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What follows is a tangent, but it feels like a relevant tangent. Like, I do not claim this is quite the same conversation as the above, it's slightly in a different direction, but it's not fully a non-sequitur.
Forgive the slightly-not-normal-for-this-venue language; this was originally a personal Facebook comment.
Here is a point that I don't think gets made often enough:
It doesn't matter whether other people are inferior, when it comes to talking about their fundamental dignity and the rights that a civilized society should grant them.
Like, often nazis or misogynists or whatever will try to start demonstrating that [some group] is objectively inferior on [some axis], and often the opposition will come right back with NUH-UH, [group] IS EVERY BIT AS CAPABLE—
I think there's a mistake, there, and I think that mistake is *acting like that would matter,* even if true. Playing into the frame of the bigot, letting them set the terms of the debate, implicitly conceding that the question of two different group's equality or inequality is the *crux* of the issue.
It isn't.
I happen to think that it's *false* that [race] or [gender] or whatever is inferior; my sense is that even if the bell curves for different groups peak in slightly different places and have their tails in slightly different places, they basically cover the same ground and overwhelmingly overlap anyway, so whatever.
But even if it were *demonstrably true* that [group] were inferior, that wouldn't change my sense of moral obligation toward its members, and it wouldn't change my beliefs about what kinds of treatment are fair or unfair.
I know for a fact that I have more raw intelligence than most humans! Even in nerd circles, I'm more-than-half-the-time in the upper quartile of whatever room I'm in, and guess what! Doesn't matter! Practically every human outstrips me in some domain or other anyway! I can't step to someone's unique expertise, nor can I compete with them along domains orthogonal to intelligence (e.g. physical prowess), and even if I were superior to someone along 10 out of 10 of the *most* important axes ...
... EVEN THEN, I do not think that gives me the right to dictate the terms of their existence, cut them off from opportunity, or take a larger share of the social pie.
The whole *point* of civilization is moving away from a state of base natural anarchy, where your value is tied to your capability. The whole point of building a safe, stable, cooperative society is making it so that you *don't* have to pull your whole weight every second of every day or else be abandoned to the wolves or enslaved by strongmen.
The thing we're trying to build here is a world where the absolutely inferior—
(To the extent that's even a category that exists; a lot depends on your point of view and what axes you consider relevant)
The thing we're trying to build here is a world where *even the absolutely inferior* get to have the maximum achievable amount of sovereignty, and agency, and happiness, and health, and get to participate in society to the greatest possible degree permitted by their personal limitations and the technology we have available (both literal technology and social/metaphorical tech).
IDGAF if you can "prove" some group's inferiority. It means nothing to me. It changes nothing. It was never the key hinge of the conversation for me. Superiority is not the foundation of my sense of my fellow humans' dignity.
(And that's setting *aside* the fact that even if you've proven a difference between groups at the statistical level, you've done very little to demonstrate the relevance of that statistical difference on individual members; bell curves are not their averages.)
I think it's good to push back on bigots when they are spreading straightforward falsehoods. I'm not saying "don't fire back with facts" in these conversations.
But the *fire* with which people fire back seems to me to be counterproductive and wrong, and it worries me. Acting outraged at the mere possibility that some group might be inferior to another, as if that would be morally relevant in any way whatsoever—
I kind of fear that those people are closer to the bigots than I might wish. That they're responding with such fervor because they *do* believe, on some gut level, that if the groups are different, then the moral standards must necessarily also be different. They don't want to conclude that the moral standards should be different, and so they object with *desperation* to any evidence that threatens to show actual differences between groups.
Potential competence differences between groups don't matter on a moral level. Or at least, let me-and-my-philosophy be an existence proof to you: they don't HAVE to matter.
You can build a society that doesn't give a fuck if people are fundamentally inferior, and that does its best to be fair and moral toward them anyway.
That's the society you *should* be trying to build. If for no other reason than the fact that that's going to be you one day, when you break a leg or have a stroke or just succumb to the vicissitudes of time. If for no other reason than the fact that that could be your kid, or the kid of someone you care about.
(There are other reasons, too, but that's the one that's hopefully at least a little bit persuasive even to selfish egotists.)
Competence is not the measure of worth. Fundamental equality is *not* the justification for fair and moral treatment.
Build your ethics on firmer ground, please.
Firstly, I will say that I'm personally not afraid to study and debate these topics, and have done so. My belief is that the data points to no evidence of significant genetic differences between races when it comes to matters such as intelligence, and i think one downside of being hush hush about the subject is that people miss out on this conclusion, which is the one even a basic wikipedia skim would get you to. (you're free to disagree, that's not the point of this comment).
That being said, I think you have greatly understated the case for not debating the subject on this forum. Remember, this is a forum for doing the most good, not a debate club, and if shunting debate of certain subjects onto a different website does the most good, that's what we should do. This requires a cost/benefit analysis, and you are severely understating the costs here.
Point 1 is that we have to acknowledge the obvious fact that when you make a group of people feel bad, some of them are going to leave your group. I do not think this is a moral failing on their part. We have a limited number of hours in the day, would you hang out in a place where people regularly discuss whether you are genetically inferior? And it doesn't just drive out minorities, it drives out other people who are uncomfortable with the discussion as well.
Driving out minorities is bad on it's own, but it also has implications for cause areas. A homogenous group is going to going to lack diverse viewpoints, and miss things that would be obvious to people with different contexts/experiences. It also limits the outreach to different countries, are we going to make inroads to India if we're constantly discussing the genetic makeup of indians? And that's not even talking about the bad PR of being a super-white, super-male group, which costs us both credibility and funding.
Following on the PR point, I think people find it gauche to talk about the PR effect of discussions, as our opinions shouldn't be affected by public opinion. But if we are honestly discussing the costs of allowing these discussions, then PR undeniably is a cost, and a really bad one. People are already using this as an excuse to slam EA in general as racist on twitter, if this becomes a major news story, the narrative will spread. EA is already associated with fradulence thanks to SBF, do we really want to be associated with race science as well?
My last point is that while not everyone who believes in genetic group differences is far-right/neo-nazi, the vice versa is not true: pretty much every neo-nazi believes in this stuff, and they use every opportunity they can to use it as an excuse to spread their ideology. A continuing discussion could very well encourage a flood of nazis onto the site, which is not exactly good for the wellbeing of the forum.
Again, my point isn't that these discussions should be banned from the internet entirely. My point is merely that it shouldn't be discussed here.
I completly that group genetic differences should not be discussed here. It is a good thing that I don't think I've ever encountered a discussion of it on the EA forum prior to this situation.
So we all agree: Talking about this on the forum is a bad idea. Then the remaining question is what attitude we should take towards Bostrom now that this email of his from the nineties has become the topic de jour.
Possibly the position you are trying to take is that the institutions of the community should distance themselves from him because continuing to treat him as a central intellectual voice might offecnd and drive out minorities, and might offend and drive away people who a very sensitive to the possibility that someone is accepted in a community who is racist.
I want to note that there are also huge negative consequences to the official community distancing itself from such an important figure over this. Notably it will show that it is adopting an attitude that people who honestly try to figure out the truth on controversial topics without being concerned about what is socially acceptable should not be here. It will be saying that we care more about PR than truth.
The sorts of people who care about arguments, and will follow them wherever they go are and have been very central to the EA community, and they are unusual people who provide extremely important benefits, and the unique value of EA as an addition to the global portolio of ideas has probably come from how it was a place where those sorts of thinkers thought about how to do good.
I'd also note: We constantly talk about the PR effect of our decisions. The forum at least has become obsessed with it over the past years.
Bostroms email is a seperate matter. My problem with bostroms email is not about the opinions he holds on technical questions, but about the lack of empathy and astonishingly poor judgement of what he decided to include in there. For example, even if you agree with his two paragraph tangent on eugenics, there was absolutely no need to include it in an apology letter. There were many, many ways that he could have apologised without upsetting people or compromising his beliefs.
Imagine if I called someone's mother overweight in a vulgar manner. When they get upset, I compose a long apology email where I apologize for the language, but then note that their mother does have a BMI substantially above average, as does their sister, father, and wife. All those statements might be true, but that would not excuse the email!
I think talking about PR is entirely appropriate, given that EA is in the charity business and was just embroiled in a massive fraud scandal, and that bad PR directly translates into less money for EA causes. I think it's important that the public faces of EA be good at PR, and find it very concerning that Bostrom is so astonishingly bad at it.
It is constantly claimed, but never actually proven that bad PR (in the sense of being linked to things like SBF, racism, or an Emile Torres article) leads to fewer donations for EA causes.
I am not convinced this is actually true. Does bad PR actually lead twenty something people who want to do ai safety research to be less likely to get a grant for career development? Does it actually hurt MIRI's budget? Or the ai safety camp? Etc.
Does it actually make people decide to not support an organization that wants to hand out lots of anti factory farm pamphlets? Are AMF and Give directly and the worm initiatives actually receiving less money because of these bad PR moments?
And if they are, how do we collectively know that?
While I agree, this grew out of the Bostrom email thing which I found hard to avoid because EA or EA-adj people were saying things I disagreed with! Luckily we have a single thread where this sort of discussion can be isolated.
I absolutely agree with this view, and I see this as one of the better takes.