[exo-pla-net]

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild:

> “I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true.

“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that. They would think that I were a ‘racist’: that I _disliked_ black people and thought it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t. It’s just that based on what I have read, I think it is probable that black people have a lower average IQ than mankind in general, and I think that IQ is highly correlated with what we normally mean by ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’. I may be wrong about the facts, but that is what the sentence means for me. For most people, however, the sentence seems to be synonymous with: ‘I hate those bloody n------!!!!”

[busterarm]

It also leaves out that the university investigated and came to the seemingly-rare conclusion that the controversial statement didn't indicate that he's a racist.

[IncreasePosts]

I wonder if these people ever paused to consider they aren't as smart as they think they are, if they're just figuring out some basics of human communication in their mid 20s that my 8 year old has known for years.

[gizajob]

Bostrom has always had the air of knowing he’s phenomenally intelligent and absolutely brilliant and almost certainly the smartest person in any room. Yet his work smacks of grind and storytelling rather than genius.

[throwaway290]

The irony is that you are looking at an example where a guy literally paused to consider how he was not so smart about communication. He also shared it with others who can also lack this skill

[K0balt]

I tend to agree with this sentiment in general, given the outcome of the misstep.

But I think it is a great poverty of mind and a sad commentary that things cannot be said without risking having their meaning turned inside out and amplified in their grotesquely mutated form by eager syncophants of pseudoreligios thought police.

It really has the smell of 1600s style witch hunts.

[ceuk]

High dimensionality, more granular interpretation/models of the world. More conscious/deliberate behaviour, less benefit from neurological canalisation.

I don't think you're seeing ineptitude, I think you're seeing lucidity, sapience.

[iraqmtpizza]

I mean you have to be fairly dull yourself to be wound up over a mundane 1996 email decades later. I think we should get the pitchforks out for Wikipedia for using the n-word so flippantly. Which happened today in public, and not privately in 1996

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Has your 8 yr old really known this for years? He may behave in a conformist way, instinctively, without being able to describe it or understand the phenomenon... both of which are, in my opinion, required to know it.

And who's figuring out whose communication? He basically has to draw a picture in crayon of what he means, just so all the rest of you don't misconstrue his meaning. Your "human communication" is much too defective to be so proud of it.

[itronitron]

The additional context you provide suggests that the smear was taken out of context in order to hide the fact that the smear was in fact covering a skid mark over a shit stain.

[malfist]

Yeah, I don't get how that context makes anything better. All it says to me is Bostrom is trying to claim he's not racist because he knows his racist view will get him called a racist and therefor he's not racist.

The argument doesn't make sense. You don't get to claim your view that black people are inferior to "mankind" isn't racist just because someone calls you a racist

[Maro]

I have no agenda for or against Nick Bostrom. It's a full paragraph quote from the Wikipedia article, with a link.

[gwern]

Are you trying to imply that Wikipedia articles by definition have no agenda and no one quoting a Wikipedia article can have an agenda either?

[pessimizer]

This context makes it worse. I was imagining a bunch of different framings that would make it sound thoughtful, but I've literally heard the same thing from Klansmen in Arkansas. Literally, not figuratively.

That last sentence is a symptom of people thinking that the only important issue is whether they're good people or not. He's saying that saying dogs are stupider than humans is not the same as hating dogs. Who cares what he hates? The question is who he hires, and who he gives the benefit of the doubt to. Not hiring dogs isn't hating dogs either.

[s1artibartfast]

I don't understand you position. Are you saying the question of if dogs are stupid is irrelevant, off limits, and if you know the answer it is unethical to say it?

Suppose dogs (your choice) are stupider. How should someone behave?

[mise_en_place]

Most people are not ready to have an honest discussion about the correlation between race and IQ. It sadly gets muddied by various political ministrations. But it seems like a genuine effect that should be studied more. If we truly want equality of opportunity, we must understand what is causing certain races to be on the left side of the normal distribution. Is it nutrition? Social status? Lack of parenting? A combination of these?

Bostrom's only crime there was hoping for an honest, curious, and intellectual discussion.

[sandspar]

The truth is that intelligence is largely genetic. Nobody knows how to handle the society-wide and global-wide implications of that.

[cauch]

But these honest conversations are occurring.

For example, scientists have honestly looked up the "biology" or "DNA" hypothesis. But this hypothesis is not very strong:

- why a "color-of-the-skin" would be linked to IQ when a "color-of-the-eye" would not?

(and also: why some people are so interested in IQ and color-of-the-skin but are not interested as soon as the genetic factor is something less "visible to the eye"?)

- how could there be IQ disparity based on skin color when the human DNA is so strongly mixed that between two white men and one black man, one of the white can easily be genetically closer to the black than the other white? There is no "DNA of Black Men" group: the DNA of black men is as diverse as the one of the white men and mixes totally with the one of the white men.

- why black men placed on different social situations are scored so differently on IQ when they have very similar DNA (same family or even twins separated at birth)

- why white men placed on different social situations are scored so differently on IQ? If you use white men as a way to predict IQ based on sociological factors, you get a formula that also predict black IQ, so science would say that color-of-the-skin is not the relevant factor here.

There are works about IQ and skin colors for ages now, and the discourse seems to always go backwards with people saying "sure, but let's forget that we know it does not make more sense and try again". This is those people who stop the honest, curious and intellectual discussion.

And I'm pretty sure the first reaction to this would be "it's all lies", because instead of an honest, curious and intellectual discussion, a lot of people who want to have this discussion are in fact more interested of pushing for one particular answer. For different reasons, but I think one of these reasons is the same as why the EA movement was popular despite being so flawed: those people want to think of themselves as very deep and very smart, they want to see "counter intuitive and repugnant" things and stroke their ego by explaining how smart they are for not finding it counter intuitive or repugnant. The problem is that they sometimes just take things that are counter intuitive and incorrect, and they force them into "look at me, I'm smart, it's counter intuitive and yet I dare to consider it".

It's basically what the Bostrom says: he says himself that he is attracted by the idea black people have lower IQ because it is the rebel thing to do. But being the rebel thing to do does not mean that it is scientifically correct or scientifically smart (it can sometimes be, and sometimes not be, you have the same odds throwing a coin). Saying "women are biologically less apt to choose their leaders and therefore it makes sense they don't have the right to vote" or "the position of stars in the sky is affecting our lives based on in which months people were born" are both as "counter intuitive" and "repugnant" as the Black IQ discussion.

Also, it's a bit strange, because in the case of the Black IQ question, the hypothesis of "I see black men failing more often, so I guess they are not as smart", is not counter intuitive at all. It is people who have considered this hypothesis and realised it's simplistic and the truth is more complicated who went further than the basic intuition.

[arduanika]

The philosopher David Thorstad keeps a blog with critiques of EA and related ideas. His writing strikes me as fairly patient and in good faith. (Or at least, it's more measured than some of my own comments on this thread!)

He wrote this good dissection of the Bostrom email controversy, and why the apology doesn't cut it:

https://ineffectivealtruismblog.com/2023/01/12/off-series-th...

That said -- it did happen way back in the 90's. There has to be a place for forgiveness, even for imperfect people offering imperfect apologies. My sense is that there's plenty of other things to criticize that are more recent and more central to this general school of thought.

[throw7]

I suppose we could also say IQ highly correlates with social ineptitude. Who could've known people wouldn't like you if you made repugnant statements... surely not 'smart' people!

[robocat]

> IQ highly correlates with social ineptitude

Does it?

Being socially ept requires high intelligence. However people that deeply apply their brains to social situations are often unrecognised as being bright in wider society. Although they may well be highly rewarded. And I suspect the very skilled often hide their skill because it's a hidden weapon in political or business negotiations. It is really hard to see applied IQ and you need to be very trusted for someone to explain their thinking: plus you need to be EQ smart to spot others that are EQ smart (and the +ve side of Dunning-Kruger causes problems too).

I think you are alluding to the stereotype of social ineptitude of geeks or academics. Personally I have found that focusing your IQ too tightly into one narrow discipline is not that smart. Really smart geeks seem to also be highly socially capable: IQ is general intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know left school at 15: you won't have highly academic discussions with them because it usually doesn't interest them but their raw IQ shows up in a bunch of other unobvious ways.

Disclaimer: I'm a geeky slow learner - a redundant disclaimer given I'm making comments on HN.

Edit: given we are on HN, here's a good example of Paul Graham deeply recognising someone as smart and socially epter than himself: https://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html

[daveguy]

Bostrom's original statement was not remotely accurate or mild. The statement, "Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true." -- is a classic example of racism. It is racist to the core. Not only that, Bostrom knew at the time racism like that would make things more difficult for him and he was correct. Sometimes cancel culture is deserved. At least he eventually apologized for it.

[myko]

I don't think this helps his case, but I do appreciate seeing the email in question

[helboi4]

Every time race comes up on HackerNews i am shocked at how horrifyingly racist (some) users of this site are. Not only did a user somehow think that this context would exonerate this very racist man, both you and I are getting immediately downvoted for disagreeing. There was a post last week or so that was so full of racist comments it just got taken down. I wonder what on earth brings together HackerNews and racism like this.

[MisterBastahrd]

It isn't a smear. His qualifying remarks indicate that he's either too stupid, arrogant, or bigoted to understand or care how context works, and thus has no business running a hot dog stand, much less an institute. Even disregarding that, publicly revealing his thoughts and framing them in such a fashion shows he has no common sense.

[beezlebroxxxxxx]

An academic would need to be incredibly stupid to think that that's a good thing to say in writing or out loud. The idea that you can "just" say these things is almost entirely the purview of people who coincidentally just so happen to not say or refer to all of the contextual and explicative ideas around them, making pointing to IQ without them essentially meaningless at best and racist at worst.

It's also not really "accurate or mild", as Bostrom himself stated in his apology for the email that:

> I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago. It does not accurately represent my views, then or now. The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time, within 24 hours; and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.

[satvikpendem]

How is this "both accurate and mild?" If anything, it makes Bostrom seem even more racist, harkening back to the 20th century notion of scientific racism, which, regardless of whether you put a pseudoscientific spin on it, is still racism.

[chkaloon]

Bryan Caplan should take a clue from his bit of introspection.

[woopsn]

What Bostrom said is that he completely repudiates these remarks and that they were disgusting. Leave it at that.

[helboi4]

Thats.... still racist? Why does he think black people have a lower IQ? Nigerian immigrants to the US are some of the most successful immigrants. Like... black people just do not have lower IQs and to say so is considered very dangerous rhetoric for a reason. The reason we even have pervasive belief that black people are stupider is because it was convenient rhetoric for the colonial powers pillaging Africa and treating black people as subhuman cattle. It's not a claim based on fact, nor is it a benign thing to say.

...IQ tests are also wildly flawed measures of intelligence anyway, but let's not even get into that.

[frozenseven]

>Why does he think black people have a lower IQ?

Because of every study that's ever been done on this topic? Pointing this out isn't racist.

>Nigerian immigrants to the US are some of the most successful immigrants.

Typically those immigrants come from among the smartest few %.

[shafyy]

Sorry, but how does this make it better? If something, it makes it worse. And you describing his statement as "accurate and mild" is also not great.