from a motte to a bailey. It’s not wild to consider this possibility given that, again, he explicitly talks about how certain arguments would scare normies too much so it’s better to just present more palatable ones. And after all that is a pretty sound strategy (and one Torres accused EAs of recently re: using malaria bednets as the bailey to draw people into the motte of AI safety, something that of course I don’t quite see as evil as he implies it to be since I think AI safety absolutely is a concern, and the fact that it looks weird to the average person doesn’t make it not so).
At this point from all I’ve seen my belief is that Hanania mostly is a “race realist” who thinks some races are inherently inferior and thus the correct order of things has them working worse jobs, earning less money etc. and all efforts in the opposite direction are unjust and counterproductive. I don’t think he then moves from that to “and they should be genocided”, but that’s not a lot. He still thinks they should be an underclass and for now thinks that the market left to its own devices would make them so, which would be the rightful order of things. That’s the model of him I built, and I find it hard to believe that Scott Alexander for example hasn’t seen all the same stuff.