Hide table of contents

Comment Permalink

This is a universal argument that can be used to stop literally any action you don't like, or at least cause people to apologize for any such action, because any nontrivial action taken in the world is going to cause harm to at least some people, and probably many people. For this reason it should be rejected out of hand unless it is supported by context-specific details that make it more compelling in this case than it would be in the abstract.

No such details have been forthcoming from the proponents of this argument, most likely because they don't actually exist and therefore can't be supplied on demand.

See in context

My Thoughts on Bostrom's "Apology for an Old Email"

by 𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆

Jan 12 20232 min read 35

157

Building effective altruismCommunityNick BostromCriticism of the effective altruism communityDiversity and inclusionFuture of Humanity Institute

Personal Blog

My Thoughts on Bostrom's "Apology for an Old Email"

Epistemic Status

Personal Context

35 comments

Epistemic Status

Expressing this opinion because I get the sense the current zeitgeist on the forum underweights it, so staking it out feels somewhat valuable.

Personal Context

For context, I'm black (Nigerian who migrated to the UK last year as a student), currently upskilling to work in AI safety and joined EA via osmosis from LessWrong/the rationalist community.

I've been a rationalist since 2017, and EA-adjacent since 2019-ish? I began overtly identifying as an EA last year.

I'm concerned about the longterm flourishing of humanity, and I want to do what I can to help create a radically brighter future.

I'm just going to express my honest opinions here:

The events of the last 48 hours (slightly^[1]) raised my opinion of Nick Bostrom. I was very relieved that Bostrom did not compromise his epistemic integrity by expressing more socially palatable views that are contrary to those he actually holds.

I think it would be quite tragic to compromise honestly/accurately reporting our beliefs when the situation calls for it to fit in better. I'm very glad Bostrom did not do that.

Beyond just general epistemic integrity that I think we should uphold, to the extent that one thinks that Bostrom is an especially important thinker re: humanity's longterm flourishing, then it's even more important that he strongly adheres to epistemic integrity.

I think accurately reporting our beliefs and being honest even when society would reproach us for it is especially valuable for people thinking about "grand strategy for humanity".

I think it would be very tragic if Bostrom were to face professional censure because of this. I don't think an environment that punishes epistemic integrity is particularly productive with respect to working on humanity's most pressing problems.

As for the contents of the email itself, while very untasteful, they were sent in a particular context to be deliberately offensive and Bostrom did regret it and apologise for it at the time. I don't think it's useful/valuable to judge him on the basis of an email he sent a few decades ago as a student. The Bostrom that sent the email did not reflectively endorse its contents, and current Bostrom does not either.

I'm not interested in a discussion on race & IQ, so I deliberately avoided addressing that.

I already had a pretty high opinion of him. ↩︎

157 Reactions

Mentioned in

135History of diversity efforts and trends in EA

16Do better, please ...

9EA should unequivocally condemn race science

Comments35

Sorted by

New & upvoted

Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 8:29 PM

richard_ngo2y65

Downvoted because I'd prefer not to turn the situation into a one-dimensional tribal conflict of "support or oppose Bostrom", which this post feeds into. I support you expressing your opinions, though, so would encourage a more descriptive title.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y28

This post was written in part because a tribal narrative of opposing Bostrom seemed to be dominating the forum zeitgeist.

richard_ngo2y27

I've also downvoted other things that promote one-dimensional tribalist conflict on this issue. In general I don't support escalation to even-more-clearly-defined battle lines; this is precisely how conflicts become worse.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y7

Fair enough. The damage has already been done, so I'll leave the title of the post as is.

Lumpyproletariat2y7

Noting for the record that I read this post after these comments were written, and other people will as well.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y51

I've updated the title.

JP Addison🔸2y9

Congrats on updating! (Your mind not the title.)

peterhartree2y50

Thank you for posting this.

I roughly share the views you expressed here.

As you intended, the post is a valuable counterbalance to some of the other discussion.

JamesÖz 🔸2y28

Responding to one point only: I think more poorly of Bostrom being a “grand strategist for humanity” if he thinks the apology he wrote was the best one he honestly could have, given the large backlash and potential impact on his work and EA. Seems like quite a large mistake IMO (especially if the investigation now launched by Oxford leads to him losing his post)

Link to article mentioning the investigation: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blacks-more-stupid-than-whites-wrote-oxford-don-8gsj8l0wf

edit: added the word honestly to be clearer

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y37

Bostrom could have written a better apology, but I think that may have required dishonesty about his beliefs, and I think such dishonesty would have been really bad.

JamesÖz 🔸2y80

Leaving aside some object-level stuff about Bostrom's views, I still think the apology could be much better without any dishonesty on his part. This is somewhat subjective but things that I think could have been better:

Don't frame the apology at the beginning as almost purely instrumental i.e. not like "I will get smeared soon, so I want to get ahead of the game". This makes everything come across as less genuine.
"What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood." - This is just not a useful thing to mention in an apology about racism, or at least, not in this way. Usually, if someone says "Don't think of an elephant" then you do think of an elephant. The consequence is now people are probably more likely to think there is a link between Bostrom and eugenics than if this was written differently.
And some other points that Habiba mentioned in her post e.g. "I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused."

In my opinion it just highlights some basic misunderstandings about communication and our society today, which (I think) was proven by the fairly widespread negative backlash to this incident.

throwaway7912y40

Don't frame the apology at the beginning as almost purely instrumental i.e. not like "I will get smeared soon, so I want to get ahead of the game". This makes everything come across as less genuine.

What other reason is there to apologize?

This framing was obviously a bad idea instrumentally, but the fact that Bostrom chose this framing sends some signal that he has some standards of integrity that he's not willing to compromise for instrumental goals. I have previously criticized other thought leaders in EA for not having any such standards, and the fact that Bostrom does seem to have them is encouraging.

And some other points that Habiba mentioned in her post e.g. "I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused."

Is she also deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of, say, French people that fails to acknowledge the historical context of their origin and the harm they can and have caused? I'm guessing not.

Again, from a power-seeking perspective her point is correct, but I'm sure that's not the sense in which she meant it.

In my opinion it just highlights some basic misunderstandings about communication and our society today, which (I think) was proven by the fairly widespread negative backlash to this incident.

It's him maximizing some combination of honesty and instrumental value because he's not willing to completely lie about his views in order to improve his public image. That's a good trait and one you should be encouraging, not criticizing. EA has enough problems with people lying and deceiving to try to accumulate more power, more resources, and more influence. We don't need any more of this behavior.

Jason2y9

What other reason is there to apologize?

A desire to mitigate the harm that one's comments have caused.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y51

Bostrom's email did not actually cause any harm (as far as we know) as at the time it was written.

JamesÖz 🔸2y1

This seems too simple. The email was going to be made public, which would (and did) cause harm to many people, so an apology could try to mitigate the harm of his words being shared in 2022. His apology largely failed on this point (in my opinion).

throwaway7912y31

No such details have been forthcoming from the proponents of this argument, most likely because they don't actually exist and therefore can't be supplied on demand.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y31

I am not clear to the extent to which his email actually harmed people.

I agree that he did not optimise for mitigating the harm caused, but I don't grant much weight to that because it's very ambiguous to me to what extent harm was caused.

throwaway7912y12

Can you point to any specific physical harm that was caused by Bostrom's comments that goes beyond "some people were upset"?

Henry Stanley 🔸2y27

"What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood." - This is just not a useful thing to mention in an apology about racism, or at least, not in this way

I actually think this was quite reasonable. He's a bioethicist, after all – 'eugenics' has a bunch of different meanings in that field and it's important to distinguish between them

not_applicable2y11

Social taboos do not just exist arbitrarily but in collective response to the amount of harm certain words and ideas have historically caused.

It is socially taboo to deny the Holocaust. Do you think it would be acceptable if Bostrom had outed himself as a Holocaust denier? If that was the case, would anyone be talking about the virtues of his epistemic integrity? No! Because the "counter-cultural belief" he would be committing to and promoting in that case (as I believe is the situation here) is actively false and harmful.

Those defending him now are likely doing so because, on some level, they are at least willing to consider holding the same specific beliefs as him on race differences, are becoming increasingly aware that these beliefs are understood to be problematic and harmful but remain committed to those beliefs and to Bostrom regardless. Don't try to sugar coat things and please be honest, with yourselves and others. Appealing to some notion of "epistemic integrity" here just seems deeply disingenuous.

Also - to clarify for those that pull out this response as an example of "look, a Black person supports Bostrom", I am also Black and the vast majority of other Black people I engage with about this issue, especially those with no personal attachment or loyalty to EA or Bostrom, are deeply hurt and offended by the contents in Bostrom's non-apology. OP does not speak for all of us, or really *anyone* except for himself.

Anon Rationalist2y45

I do not follow the relevance of this critique. If Nick Bostrom, or anyone else, denied the Holocaust, and there was ample evidence to support the position, people would be talking about the virtues of his epistemic integrity. If he denied the Holocaust without ample evidence, people would be critiquing the virtues of his epistemic integrity. The crux of the matter of epistemic integrity is whether or not the evidence supports the position.

Those defending him now are likely doing so because, on some level, they are at least willing to consider holding the same specific beliefs as him on race differences, are becoming increasingly aware that these beliefs are understood to be problematic and harmful but remain committed to those beliefs and to Bostrom regardless. Don't try to sugar coat things and please be honest, with yourselves and others. Appealing to some notion of "epistemic integrity" here just seems deeply disingenuous.

This seems to rest on the false assumption that "defenders" do not hold these beliefs out of epistemic integrity, but out of some other sort of animus. I do not think that is true for most, and certainly not true for myself. I hold my understanding of Bostrom's statement (that black people are on average less intelligent than white people) to be true because that's what all available evidence suggests.^[1]

Bostrom did not delve into the causal mechanism for this phenomenon, which is considerably murkier. His statement was a plain stating of observed facts. albeit in an insensitive manner. That is why people defend his epistemic integrity in this instance.

^{^}

https://reasonwithoutrestraint.com/the-scope-of-racial-disparities-in-test-scores-in-the-united-states/

not_applicable2y-16

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y23

OP does not speak for all of us, or really anyone except for himself.

This is very true, thanks for speaking up.

(I never intended to speak for all black EAs.)

Jason2y6

Per Bostrom's note, this is "very worst of the worst in [his] contribution file" on the forum in question. That suggests there may be more of "the worst" to come in the expose some unnamed person is apparently compiling.

britomart2y6

I'm surprised you feel that "the current zeitgeist on the forum underweights [the opinion 'I support Bostrom']" - my sense is that most upvoted comments are supportive of his apology, and I haven't seen any advocating that he face professional censure.

Matthew_Barnett2y49

At the time Cinera's post was published, the most upvoted post on the EA forum about the controversy was this post, which explicitly said that Bostrom's apology was insufficient,

His apology fails badly to fully take responsibility or display an understanding of the harm the views expressed represent.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y36

Most comments on the matter I've actually seen were critical/condemning. It sounds like several supporters were not vocally expressing their positions?

The opinion itself may not be that controversial, but it's very much a minority in terms of actual comments on the matter?

britomart2y11

The current top-voted comments on the original post are: 1) a moderator asking people to remember community norms, 2) a commenter asking people to be kind and charitable, and 3) someone who says "The original email (written 26 years ago) was horrible, but Bostrom's apology seems reasonable" and criticises the author of the post for attempting to stir up drama.

quinn2y3

Interesting! When I read oldemail.pdf, I thought he pretty loudly was damning with faint praise toward arguments against race/IQ correlation, which made me respect his epistemic integrity less. It just felt like a lotta kayfabe to me, even though I understand not wanting to write an in-depth viewpoint that's out of one's area of expertise. Hard problem: the epistemic integrity response to race/IQ discourse is to believe true things, to ignore people who think empirical facts are identities (and face the political consequences head on!) or who haven't internalized the is/ought distinction, but that means some serious engagement with what is in this case a thankless literature.

I know you didn't wanna make this about the object level race/IQ thing, so sorry if that's what I'm doing, I meant to write about our differing assessments of his epistemic integrity. There's a lot of understandable brain poison around this topic.

𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆2y25

Yeah, I can't particularly discuss this given my stated preferences to avoid race/IQ discussion.

sak_sham2y21

Academics lean towards epistemic integrity

Leadership/Influencers/Elites should learn towards epistemic responsibility at the cost of integrity due to network effects

Bostrom has graduated from being just an academic to a thought leader and pretty influential figure in the movement, getting mainstream media attention. It makes sense for him, at this point in his career, to make the statement that he did regardless of his views on the topic.

Arturo Macias2y-28

lepidus2y-42