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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.
You are a minority in this regard. But by all means, make your case.
Am I misreading some double negative in that sentence, or is it you that has a particularly dismal view of this place? Count me in as having that supposedly minority view. I don't have time write an essay on it, but morality is morality, and intelligence is intelligence. There might be some statistical voodoo where it turns out intelligent people tend act more moral, but that doesn't mean the two are directly linked. I've literally met a girl with Down's Syndrome that I'd give a higher moral worth than half of rationalists, I might even put her above myself if I had to judge things objectively.
The statement isn't "intelligent people act more honorably/morally", it's "intelligent people have better / deeper experiences and should be prioritized as moral subjects". Although arguably the former is true too, consequentially - a 90iq person can't cure cancer or invent the computer or whatever, and immoral acts are necessarily counter to some moral acts, so any specific level of accomplishment needs a certain level of intelligence to accomplish. E.g. someone who's sufficiently intellectually disabled doesn't even have the awareness to 'save the drowning child'
Yeah I know, "intelligent people act more honorably/morally" was the steelman. The second statement is morally abhorrent under my framework.
And it doesn't even seem to prioritize intelligent people, as much as chicks with BPD who love you like crazy, but want to off themselves when you don't give them enough attention, or addicts tripping balls on acid or heroin. And speaking of offing yourself, the chronically depressed they might as well go and do it, and make way for people with "better" experiences.
Sure, which is why you don't hold their actions to the same standard.
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