[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.

[Syzygies]

Your comment lead the poker player in me to watch a few videos of Bostrom speaking, such as his TED talk. He has clearly worked hard to become conversant in these ideas, but I don't detect any original provocative thought.

[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

[IncreasePosts]

He said "I think it is laudable if you accustom people to the offensiveness of the truth, but be prepared that you may suffer some personal damage".

Doesn't sound like someone doing introspection, it sounds more like he is lamenting that the world isn't as "logical" as he is.

[robertlagrant]

Well, not logical. Truthful. "How much of communication is impaired by filtering through various politeness laws and offences?" Is how I read it.

[ceuk]

> Doesn't sound like someone doing introspection, it sounds more like he is lamenting that the world isn't as "logical" as he is.

There's an autistic elephant in the room. "Why are people so irrational" could be one of the slogans if there was a high functioning autistic persons society

[s1artibartfast]

Sure, I don't think anyone was claiming infallibility.

I think it is easy however to romanticize these such errors made in the pursuit of truth.

It can be like the pointing out the fallibility of Galileo Galilei in thinking he wouldn't be held to the inquisition, and made to recant his evidence of heliocentrism.

[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.

[IncreasePosts]

14 year old edgelords on tumblr are peak sapience by that standard.

[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.

[IncreasePosts]

I assume by "draw a picture in crayon", you mean provide a very simple explanation. You seem to be confusing the fact that children generally draw simple things, and also draw with crayons commonly. But there is nothing about crayons intrinsically that means a crayon drawings must be simple.

[sokoloff]

Having drawn with crayons, pencils, and pens, I think there is an intrinsic property about crayon drawings that does severely limit their maximum complexity/detail.

[autoexec]

you might be surprised http://www.everythingis-art.com/2012/07/recommended-artist-d...

[davidivadavid]

If he has to draw a picture in crayon, maybe he must think a little harder with that big head of his about how to say it properly in the first place so it doesn't require a second explanation?

In this case, it's really hard to understand why someone not completely idiotic when it comes to communication would have used the phrase "I like that sentence" after saying "Blacks are more stupid than whites."

[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

[golergka]

Depends on how you define racism: is it a descriptive (this is a fact about the world that I consider to be true: this group is smart, that group is not) or perceptive (this is what I want to see in the world: this group should be given privileges, that group should not) view? In the email, his own statement is the former, and his assumed definition of racism clearly only relates to the latter.

[sandspar]

He said that black people have lower IQ, which is true. You are the one who translated that to "black people are inferior". You are the one who is equating intelligence with superiority. You are projecting this belief onto him. Reasonable people can simultaneously believe two truths: "black people have lower IQ" and "black people are not inferior".

[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?

[exo-pla-net]

gwern! FWIW, I read what you have to say in the same, careful way that I read Bostrom. You're a treasure.

[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.

[skissane]

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

To try to steel-man the argument: there is no reason to think, at a long-term global level, there would be any correlation between genes for any particular physical appearance traits and genes for intelligence

However, at the level of a specific nation, during a specific period in its history: that nation may be composed of a small number of major descent groups. It is plausible that group A may have higher frequency of "high IQ genes" than group B, and groups A and B may also differ in their frequency of physical appearance traits genes. And, some of those physical traits may have a marked difference in distribution between A and B, and others a less marked difference. So, in that limited context, a positive correlation between heritable IQ and some-but-not-other physical appearance traits might emerge; however, as we broaden the context, both spatially and temporally, we'd expect that correlation to weaken and then dissipate.

Note I only said "It is plausible that", I'm not saying this is actually true in any particular case. I'm just saying that even if your conclusion is correct, this line of argument you are using to make it is somewhat of a straw-man.

> 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"?

Because "race/ethnicity" (descent group) and "color-of-the-skin" are not the same thing. Two people from distant parts of the world can have a similar shade of skin but have much more remote shared ancestry. A person will often be genetically much closer to a person from the same country with a markedly different skin shade than they are to someone with a similar skin shade on the other side of the globe. In certain spatiotemporally limited contexts (some countries during some periods of their history), color-of-skin can be a somewhat of a proxy for descent group, to the point that one becomes a metonym for the other, in broader contexts that breaks down.

Also, the claim that descent groups have different distributions of high intelligence genes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skin colour. For example, it is sometimes claimed (I make no comment on whether it is true) that Askhenazi Jews in Central/Eastern Europe had higher IQ genes than their non-Jewish neighbours did: there was no significant difference in skin colour between the two groups.

[cauch]

> However, at the level of a specific nation, during a specific period in its history: that nation may be composed of a small number of major descent groups. ... and groups A and B may also differ in their frequency of physical appearance traits genes.

That's exactly my argument. Isn't it funny that people interested in the Black IQ question just consider that the only physical appearance worth studying is the color of the skin? Cluster of people with specific genes are super common. It is why your "get my ancestor from my DNA" test is able to tell you that you are X% spanish and Y% danish. But strangely, these people are wondering if a huge group of "black skin" mixing over a full continent and a huge group of "white skin" mixing over a full continent, somehow, is the only main pertinent cluster to separate IQ.

> Because "race/ethnicity" (descent group) and "color-of-the-skin" are not the same thing.

Isn't that exactly my point?

> In certain spatiotemporally limited contexts (some countries during some periods of their history), color-of-skin can be a somewhat of a proxy for descent group, to the point that one becomes a metonym for the other, in broader contexts that breaks down.

My point is that the people interested in the Black IQ question consider that color-of-skin is the best proxy, to the point that they don't even consider that there should be other proxy.

If indeed they were just "asking a scientific question", why are they always asking "what about the skin-color-cluster" and never asking "what about the hair-color-cluster"?

In reality, the reason is simpler: color-of-skin is a clear and popular ingroup / outgroup separator. Some people see black skin people, and they say "they are not like us", and it is a catalyser for the idea that color-of-skin is a good proxy: they like to think that they are different from them, especially if this difference rationalizes their opinions of them or justifies some of their biased conclusions (such as ultimate attribution error between ingroup and outgroup).

> Also, the claim that descent groups have different distributions of high intelligence genes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skin colour ... Askhenazi Jews ...

That is correct. If the Black IQ question would had only one half of the arguments given in the case of the Akhenazi IQ question, I would give then the benefit of the doubt. I give the benefit of the doubt for the Ashkhenazi IQ question because there are way better arguments: a mechanism that explains why this group is a cluster, parallel factors such as specific genetic diseases, a non naive clustering such as "they look different, so their genes are different", a non naive clustering such as "let's put population thousands of kilometers apart in the same cluster, but suddenly draw the line even for neighboring population", ...

It still smells pretty fishy: why focusing on intelligence and not plenty of other stuffs? And "intelligence" is not even a "core component", it's an emergent property made of hundreds of characteristic: being able to do geometry and being able to do logic is as different as being able to digest milk and being able to run fast. Each of the component have their own advantages and disadvantages in plenty of very specific situations, it is just unrealistic that all the components have been favorised in one cluster and all have been disfavorised in another cluster. Even basic questions are just impossible to answer: is doing something that returns a benefice in the short-term smarter than doing something that returns a bigger benefice in the long-term (surely, whatever your answer is, you can change the factor between the two returns to find a situation where you don't agree with your answer anymore). So, I would give credit to a study that say "this cluster has better capacity for X", with X pretty limited, not obviously hierarchical and not so simplistic as a term like "intelligent".

But again, strangely, people interested in the Black IQ question are not really interested in the Askhenazi IQ question, and they scream at the "cancel of the science" when people consider rightly the Black IQ question to be pseudoscience, but don't care about how the Askhenazi IQ question is treated (unless they can instrumentalise it for their own purpose).

[skissane]

> Isn't it funny that people interested in the Black IQ question just consider that the only physical appearance worth studying is the color of the skin?

"Black" isn't a proper descent group, it is a term applied to everyone from American Descendants of Slavery to Indigenous Australians to Melanesians to umpteen different distantly related groups in Africa (a continent with massive internal genetic diversity). There is no meaningful question to ask about "Black IQ"

> In reality, the reason is simpler: color-of-skin is a clear and popular ingroup / outgroup separator. Some people see black skin people, and they say "they are not like us", and it is a catalyser for the idea that color-of-skin is a good proxy: they like to think that they are different from them, especially if this difference rationalizes their opinions of them or justifies some of their biased conclusions (such as ultimate attribution error between ingroup and outgroup).

Is that actually what happened though? Imagine a parallel universe which is uncannily like this one, except for the fact that Europeans and Africans happened to have largely similar skin colours (it doesn't matter whether we suppose they be equally dark or equally pale or equally blue-green). Would that have resulted in European-Americans treating African-American descendants of slaves equally? Or would they have still been oppressed about as much, and if some other physically visible marker could have been found to distinguish them, discrimination would have been based on that instead?

> But again, strangely, people interested in the Black IQ question are not really interested in the Askhenazi IQ question

I think human genetic diversity and the heritability of intelligence is an interesting topic–albeit one about which our knowledge is (at least at present) greatly outweighed by our ignorance. But my impression is a lot of people want to approach that topic primarily through the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country: a lens which adds more heat than light, and as someone who has lived their whole life on the other side of the planet, looks like just excessively focusing on just one question and ignoring a hundred others like it

[cauch]

> There is no meaningful question to ask about "Black IQ"

Yep, exactly my point.

> Is that actually what happened though?

I'm not saying that you can only consider a group as a outgroup if they have different skin color. What I'm saying is that foreigners (whatever skin color they have) are considered as a outgroup, and then, people associate easy characteristics of these outgroup as "being foreigner". This is for example why black-skin people who live in white-skin-dominated countries for generations are still strongly associated as being "foreigner" even if they are less foreigner than the white-skin person who was born 500 kilometers away and grew up in a totally different culture.

And this is why people are so interested in Black IQ, not because they are interested in science, but because they are interested in easy ways to confirm or rationalize their prejudice on people they associate with their outgroup.

> I think human genetic diversity and the heritability of intelligence is an interesting topic

It is. But it is very very strange that people who, according to them, are just "interested in the subject" are focalising in the most useless and stupid approach of it. I cannot find the quote, I think it was from Gould, saying that genetic of intelligence is an interesting topic but people who are approaching it with this particular aspect are not contributing anything to science.

> But my impression is a lot of people want to approach that topic primarily through the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country

Yes, I agree with that: what you call "the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country" is what I call "confirming or rationalizing their prejudice on people they associate with their outgroup".

[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.

[itronitron]

Some words of wisdom passed on to me from a very knowledgeable person who was in turn given this knowledge when starting their career.

"This organization (group of people) represents a random sample of the population. Traits that occur within individuals in the population will therefore occur within some individuals in this organization (group of people.)"

[zo1]

You know, topics like this are not always black and white. There is a full-range, nuance and discussion.

I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways.

Me, I think the refusal by some to admit (or accept) that the full-context post adds to the discussion and to instead double-down and cry more racism is definitely not constructive.

I'm honestly getting tired of these "race card" low-blows and one-sided thinking shutting down conversation.

[daveguy]

> I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways.

It's odd to me that calling racism racism when a parent called it not racism is either non-contributing or inflamatory. Seems to me it is warranted.

[exo-pla-net]

An assertion without rationale is noise or worse.

"That's racist; cancel them!" falls in the latter category. It's the mindless baying of the rabble. You don't engage with the rabble, as there's no fixing stupid. You just hope they shut up, so that you and the other adults can think, and you hope that the rabble burns down someone else's house.

Analogously, there's not much to be gained from engaging with someone shouting "Allahu Akbar; death to infidels!" That's drone purview.

I hope that helps.

[anigbrowl]

An assertion without rationale is noise or worse.

This could equally be applied to statements like 'blacks are more stupid than whites'. Rather than anyone calling for Bostrom to be cancelled, most of the people posting here just wonder how a clever and academically successful person like Bostrom could have been oblivious to the factual and historical problems of such a broad generalization. One could equally wonder why he picked a racial trope as his controversial example, as opposed to challenging the conventional wisdom on nuclear weapons, or economics, or the superiority of rugby to association football, or the correct pronunciation of 'gif'.

[cauch]

But the author himself says that his sentence is repugnant.

Are you saying that the author has no rational to say that?

It really looks like nowadays we cannot say "that looks racist" without being accused of being the big satan that want to cancel everyone. If this kind of "ad-hominem" is not itself not without any rational and not noisy and inflammatory, I don't know what is.

You can, if you want, defend that according to you this statement was fine and not racist. But you don't do just that, you also say that people who don't agree with you merit to be down-voted and that the forum would be better if their voice was not even there. Difficult to not see there exactly a justification of a "cancelation" of an opinion you just don't like.

[daveguy]

Your conflation of responding "yes it is," when someone claims something is not racist when it clearly is with "that's racist, cancel them!" seems disingenuous. As disingenuous as conflating it to "Allahu Akbar; death to infidels". Correctly identifying a statement as racist when someone else said it wasn't is about as polar opposite as you can get to "death to infidels!" Do you see them as equivalent?

[helboi4]

Yeah bro I never said anyone should be cancelled. I have a problem with people calling the statement "Blacks are stupider than whites" "accurate".

[helboi4]

I'm not sure what you think about my comments is flame bait. I'm having a discussion about whether or not these comments are racist, since someone brought them up.

This is not pulling out the "race card". I made absolutely no "low-blows". Stating that calling black people lower IQ than whites is very much racist is not an unreasonable thing to say. I have no problem with anyone bringing up context. I just think implying that anything about the statement is "accurate" is racist. I'm not sure what is so contraversial about stating that saying white people are inherently smarter than other races is a white supremacist talking point.

And its not just me, anyone saying absolutely anything in support of the idea that what this guy said was bad is being downvoted. No matter how restrained their comment.

I would also much rather people replied to me rather than just downvote. That would be a discussion.

[empath-nirvana]

It's because the people who run the site tolerate it and ban/warn people for making comments like yours.

[baobabKoodaa]

Give me one single example of a ban like that

[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 %.

[neffy]

It of course depends on how you cut and slice it, and also on the categorisation of black - but we are talking about approximately 2-3 billion people there if we include India, Indonesia, Africa and the rest of the world.

Can you point to a study that has comprehensively assessed that total population? Or just a few studies by Americans, who make their own racial biases, which from a cynical perspective can be boiled down to rampant and cruel exploitation over several centuries, abundantly clear in the articles concerned?

Immigrants across the world tend to be a slightly self selecting class of folks - why would black immigrants be any different on that front?

[airgapstopgap]

Can you point to anyone other than yourself who calls Indonesians black? Because I think otherwise it's not worthwhile discussing categorization and measurement in good faith with you.

[frozenseven]

South Asians are a wholly different and distinct group. Most Indonesians are South-East Asian, except for Chinese migrants and those living on the island of New Guinea. Africa is a continent, not a race.

What you're saying is all over the place. And I'm not here to discuss politics.

[selimthegrim]

South Asians in the UK in the 80s and 90s were classed as black, n____, etc.

[helboi4]

Yup, I"m British and can confirm this was the case and it makes just as much sense as any other categorisation of black. Its almost as if race is a made up social construct. Even within Africa there are many different ethnicities, many of which are not very represented amongst African Americans, which is probably what the majority of people here see as black. That's just a subset of West Africans who are pretty mixed at this point.

[BlueTemplar]

This whole discussion is pointless - categorizing people by skin colour is ridiculous for almost all purposes, and also, considering history, racist.

Also, didn't "black" and "n-word" switch meanings as slur/non-slur less than a century ago (and might switch them again in less than a century) ?

[frozenseven]

>categorizing people by skin colour is ridiculous for almost all purposes

Sure. But race is most often about genetic (or ethno-linguistic) heritage, not skin color. A person from Japan might have the same skin color as someone from Greece.

[goatlover]

Sub-saharan Africans have greater genetic diversity than other continental populations. Race is just not an accurate categorization.

[helboi4]

Yup. Thanks for talking sense. There are tons of ethnicities in Africa. Which one exactly is the genetically stupid one?

[malfist]

Are you trying to say that people didn't know the n word was offensive in....1996?

[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.