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Another day, another Guardian hit job.
The title reads "Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back"
Take a moment to form a hypothesis about what kind of group this could be. The KKK? Some fringe right-wingers? An Israeli lobby group?
Turns out their target of the day is Lightcone Infrastructure. Lightcone is running lesswrong, which is a grandparent of themotte.
I personally have only heard of lightcone in context of TracingWoodgrains' writings on the Nonlinear investigation conducted by Ben Pace and Oliver Habryka. (TIL that this is a name different from the handle of a former motte mod. In my defense, I did not read a lot from either of them. Blame my racist brain.)
Of course Trace's critique could not be more different from what the Guardian writes about lightcone.
They start off by linking the NYT article on Scott Alexander. I think it is the one where they tried to doxx him. Apparently the NYT does not like my adblocker or something, the only think I get (besides a picture which indicates that the NYT designers have way too much time on their hand) is the text "Silicon Valley’s Safe Space -- Slate Star Codex was a window into the psyche of many tech leaders building our collective future. Then it disappeared." -- I guess that is one way to phrase it. Of course, the Guardian gleefully doxxes Scott again, not that anyone cares (but it's the thought that counts).
Robin Hanson is apparently misogynistic. From the linked article, I would say it is either being tone-deaf or intentionally courting controversy. He even has sympathy for incels. The nerve of that man!
Apparently they found no dirt on Eliezer, which to me seems like a failure of investigative journalism. EY has written a lot more than the six lines Cardinal Richelieu would have required.
Then they come to the "extreme figures" present at Manifest 2024.
Jonathan Anomaly is apparently pro eugenics. Never heard of him. However, given that anything from "select embryos which do not have a genetic disease" to "encourage smart and successful people to have kids" can be called eugenics, and given that the article would cite the most damning quotation, I will assume that he is not a Nazi.
Razib Khan is a
journalistscientist and writer who got kicked out of the NYT because he wrote for some "paleoconservative" magazine. This matters only if you think that failing the NYT ideological purity test is some kind of fatal character flaw.I vaguely recall Stephen Hsu being discussed on slatestarcodex and from what I remember my conclusion was that he got cancelled for a lack of ideological purity -- calling for research into increasing human intelligence is not acceptable, and talking about race differences is even less acceptable.
Brian Chau is apparently an e/acc and thus probably the most controversial person from my personal point of view. But then, engaging in honest discussion with advocates of other positions is generally a good thing, so if Lighthaven is more inclusive than Aella's birthday party, I am kinda fine with it.
Of course, the narrative would not be complete without the specter of antisemitism, here in the form of a quote "[Hsu is] often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people [...]". I think the rationalist community is a bad place for antisemites for the same reason why the marathon Olympics are a bad place for white supremacists.
In the end, the plug for this story -- lightcone having received money from SBF -- has no bearing on the bulk of the article, which is about how icky these ratsphere nerds are. It does not matter if SBF donated to the Save Drowning Puppies Foundation or to the Feed Puppies to Alligators Alliance -- either the donations can be kept or not.
Edit: fixed Khan's profession.
I'm not sure what to make of this hostility towards the article. What about it is wrong, exactly?
By normie ideological purity standards sympathy for incels from a man is misogynistic. Pro-HBD guys like Razib Khan and Stephen Hsu are racist. By objective measure standards, wanting smart and beautiful people to have more children is eugenic.
Reaching verboten conclusions through 'rational means' on topics long decided by the 'ruling class' doesn't protect you from the consequences. Even if you always imagined yourself an enlightened rationalist far above the boorish outcasts that, unlike you, must have reached these very same racist conclusions through some dark age anti-rationalist sorcery.
Though I doubt this will lead anywhere, as this sort of reporting is usually just about petty politics and interpersonal relations between the uncool kids from school, I wouldn't mind it actually doing some damage. Why should this group of smarts be exempt from the contempt of mainstream society? They have certainly proven themselves to being no better morally.
It seems like some humbling is in order. After all, the very same 'rationalist sphere' in question has proven time and time again that they stand firmly behind the principles of 'racism bad', 'misogyny bad' and all the rest. By what mechanism do they propose to defend themselves after their better part falls firmly on the wrong side of these things? Like, does it need spelling out to these big brained luminaries of ours? You can't call an entire race of people stupid just because you understand statistics and studied psychology. It doesn't matter how nuanced and detailed your blogpost is. Some wordcel is just going to copy paste your conclusion and now you're no better than the evil racists you spent 15 paragraphs trying to distance yourself from. And you know what? The wordcel is right! You did reach the same conclusion, after all.
Here is a Twitter thread listing some of the factual inaccuracies. https://x.com/ohabryka/status/1802563541633024280
Hsu claims no knowledge of cognitive differences between races caused by genetics. Has he said something different elsewhere? https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-controversial-views.html
To use Hsu's own words in a different context:
Sorry, Hsu, but claiming a neutral position on certain topics doesn't cut it.
Maybe as I grow older I also grow more stupid but I feel like a lot of people really needed that article by Eric Turkheimer on why race science is objectionable. Claiming that your interest is purely scientific or whatever isn't good enough. Because the wrong discoveries can do a lot of damage. You need to meet the moral/ideological/philosophical underpinnings of the progressive worldview head on. Otherwise you have no relevant objection to them crushing you when you go too far astray.
I think a fair summary of this article is “it’s offensive”, which is not an argument I find compelling. Am I missing something here?
I'm not posting it to convince people of Turkheimers viewpoint, I'm posting it to demonstrate at what level the debate is being had. It doesn't matter what the science says. Race science is ugly and offensive. This is a fact and anyone who disagrees can be invited to explain the hereditarian viewpoint to a kind and caring black person without feeling gross.
Or to put it another way: We object to it on the same grounds we object to excavations of alleged mass graves from Nazi death camps: The holocaust happened, there's no reason to desecrate graves of its victims. The end!
If you want to argue in favor of science and knowledge... Why here, why now? What drives ones interest towards race or the holocaust? There is no answer here. You're just a racist nazi.
If there's a genuine position that can meet progressive ontology head on I'm willing to hear it. So far the only competitors I've seen are racists or people who either willfully or ignorantly ignore the glaring issues that lie between blacks and whites.
I don't know how many more times this can be repeated, I'm sure everyone with your position who posts here has had this explained but then you go on to ask these questions again so I will explain to you again. The reason it matters to many of us is because White people in America and the world broadly are being accused of a grievous crime of holding entire races of people down. Of perpetrating massive and distributed systems of racial discrimination. The proof is the outcomes from claimed to be meritocratic processes being unequal along racial lines. Everywhere that explicit racism can be found has been rooted out by ever more hysterical people who have gotten to the point of calling the idea of meritocracy itself to be racist.
This calls out for a search for an alternate explanation. And there are some pretty obvious places to check.
If not HBD and our attempts at rooting out explicit discrimination what's the progressive's actual endgame? Permanent and continuous transfers along racial lines with the agreed understanding that white people are just incapable of not discriminating against black people? You think that's a stable solution?
I don't disagree, but I'd argue that your position is not scientific/knowledge seeking. You want to protect white people. According to the progressive oppression stack white people rest pretty low. That's where your problem with the progressives begins.
If you're a supremacist you want to protect white people no matter what. If you're not, why protect white people when there are so many others in need? Surely whitey can wait. And if you want to challenge that aspect of progressive ontology you will be so far outside the Overton Window that they can easily just call you a racist nazi and move on. And I don't think they would be all that wrong in doing so, technically speaking. I mean, we did storm the beaches of Normandy for a reason, right? We depict those guys as heroic for a reason, right?
What a trick this is! Ask why someone might be motivated to seek knowledge "why here, why now?" to imply racial hatred as motivation and then when some other motivation is reached for you say "See!? I knew no one could just value scientific knowledge!". From how you've constrained the options no path can lead to a genuine motivation.
Being somewhat username blind it's not clear to me if you're merely trying to demonstrate how tightly hermetically sealed the progressive outlook is or if you find yourself caught in it. But in the interest of trying to unravel this nut either way. I will say I care about avoiding the pitfalls of impugning a people with the blood libel of unfalsifiable racism from the same parable the jews were famously put through and in a way that ought resonate deep in the western psyche. It is enough for me that it is cruel, unfair and a violation of our national aspiration to hold whites culpable for a crime they have not committed. But if I must appeal to the progressive stack, that loathsome concept, then I will say that it did not serve the nazis well to place the blame for all their troubles in the jews, nor did it serve Lysenko well to place the soviets on the other side of genuine scientific inquiry. History is replete with people and peoples who thought they could, this time, let resentment and catharsis take priority over truth and the hatred will not serve you. There is nothing to gain from this willful ignorance and much to lose.
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Surely "permanent" is an exaggeration.
I don't even really think that's the end of the problem most unstable. The gaps will continue to exist among people with the same background so we're really going to go ahead with the belief that in 100 years when progressive thought is no longer fought at all that we're just going to let the obviously discriminatory leaders continue to do their harm?
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Is there bulletproof glass between us?
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Ah, I see. In that case I agree that it demonstrates the discussion well.
I’m a bit confused by your last paragraph though. The obvious answer would be to judge individuals on their merit, no? That’s explicitly opposed to progressive race-based judgement, aligns well with classical liberalism and HBD views, and already has a wide acceptance society-wide.
It works up until you need to answer why their literacy rates are so low and why there are practically none of them in higher education.
You can't tell the black people the truth because that's ugly and no one has the stomach for it, so where do you go? The exact same way our modern western society has gone: Towards progressivism. Because progressive ontology actually has a beautiful answer: ordained equality and racism.
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