Trigger warning: racism.
I personally found this letter incredibly difficult to read. Beyond the content of the email, the apology is also terribly written, and reads like Nick, an intellectual leader in EA and longtermism, might still hold these views today to some degree. It also reads like Nick is primarily just trying to do damage control for using a racial slur, or preemptive PR work for some other reason, as opposed to focusing on the harms he may be contributing to, and the folks he is apologizing to. In this context, this also sounds like a dog-whistle:
Are there any genetic contributors to differences between groups in cognitive abilities? It is not my area of expertise, and I don’t have any particular interest in the question. I would leave to others, who have more relevant knowledge, to debate whether or not in addition to environmental factors, epigenetic or genetic factors play any role.
Myself and other EAs I know are worried about professional reputational risks of continued association with the EA movement or longtermism. This is not just a PR risk, and despite my view that this reflects terribly on Nick and any comms experts who may have been involved in this, I don't want this to imply that the PR angle is what we should be primarily concerned about here-it isn't! But whether or not one of the leaders of EA has held racist views for decades, and whether he still basically holds them today is important.
It has real implications for the movement's future, including selection effects on people who may become more uncertain about the views that intellectual leaders of the EA/longtermism movement hold (and by extension, its intellectual foundations), whether EA is a community for "people like them", and whether EA is a movement that is well-equipped to preserve a future for all of humanity. Even if they aren't uncertain, they may be more reluctant to take risks to continue or become more outwardly involved in an increasingly controversial social movement. This may also affect the view of current and prospective donors to EA causes.
These are not concerns held solely by "EA outsiders" or those who are already unsympathetic to EA.
Reactions on Twitter-read on at your own peril!
(The EA forum seems to default to strong-upvotes on your own posts. I don't know why this is, but I'll probably change mine to a normal upvote if this post gets some engagement.)
EA has become big enough to weather such a storm, especially since stemming against the ever-increasing number of calls for struggle sessions should become a central EA cause area. People need to be able to speak their minds and be judged by their deeds and impact, not by some demonstrably uncharitable reading of their thoughts. The latter seems motivated mainly by an attempt to stir up a denunciation rally, likely because somebody didn't like the intellectual content Bostrom is known for.
It is also important to keep adult public discourse policing sane enough that no one gets lambasted for saying or writing something like "People seem to react equally enraged by someone wondering aloud about specific IQ differences in populations, as by someone shouting 'I hate those bloody n-words!!!'". People get riled up over this as if this was some teenage utterance of the form "I know I am not supposed to say 'n-word', and therefore I would never say 'n-word', even if someone, whom others might call a 'n-word' were to walk by and complain to me that people often call him a 'n-word', especially since his grandmother has been called 'n-word', much like his mother who has also been called 'n-word' ..." and so forth, specially compiled to strafe a taboo. Obviously one should intervene in such a case. Doesn't mean adults shouldn't be able to spell out the term when they talk about it while not using it as a slur. Preemptively treating people like children is what ruins modern discourse.
And the musings on population differences, well, a lot has been said and written about those. Concluding they may very well exist isn't necessarily malevolent. Instead, an honest discussion about this might be the key to solving the genuine problems of those populations in a way that affirmative action and explaining away certain facts haven't. The intellectual dishonesty on this topic runs incredibly deep and is far more expansive than just population differences and race. Think a politician talking about 'the uneducated' as a social class, that's pretty much acceptable. Speaking about the 'intellectually challenged' however is wrongthink, the overlap between these two groups equally in the realm of career-ending topics for all but the most established scientists. The missteps science in its infancy made with these topics cannot be grounds to suppress a rational discussion of how to deal with inherent human differences for the benefit of all forever.
(this comment previously got deleted by the moderators because it contained 'n-word' several times, a decision with which I vigorously disagree)