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Notes -
Rationalism Done Right (and Hipster Eugenecists)
I don't follow the Rationalist sphere very much beyond this community, but I came across the above article with claims that there may be some rightward shifts within the rationalist movement in interesting directions. The author starts by mentioning that:
I can't speak to Hanania's views so I would take that with a grain of salt. But the author creates "a list of beliefs for rationalists or effective altruists who lean right", which are the author's conception of "right-wing rationalism." They are described in the article but listed here:
The list is weighted too much on IQ differences and socio-economic outcomes. Basically five of these points are restatements of the importance of IQ. But essentially all aspects of our personality, including our religious and political beliefs, are heritable. What makes China and what makes the United States is not only a function of IQ.
Point #6 is interesting because I felt it was the biggest differentiator between rationalist thinking and dissident right-wing thinking- the latter of which is concerned with the problem of ethnogenesis and race formation which, if you care about basically anything: civilization, politics, religion, you have to consciously confront the problem of ethnogenesis. It's interesting to see a higher awareness of that problem in a Rationalist, although again he seems only concerned with IQ drift and is missing the bigger picture of ethnogenesis. That is probably why he ultimately describes himself as "enthusiastic for immigration", still viewing the problem as capturing as many high-IQ genes as possible rather than confronting the harder problem of race formation.
Point #9 is also a step closer to DR-oriented thinking:
At the end of his article Parrhesia mentions "the Collin’s pro-natalist conservative faction" and linked to this article: Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution'. There's a lot of sneering by the author, a lot of cultish goofiness from the subjects of the article (the Collinses), but ultimately I think there's a lot of substance there.
Like many, I've been highly critical of Effective Altruism's implementation of longtermism, primarily due to the fact that if you are a longtermist then your top priority shouldn't be altruism, it should be race formation. What would a longtermist, civilization-building-focused care about that isn't downstream from the gene pool? The Effective Altruist forum has a thread on this article under the thread name "Pronatalists" may look to co-opt effective altruism or longtermism. The greatest consternation was over this part of the BI article:
I think the vision here is a far better implementation of longtermism than EA.
As these threads of of Rationalist thinking start to converge with DR thinking, they will have to confront the major problem of coordinating behavior. There's a tounge-in-cheek naivety in the plan of the Collinses:
This sounds like a crazy idea (and it is). But a much more attainable solution is to organize the social behavior of similar people by granting social status to reproducing, and incentivizing assortative mate selection with high-quality and like-minded people. Basically the things Religion has done for us until now. This could be accomplished with the revitalization of traditional religious institutions or the creation of a new non-theistic cult that coordinates this behavior. The DR is split between the two approaches, and the Collinses would clearly fit better in with the latter.
Another aspect of the article I found noteworthy was that the Collinses (who are Jewish) laugh-off the predictable comparisons to Nazism which (to be fair, credibly) are going to be associated with any pro-natalist movement by its opponents:
Another interesting statement from Simone, which is something you will read verbatim in the DR:
So did you intentionally or unintentionally cut the ages out of the article? The Collins' are in their mid 30s, and they're at 3 kids. They are highly unlikely to make it to 8 without serious, expensive, high health risk, and failure prone technological interventions. It is highly likely their fourth kid, let alone their eighth, is going to require thousands spent on procedures that might not work. And in a geriatric pregnancy highly likely to lead to severe autism or other genetic defects that make further generational breeding unlikely to be successful.
The whole scheme strikes me as hilariously inept, the sort of thing that happens when investment bankers try to go farm or Blue tribes go Red; figuring that if those stupid rednecks could do it surely we can do it better. The Collins' think breeding must be easy, they always heard about dumb welfare mothers doing it. Dynastic history is littered with men who needed heirs and couldn't produce them, men who would have loved to have eight kids and wound up with none. Having eight healthy children is physically difficult! That ability is rare!
She has undergone at least 6 rounds of IVF according to the article.
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I also noted that the 8 kid goal is unrealistic at this point, but I think they have chances for 2 more without too much trouble. My wife had our kids at 37 and 40, and though we did go through some fertility treatments (which proved to be ultimately mostly unnecessary, both times), it didn't cost thousands. There's no guarantees for it, of course (as you indicated nothing is guaranteed when trying for kids).
I tried looking up statistics it's actually much more complicated than I thought because the raw numbers don't necessarily apply to very fertile women.
I agree one or two more could be possible, but unless you have quadruplets you're not hitting 8 if you start that late.
I was also thinking in terms of quiverfull families I know, out of eight they all get one genetic "dud" at least. So what do you do with that kid? To get 8 x 8 you'll really need 10 kids at least, to sub in for the duds.
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