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I'll be damned. EA might just be the one left-leaning space that will survive wokeness in perpetuity. The response to the Hanson deplatforming was inspiring, and support for Bostrom actually seems pretty strong at the forum. This might even be a good thing for them. As they get tarred as a den of reactionaries, woke sympathetic people will become less interested in engaging with them, and the entry of future enemies into their ranks might decrease.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
Are we reading the same forum?
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ALzE9JixLLEexTKSq/cea-statement-on-nick-bostrom-s-email
(emphasis mine)
Once you start condemning the "discussion of ideas" for reasons other than obvious falsity or existential risk, you lose all credibility as a rationalist organization (and frankly even those two exceptions are debatable). There are a few people in the comments pushing back, but that's always how it starts out. The posts cited by DaseindustriesLtd in the below comment are quite damning. Its important to remember that, "making people feel comfortable," means conforming to the dominant culture, and we all know what the dominant culture in London and Berkeley is.
I think there is a good case to be made that race/IQ discussions are an existential risk.
Many people on this forum probably like to think of themselves as "high decouplers" -- I used to think of myself as the same way -- but to be quite honest, it is very difficult to let "racial IQ differences" in through my perceptual door without some darker thoughts following it. Even on this forum, I don't often see people mentioning that IQ differences shouldn't imply differences in moral worth -- which suggests to me that many people here do actually have an unarticulated, possibly subconscious, belief that this is the case.
Furthemore, even if everyone here, and everyone in EA, is a high decoupler, it's clear that the world is full of low decouplers. Just observe your nearest political debate. So from a consequentialist perspective, spreading race/IQ discussions could be incredibly damaging.
Back to x-risk. In the terminology of Bostrom's paper, Hitler winning World War II would most likely count as a "shriek" or a "whimper" at the very least: https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks If not an "s-risk" (worse than an x-risk): https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/s-risks/
And while wokes discount the possibility that Hitler being a hater caused him to endorse eugenics, it's possibility that causality flows in the other direction as well. We can't rule it out, and the chance it is true should be a major update for how we discuss race & IQ.
If you've heard the term existential risk, you've likely also heard the term infohazard. It seems possibly to me that race/IQ information is in fact an infohazard.
"many people here do actually have an unarticulated, possibly subconscious, belief that this is the case." - There's nothing subconscious about it. I believe this is the case, and am willing to defend it explicitly.
Well, as you age, your intelligence will fade. So if you believe you will be worth less morally when you're elderly, has that caused you to save less for retirement than you would otherwise?
Do you believe that you have less moral worth when you are sick, sleep-deprived, intoxicated, distracted, or otherwise cognitively impaired? And if so by how much?
You acknowledge it's possible for something to be true, but for people to poorly acknowledge it, right? Consider telling an addict that "yeah, you may CLAIM cocaine is bad for you, but if you really believe that why's there some white powder on your jeans"?
wait, what moral worth does a person who's braindead, or in a permanent, unrecoverable coma have? In the normal case, that person will be alert and intelligent in at most a dozen hours, but if that isn't true ...
Challenging people on the implications of their beliefs is a standard argumentative technique. If you're not acting on the implications, maybe there's a part of you that doesn't actually buy into the belief.
I agree that if there's a braindead person in a permanent unrecoverable coma, we should probably pull the plug on them and use the resources to help others. (Well, under ideal circumstances cryogenically freeze them first, in case future tech can help them recover from the coma)
This doesn't really prove it false though! Consider telling the slaveowner who's having doubts about slavery that "well, you own slaves, so"? The way that codes today is "which is disgusting, and you shouldn't", but the way you're using it is "and slavery is fine, therefore". Morals aren't attempting to "find our current beliefs", as that would make pondering morality entirely vacuous, one can be wrong!
So to be consistent with their doubts, they'll want to liberate their slaves. Pointing out inconsistency is valuable.
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