[k_brother]

Could you provide citations for those posts? This is the first I have heard of either Curtis or Moldbug, and I'm having trouble seeing the connection you're drawing. However, it seems to be the consensus. [edit: I see that there are secondary sources — but I'm curious about a primary source. Shouldn't that be the most important?]

[lukev]

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl...

Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel:

  In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship parameters emerging whether the relationship of domination originates as a hereditary obligation, or as a voluntary obligation, or in a state outside law such as the state of the newly captured prisoner (the traditional origin of slave status in most eras). This is a pretty good clue that this structure is one to which humans are biologically adapted.

  Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences.

[urbit]

"He has literally written that several of his co-speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master."

Certainly a powerful use of the word literally.

Frankly, I'm actually considering recanting. Who wouldn't rather be Galileo than Giordano Bruno? But recanting is a serious matter - it's the sort of thing you need to get right the first time.

To appear at future conferences without my fellow speakers worrying that I'll enslave them or kick off Holocaust 2.0, it'd be ideal if someone can tell me what I have to believe. I'm guessing it's either:

(a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations.

(b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations.

Let's face it, Strange Loop is an awesome conference - there's a reason I applied. And I think Alex's decision is totally understandable for practical reasons, as someone downthread explains. If there's a chance of being invited back next year, I could totally go for (b). But if it has to be (a), I might still be all "e pur si muove" and stuff.

[colinhb]

> I'm guessing it's either:

> (a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations.

> (b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations.

Or: (c) The inter-group variation in the talents and inclinations of human beings is completely dominated by the intra-group variation.

In other words, "living populations" (= ethnic groups) don't matter. You'll have (e.g.) smart and dumb people in every group, and everything else is noise.

I'm not sure how a reasonable person could choose hypothesis (b) over (c), given the long history of hypothesis (b) proponents trying (and failing) to make the math work out for them.

[yarvin9]

I think if you read (b) again, you'll see that it's exactly the same hypothesis as your (c).

[smitherfield]

As a disinterested (in both senses of the word) outside observer, I'd point out that while his (c) is pretty much the same as (b), sans the editorializing it's in no way incompatible with any of the previously mentioned Yarvin/Moldbug quotes.

Take, for example, the statement "America is richer than Mexico." By which is meant, "on average, Americans are richer than Mexicans." Someone else could say: "But there are plenty of homeless people in America, and Carlos Slim is the richest man in the world! There are vastly greater internal differences in wealth within America and Mexico than the difference between the two countries' averages."

Perfectly true. But, it doesn't then logically follow that America and Mexico must not differ in terms of average wealth, or that the difference in average wealth between the two countries is irrelevant or less relevant than their internal inequality.

[lexcorvus]

This is exactly right. Unfortunately, the fallacy—often called Lewontin's Fallacy [1], after the Harvard biologist who most famously committed it—seems nigh ineradicable. Perhaps there should be some sort of Godwin's Law for it: "As an online discussion of human biological differences grows longer, the probability of someone committing Lewontin's Fallacy approaches 1."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewon...

[danso]

I don't have anything to add to this thread except to say that this is a gracious response and thank you for chiming in even while being at the center of controversy.

[chubot]

I don't normally get involved in these types of discussions on the Internet, but I met you when you presented Urbit in SF a couple years ago, and thought your work was very interesting.

Have you heard of "Yali's question"? [1] This is the framing of Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel. I believe this is a question that you think people are dodging, perhaps with politically correct wish-wash.

Apparently you think the answer is that some races are genetically superior to others. Jared Diamond of course has a different answer than you.

I tend to believe Diamond, as he lived among various tribes of New Guinea, studied them professionally, and wrote multiple well considered books about the topic. He also speaks simply and plainly, whereas you have a penchant for sophisticated arguments, whether they are true or not.

Let me also say that this type of thinking isn't exactly unique to whites. In my family are various Chinese academics (professors, Ph.D.'s, etc.) In this company, it's not unusual to hear an assertion that the Chinese are genetically superior to other races.

I think you should recant, but only if you have arrived at the conclusion honestly. I think you should also consider the possibility that some past emotional experience is driving all these rationalizations.

[1] http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/gungermsteel.html

[lexcorvus]

Here's the crux of the problem: Jared Diamond's answer to Yali's question is not mutually exclusive with the converse of (b). In other words, Guns, Germs, and Steel argues persuasively that environmental factors played a major role in observed group outcomes, but it does not argue persuasively (or at all) that those environmental factors left no imprint on the genomes of the groups in question.

To put it in concrete terms: Do you believe that, say, Scandinavians and Australian Aborigines have—on average or at the extremes—identical talents and inclinations for playing chess? If so, what is your basis for this belief?

[chubot]

This is the kind of discussion that doesn't end anywhere productive, but I don't have any reason to believe that those two groups have substantively different inclinations for playing chess. As others have said, the individual variations drown out the group differences.

Look at how superior Americans are to Europeans economically. Americans invented the iPhone, Google, and could best all of Europe combined in a military battle. Does that mean that Americans are genetically superior to Europeans? No, it's that they had access to more resources on a bare continent, which led to a positive feedback loop of wealth and creation.

You can perhaps make fuzzy statements about averages or extremes, but what matters is how you act on those beliefs. Are black people better at basketball than whites or Asians? Hard to say on average, but maybe at the extremes? Does that say anything about which races should play in the NBA? No. It's not like Larry Bird or Jeremy Lin don't exist. There might be some differences there, but they're not substantive.

The minute you start using this to justify slavery, that's when it becomes racism. If you are white, would you accept an Asian person's claim to enslave you based on the fact that their IQs are higher on average?

Even if you accept that intelligence implies a right to rule, there are plenty of dumb Asians that don't deserve to rule over a smart white person, and likewise for whites and blacks. This is a simple consequence of the fact that individual variation is greater than group variation.

[lexcorvus]

I appreciate your thoughtful comments. Inspired by these discussions, I believe I've sharpened my understanding of this subject considerably. When it comes to accounting for observed differences between different groups, the following statements are the only two possible explanations:

(a) Genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes

(b) Non-genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes

Note that the two are not mutually exclusive. For example, when you write

Does that mean that Americans are genetically superior to Europeans? No, it's that they had access to more resources on a bare continent, which led to a positive feedback loop of wealth and creation.

you are arguing for (b). But because (a) and (b) are not mutually exclusive, this is not a valid argument against (a). Indeed, virtually the entire mainstream discussion around group differences consists of increasingly strong statements in favor (b), without ever addressing (a) directly.

This isn't to say (a) is always true, just that you need direct evidence to dismiss it. For example, given the observation that any human being with the ability to learn a language can learn any language, (a) appears to be false with respect to acquiring specific natural language (as opposed to language acquisition generally, which of course is genetically based).

So, why is it that so many otherwise clear thinkers fail to see that arguments for (b) aren't arguments against (a)? My guess is that most people who believe in (b) and only (b) implicitly apply the following reasoning:

The non-genetic factors in group differences are so numerous, egregious, and well-documented that they plausibly account for all known differences in outcomes between people of different ancestry. Therefore, genetic factors are probably irrelevant or negligible.

Unfortunately, this reasoning is faulty. For example, there is no a priori way to know how big an effect discrimination will have, and hence no way to rule out (a) without direct evidence.

As to your other points, I agree completely that we should treat people on an individual basis, without discriminating on the basis of ancestry, gender, etc. Furthermore, I believe in finding and cultivating talent anywhere it exists, regardless of background. I hope you agree.

[vanderleun]

"I think you should recant, but only if you have arrived at the conclusion honestly"

Were you home sick the day high school discussed the word "sardonic?"

[qualifiedbreak]

Don't fret it. Most of what you wrote as MM may be described as "what we were all thinking already, but lacked the time to express at length."

As for the "literally" bit, I suspect you experience resignation that few actually read what you've written as MM and instead rely upon executive summaries otherwise known as gossip and propaganda. As a guy whose real name sometimes appears in print, I wouldn't fret it.

For whatever it's worth, I'm on record proposing that urbit may be your most notable legacy, so keep working.

[bk81]

Galileo? How dare you compare the SJWs to the inquisition?

A confession detailing how you put ground glass into the (minority and female) workers' meatloaf, along with a list of your co-conspirators MIGHT be a start.

[cactusface]

Barring peculiar talents such as resembling the POTUS, you should go for (b) and get yourself re-invited to this year's conference.

[sudioStudio64]

If you have time, and I completely understand if you don't, could you elaborate on the authoritarianism thing?

Why on earth would that turn out to be a good thing this time?

[vanderleun]

Naw, Alex is a deep and abiding chunk of urineyellow crap.

[vezzy-fnord]

So, from that quote, he seems to be:

a) Describing a master-slave structure with the implication that it is a biologically programmed one.

b) That some are born for more dominant roles, some for more submissive ones, and then others who are in between or neither.

c) That the aforementioned characteristics are genetic.

Not particularly savory, but also a pretty standard evopsych position. In fact, I'd say that the only truly controversial part is the argument that these structures are innate and predetermined. That such master-slave structures permeate society is readily observable.

[tptacek]

That's one way to read it, I guess. The more straightforward way to read it would be to just use the normal accepted meanings of words, under which the quote straightforwardly argues that Africans are genetically adapted for slavery, and that arguments to the contrary constitute "political correctness".

I feel like the only "reaching" I had to do to take that meaning from the quote was c/p'ing it out of my browser window to correct for the weird spacing HN put on it.

[vezzy-fnord]

No, that's oversimplified, I find. The quote implies that the colonizers found Africans to be more suited to fulfilling slave roles, and that the master-slave cycle formulated earlier is a genetic one. It doesn't make a direct judgment whether the colonizers were correct. The jab at political correctness doesn't seem to be an absolute refutation of opposing arguments, so much as an outlining of the historian's fallacy of trying to apply contemporary moral value judgments to past circumstances. FWIW, there was "political correctness" (sidestepping taboos) in those days, but the taboos were wildly different.

[tptacek]

The term "politically correct" comes directly from the quote, as does African genetic predisposition for slavery.

It's also not an isolated, out-of-context quote. For instance, it's easy to find Moldbug holding forth about the evils of South African apartheid abolition.

[yarvin9]

It's easy to find South Africans "holding forth" etc. For example: [0].

"The number of black people who believe life was better under South Africa's apartheid regime is growing, according to a survey published yesterday... In a rebuke to the African National Congress government, more than 60 per cent of all South Africans polled said the country was better run during white minority rule."

Yes, that's from 2002. Everyone who thinks the ANC has improved since 2002, please raise your hand.

While I didn't click on this thread to banter about details, details like this matter in a way - because South Africa is a real country and not a story or a song. In the real country, pressure from nice white people who live in America helped replace one one-party government, the Nationalists, with another, the ANC.

If the ANC governs South African blacks better than the Nats, the nice white people did a good thing for South African blacks; otherwise, they did a mean thing. Surely this is true whatever the names of the parties, the skin colors of the government bureaucrats, etc, etc, etc.

The possibility that, while listening to "Biko," singing "Free Nelson Mandela," and generally having a grand old time, our nice white people actually damaged the lives of actual real people (eg, there are 500,000 rapes a year in ANC-governed South Africa) does not seem to occur to our collective progressive consciousness. It seems much easier to express "guilt" about our 17th-century ancestors than to consider the possibility that we, ourselves, actually caused real harm.

[0] http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/12/1039656168811.h... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_South_Africa

[oldmanjay]

After reading the specific example given, I do have to qualify that as an out of context quote. The surrounding paragraphs make it clear he isn't targeting any one race in particular with the genetics business, just that the master-slave relationship occurs frequently enough and in enough forms that it seems to be fundamental to our nature as a people. I have a hard time finding that objectionable.

You're heavily implying that one can find writing wherein Curtis explains that black South Africans need white rule, but all the writings I can find "easily" (via google) are about how the current government fails to be at least as good as the apartheid-era government, which is an unpalatable truth but hardly racist. Do you have some specific examples? I'm not finding it as easy to come up with damning examples as you indicated.

I will admit I've found quite a lot that can be easily twisted if you're being uncharitable but I'm assuming you're better than that.

Overall, I'm getting the feeling that Mr. Yarvin is a victim of the modern moral panic led by "right-thinking" folks, and as seems to happen far to frequently, the panic seems to be precipitated by strange misinterpretations instead of what was actually said.

Sure, he advocates for forms of government few people want. I'm not too onboard with that meaning he needs his technical work suppressed.

[convexfunction]

This is not a "standard evopsych position". Evolutionary psychology seems to get conflated with a lot of unsavory bullshit just because the latter uses appeals to the former. Most people I know who do evolutionary psychology are extremely careful to point out all the ways they differ from (usually) sexists because they're so damn tired of people conflating one with the other.

[emjr]

"Natives did not make good slaves, and so Africans were imported." That alone is so innocuous as to appear in elementary school textbooks. Is this really what the whole row is about?

[cactusface]

No, it's because he said it was due to genetic differences between population groups. This makes him a "true" racist in that he believe there are different races, or sub-species, of homo sapiens (sapiens). There is a scientific consensus that this is not the case, because races only exist if population groups are completely isolated, which humans never have been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

[tjradcliffe]

Except that no one in ordinary discourse uses "race" in the way you are, which means "species" (the whole not-interbreeding thing is often taken as definitive of "species".)

"Race" as it is commonly used means "variety" or "breed", and the claim that there are observable and significant statistical differences between human populations in geographic regions is, one hopes, uncontroversial. Those differences come from different genes, and since we all know that a trivial edit to a single gene can result in a massive change in function, it is reasonable to ask about a wide range of characteristics that have some genetic influence.

To claim that "races" in this sense "do not exist" is to come across as incoherent and pedantic at the same time.

Whenever anyone has looked at any characteristic that is really significant in society and how it differs across "races" so defined, they have found that the differences are trivial at best, non-existent at worst. This is "controversial" because a bunch of idiots want to project their prejudices onto genes.

"Intelligence" is by far the most debatable target for this kind of nonsense because a) it is controversial as to whether or not anything like "g" is an objectively real feature of human beings; b) it is extremely controversial how heritable it is; and c) even if it is real and heritable, our ability to measure it is so poor that it is very difficult to make any claims about population statistics.

See... you can actually refute racist nonsense while at the same time acknowledging what everyone knows: varieties of humans exist, and redefining the word "race" so it does not apply to those varieties of humans does not make the fact that varieties of humans exist go away.

[cactusface]

Different races cannot interbreed, but only because they are geographically isolated.

Different species cannot interbreed (generally speaking), even if they are not geographically isolated.

Humans are not geographically isolated. Geographical barriers have contributed to the creation of population groups, but these are distinct from races in that there is a mechanism for DNA to move between them (somebody takes a trip and makes a baby).

Anyway, Wikipedia says in the lead sentence of that article I linked to that simply classifying people into discrete races is scientific racism.

"Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority, or alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."

[theorique]

"Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority, or alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."

The first three actions refer to value judgments ("better" / "worse" - compared to what? for what purpose?). Most people would agree that science should steer away from such judgments.

On the other hand, "classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races" seems distinctly unproblematic. There are different clusters of genetic types that arose due to relative geographic isolation, and gave rise to various differences and adaptions. Obvious examples of these include skin color, hair color and texture, average height and build, and so forth. I did not realize that making this observation, in the absence of value judgments, was now interpreted as "scientific racism".

[devalier]

Science is not a democracy, and consensus means little when the peer review and tenure review process is designed to reward conformity rather than truth.

Use your own brain. Denying the existence of races is completely absurd. See for instance:

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for... and https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i...

And lots more reading here: https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#race

[cactusface]

There's a scientific meaning behind the word race - geographically isolated population groups, or more precisely groups that do not interbreed. Humans don't have those, and never have had those. I never said we were homogenous, any nitwit can see that most people in Asia have black hair, and there's no reason to think that only superficial physical characteristics sort geographically. Just that, there aren't distinct races. You know, a middle ground, as proposed by the guy who wrote that first article you linked to, at the end.

[andrewchambers]

I find asserting superiority of one race over another hard to justify, but is it crazy to think there are differences?

Dogs are the same species, but people do assign traits like aggression/playfulness to different breeds.

[cactusface]

There aren't "races" in the sense of Darwin's finches because there is interbreeding between population groups, that's all.

[tjradcliffe]

Redefining the word "race" so it does not apply to the human varieties does not make the fact of human varieties go away, and so fails to make a counter-argument against racists. "Racism" exists, and saying "race doesn't exist" doesn't change that. All it does is mean that to be consistent you'll have to call it "variety-ism", which is awkward and irrelevant.

[politicalhn4tw]

School textbooks also often make the case that Native Americans didn't make good slaves because they were native to the area and just walking away and vanishing was relatively easy for them. That's very different from asserting genetic racial differences were the factor at work.

[tptacek]

I do not accept the premise of this argument, unless we're talking about textbooks from the 1910s.

[emjr]

It was stated as fact as late as the early 90's in my own textbooks, and I attended a private school in the NY metro area.

[k_brother]

Right, I think I saw this one pulled elsewhere. It's still not clear to me that the author holds that view, or that he's just putting forth a weak analysis. Considering the response, I thought there would be something explicitly aggressive.

[hibikir]

It's pretty difficult. Racism, like other ideas that at some point were not considered unacceptable in public, is nowadays covered in what we could call Hermetic writing: In other words, instead of saying what they really want to say, a racist says things that imply they are OK with racism.

A way that you can find all over his writings is talk about how people and businesses should be free to refuse dealing with people for any reason whatsoever. It's not quite saying 'I do not like brown people', but instead 'In my ideal society, we are free to discriminate against brown people, or people that don't share my religion'. It's the same kind of rhetoric you'll find in traditional racist groups. That's enough for many people to call that rhetoric racist, but I see how you might not agree.

What I find most amusing is that in that libertarian utopia where people can discriminate at will, you can discriminate people because of their political views, or because you think it'd make some people feel less welcome, and that's exactly what happened here. Having people that defend the right to discriminate at will complain due to discrimination is interesting to say the least.

Either way, I don't think this is an economic decision though. Last year, StrangeLoop ran out of tickets in a few hours. This year, I know they had more companies wanting to sponsor the conference at than they had slots! So Alex could have reacted either way to this controversy, and he'd have done fine economically. This just seems like very predictable behavior given their pro-diversity direction, taken after a few years ago, they had so few women that they had turned all the female restrooms in the opera house into male restrooms, leaving just a single 'family room' in the entire venue for women.

If anything surprises me, is that they didn't vet their speakers before accepting submissions. Rejecting conference talks because of who the person is happens all the time. What turned this into a contraversy is that they rescinded the invitation after making the list public. I would be surprised if, for next year, they don't add an extra step to their process, to try to catch something like this in advance.

[tptacek]

Edit: It seems to me like Yarvin is pretty overt about the racial stuff. His isn't a Rand Paul-ian "we don't need the Civil Rights Act, let the market take care of it" posture, but rather one that leans heavily on the just-world hypothesis to draw conclusions about the inferiority of Africans.

[ElComradio]

"What I find most amusing is that in that libertarian utopia where people can discriminate at will, you can discriminate people because of their political views"

This is also a dominant feature of progressive utopias. :)

[obstinate]

Google is helpful here. There are plenty of articles that have been written about him (speaking as someone else who hadn't heard of him until today). This is the one I'm reading right now: http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/

[13thLetter]

Why read an article _about_ him, as opposed to reading what he actually said? Are you concerned about contracting wrongthink?

[gwern]

Probably because his blog posts are like millions of words of meandering stream of thought and links to public domain books and you would have to spend the next few months of your free time to read most of his posts? Occasionally funny and insightful, but concise and well-written they are not, burying the real content under mountains of fluff.

[dropit_sphere]

You're gwern, so if you said you'd read enough to say you understand his writing, I'd believe you.

But someone reading the Baffler article will not have the same understanding you do---and worse, they'll think they do.

[obstinate]

I do not know the man's writings. There are many links on that page to things he wrote. So this is the most informative link I am likely to be able to provide.

As for why not read his writings: why not read the writing of the timecube guy, or those of reactionary christian authors? Because I try not to waste my time on idiotic polemic.

[tjradcliffe]

If you keep firmly in mind that he's a complete crank, his iconoclasm can be quite entertaining in short intervals (maybe one article a year.)

[leereeves]

I'd never heard of him either. Now we have.

If the goal of banning him from the conference was to suppress his ideas, his opponents remind me of George Bush standing beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

[tptacek]

The goal of banning him is probably not to "suppress his ideas". I'd imagine the goal is something more like "not allowing the experience of conference attendees to be made a little less pleasant in the service of what is a quirky and maybe interesting but probably pretty marginal technical talk".

[anon_adderlan]

Um, as far as I understand, he wasn't banned from attending StrangeLoop, just that he had his talk pulled.

Given that, could we please either clarify this with Alex, or stop claiming this as it just further distorts the truth and politically weaponizes this situation even further?

[leereeves]

Allowing some to have a more pleasant experience by excluding others...

Once upon a time, liberals argued against that.

[tptacek]

I don't think you really believe, were the shoe on the other foot and you were the one organizing Strange Loop, that there's nobody you'd consider excluding.

[leereeves]

I've never refused to work with anyone because of their political beliefs.