Does it matter that some EAs think black people are stupider than white people?

"It's clear that many EAs believe that there are population-level differences in average intelligence between ethnic groups"

It is not clear that many EAs believe this, unless you can point to a representative survey that shows otherwise. I would suggest changing 'many EAs' to 'some commenters on the EA Forum'.

It is commonly theorized that having friends who hold a viewpoint should make one more charitable to that viewpoint. This has not been the case with HBD. I have a close friend of around decade who has gotten increasingly obsessed with HBD. In general they are a smart and friendly person. But the things they have started espousing have become really shocking. 

Example of their beliefs: If Black people are not heavily under-represented in a 'cognitively demanding' organization that is very strong evidence the organization is racist against White and Asian individuals!

Obviously this point of view is completely at odds with any sort of fair and inclusive community or organization. They have also moved further and further rightwing. This resulted in a lot of personal problems when I came out as trans. They don't 'just' have some abstract objections, they were quite toxic to an old and supportive friend when she was having a hard time. They explicitly admit that a huge driving force for them moving rightward in general is belief in HBD. The logic for why is not hard to see. If you believe in HBD you can start to feel 'persecuted' by people on the left or center-left. It's easy to start sympathizing with the right and far right.

I've been in the rationalist community for over a decade and the EA community for a somewhat shorter period. I have seen tons of seemingly kind and reasonable friends become increasingly far-right after they got into HBD.  Im honestly not surprised FLI was considering funding an explicit far-right nazi-adjacent group. The sympathies run deep. Neo-reaction has been close to the EA and rationalist communities for a very large fraction of our history. 

It would be extremely hypocritical for me to hold people to views they no longer support. I endorsed HBD in 2015 and 2016. Like many rationalists I was introduced to HBD by reading Slatestarcodex. Promoting HBD in anyway, including privately exposing people to the ideas, is one of the biggest regrets of my life. It is a seriously harmful philosophy. Im very, very sorry for any negative impact my actions may have caused. For obvious reasons I have sympathy for people who have gotten into the racist pipeline. I honestly only got out because the right is so shitty to trans people and is pretty anti-vegan. Like many eggs I had a lot of trans friends. Independently I was quite convinced veganism was a positive lifestyle. them being so shitty on slam dunk issues like trans rights made me start rethinking other parts of the ideology I had started adopting. HBD is a very harmful pseudo-science and it is totally unacceptable that people with power in Effective Altruism believe in it. 

I truly hope the EA movement can move toward a better future free from this toxicity.

I have written a post that probably answer some of those concerns:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r3f45au7ewEkypygf/wokism-rethinking-priorities-and-the-bostrom-case

Across large racial groups, however, the observed differences are statistically significant but modest (as they are for other anthropometric characters), and given the social and cultural disparities across racial groups and the social plasticity of IQ the share of biological causality on the observed racial IQ gap is a difficult and controversial research problem. Bostrom has not scientific legitimacy to give an opinion in such a technical and disputed issue.

Regarding feelings and human sympathy, the big question is: whose feelings? How can a modest difference in the mean of the IQ distribution offend a black man with an IQ of 130? And if you are a white person with an IQ of 85, how useful is for you the white black IQ gap for which you make a negative contribution? IQ is a personal characteristic, and means are completely irrelevant for every single person.

If we believe that IQ is important for some application, we can measure it directly at the individual level instead of looking at skin color. Anti-racist arguments do not depend on the distribution of psychometric variables. They depend on treating each person as an individual, ignoring skin color, and exclusively considering the abilities and limitations relevant to the case considered of the person under scrutiny. Any “anti-racism” in excess of this, is, in fact, racism

>This has profound implications for the ability of the movement to work in the interests of all humanity. For example, EAs who believe it is important that the human population expand but who think that African people are likely to be stupider than the human average may divert resources away from them. EAs making hiring decisions may prioritise applications from people whom they have not subconsciously assigned to the schema "stupider than me."

Let's say that it is true that not only are africans today lower in cognitive ability than whites on average, but that this gap is also mostly heritable (the latter is debatable but there is strong evidence to support it - the former is indisputable unless you think literally every single measure of cognitive ability that has strong predictive validity is radically and fatally flawed) . 

Should this be acknoledged? Should this affect how we view the world?

Assuming it's true, do you believe, as a rationalist, that ignoring fundmental characteristics of human ity that explain more about society than almost any other factors will lead you towards making better decisions? 

Speaking only for myself here, I think the answer is an unqualified hell no. 

If you assume African Americans are congitive equivlanet to Asian Americans on average, then you will assume that sending more of them to college (in excess of those who can get in on the basis of academic merit alone currently) will result in improved socioeconomic outcomes (even if no affirmative action in hiring existed). But the real result is that many black people will have wasted 2-4 years of their life accumulating debt and forgoing earnings to gain an "education" that did nothing to close the cognitive gaps between themselves and asian americans. The debt, loss of income and wasting of time that could have been used developing valuable skills will hurt these graduates. 

If instead, given that we know that intelligence varies between people, and we're interested in maximising the earning potential of black kids from low income families, we had identified their IQ early on and put our effort into getting them onto the optimal career track for their specific level of cognitive ability. 

 (The same is true for kids of any race - the difference is people are generally  much more accepting of the fact that some white kids are just plain less intelligent than other white kids and can't have the same careers, and much more of acepting income inequality within than between races. And so there is a much bigger push to get black people specifically into college rather than low income/IQ kids generally, which is why it makes sense to think along racial lines here). 

The same logic applies to entire countries. If you assume that Nigerians are no less intelligent than Chinese people, then you're likely to expect that Nigeria is going to follow the same development path as China once some threshold is passed for e.g. education health and so on. This is almost certainly not going to happen, and expecting it to will mean you will make suboptimal decisions when thinking about how to help countries in Africa. 

More controversially, it also would mean that people in Africa are likely going to be of much lower instrumental value to humanity than people in Japan. But choosing to ignore this is actually the decision that is being made on the basis of race. Choosing to factor this into your worldview and decisions means you're acting on the basis of utility alone and not making decisions aimed at helping people because of their race more than you would of. 

Liberal americans obviously aren't categorically opposed to helping low income black americans more than low income white americans in rural areas/the south, and it's likely this is because they think that black americans are better people and have more to offer the country, whereas white americans are just dumb and ignorant and cannot be reformed (not everyone believes this entirely, but I think some implicit form of this belief colors much of liberal thought in this area). All I'm saying is this type of thinking also applies more generally, except in this case the difference is based on data rather than intution and in-group favoratism. 

If you, as you say, care about "working in the interests of humanity", you need to think about the interests of humanity collectively. Maximixing the interests of humanity will necessarily involve not helping all groups equally.

I join this forum because your post.. so cringe, so wrong, so out there.. I have to let you know how bad your looking at things.. your fascism stinks and your response.. even worse, not even deserving to be the thought of the dumbest of the IQ testers for the racial i.q experiment.

Now that being said, listen up. It's a fact, since 1970 we've been re running those number along others.. there is severe differences between race and their abilities.. you crying wolf hoping to be heard as you wish for some kind of weird recognition... on pushing a lie, that you wish where true because you think everyone has to start exactly at the same place in life..

Guess what buddy nobody does.. we all start differently and are different. An i.q test btw, is to figure out how good you are at figuring it out. With or without knowledge of the task at hand.

Now would you complain about mm let say, research saying blacks are as good or bad as white people for playing sports, I'd bring you a long list of sports team that are completely black. And would ask you to explain this to me.

As far as smarts, let see here from the creation of Rome, to the creation of the automotive, computers, cellphones, and most anything America made, white people, we are innovative as fuck. Apple, wouldn't of happen without whites. No would of the airplane nor have the shit u disrespect in your life.. but some how, we have to be, no more smarter than anyone else ?

Do you know why I would never think a mosque or a Jewish family has internal issues with counting thee money or ajythint to do with numbers?? Because Jewish as a culture have created the binary systems, the math we use today. I know Jewish people have heavy demands on their kids to learn the Torah and along that to exceed in schools.

Do I attribute their smarts to genetics.. no, even tho I see it in their history my ass knows that's just a tall tale of what can be, the really reason why I know that it ring true for most Jewish family to be exceptionally good at math, is because they teach you to read the Torah in Hebrew by the time you hit 16 the entirety of it. fuck you for ever saying those people have no advantage on other when it coems to math, and if you think so, ur bad.. dummy, we dont all pourpousely whool are eyes blind ourselves to what we knownis truem.

And we won't punish others on ur behalf little princess, you'll lose before u get ur win trust me.. only racist here is the guy offended. Science is bipartisan , ur not.. stfu