For the last several days much of the discussion about Scott Siskind of Slate Star Codex has been about "guilt by association" with Charles Murray, Moldbug and other white supremacist and neoreactionary types. I firmly believe that guilt by association with white supremacists is fundamentally valid, but I was heavily downvoted for my arguments.
My priors have been confirmed, as the rationalists would say. Association with white supremacists and neoreactionaries continues to be strong evidence of one's own sympathies, despite loud protestations (perhaps too much?) from the denizens of this hellsite.
Free clue: Calling a place a hellsite does not make your post more persuasive. Quite the opposite. It indicates that you aren't even bothering to try to persuade.
If your concern is more about this place being called a hellsite than the actual scientific racism at hand, then perhaps that says more about you than you might think.
If your concern is for screaming "scientific racism" rather than encouraging an honest look at the scientific evidence and using it as a guide to try to improve the situation, then that says something about you.
Siskind is very thoughtful and reads a lot. If, after weighing the evidence, he concluded that some of the white/black difference on IQ tests is probably genetic, that does not make him a bad person or a "white supremacist", unless he has advocated denying civil rights to blacks. He has not done so.
There is much current discussion of how to deal with racial disparities in outcomes in employment and education. What to do about them depends on what factors cause them, which should be studied objectively.
IMO, anybody who takes Charles Murray seriously needs to be hit upside the head with a hardcover of Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which exposed race-and-IQ studies for the racist bullshit they are in the 1970s, years before the publication of The Bell Curve.
Its incredibly socially awkward to float the idea that you could judge someone’s intelligence by their physical features and claim some objective validity. This is quite unfortunate because in my opinion IQ is pseudoscience and intelligence is socially constructed, so its not going to be possible to substantiate that view. But since we can’t even propose such an idea for purposes of argument without the danger of social sanction, those ideas are never properly debunked.
The reason you can't do that by the way is because of literal centuries of slavery and oppression which was informed by the same basic idea, that some groups of people are naturally better than others.
Until things have been fine for an equally long time, such arguments will be socially sanctioned, as they should be.
Why is it white supremacy and not Japanese supremacy, since Japanese have the highest average IQ in studies I've seen? White countries all lag behind east Asia.
It is really weird that Scott would be called a racial supremacist for exposing data that puts his race squarely in the middle of the pack.
This is no different than schoolyard name calling and is so juvenile. I just can fathom the thought process of someone that takes it to this level. If this is how someone believes they can win an argument, maybe it time for them to do a little self reflection.
it's not really about winning arguments, so much as it is about making it so that reasoned discussion is difficult/impossible. And introspection is probably the only way for them to realize this. Unfortunately intellectual curiosity doesn't seem to be a common characteristic of this crowd.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 46.1 ms ] threadMy priors have been confirmed, as the rationalists would say. Association with white supremacists and neoreactionaries continues to be strong evidence of one's own sympathies, despite loud protestations (perhaps too much?) from the denizens of this hellsite.
Learn to distinguish between ignorance and indifference.
There is much current discussion of how to deal with racial disparities in outcomes in employment and education. What to do about them depends on what factors cause them, which should be studied objectively.
Until things have been fine for an equally long time, such arguments will be socially sanctioned, as they should be.
It is really weird that Scott would be called a racial supremacist for exposing data that puts his race squarely in the middle of the pack.
Don't Ashkenazi Jews as an ethnic group have the highest average IQ?
Because its not about the specific issue, its about demonizing people who are willing to consider dangerous ideas.
> racial supremacist for exposing data that puts his race squarely in the middle of the pack.
He’s Jewish but you wouldn’t know that from all the people accusing him of being a nazi.
This is no different than schoolyard name calling and is so juvenile. I just can fathom the thought process of someone that takes it to this level. If this is how someone believes they can win an argument, maybe it time for them to do a little self reflection.