Ironically this is literally what the black metal band Taake did after they did a neonazi and were banned from Germany.
> CW neonazi shit: from wikipedia, their non-apology after hopping on stage with a swastika on his chest in germany: >!Taake is not a political Nazi band [...] everyone should know by now that our whole concept is built upon provocation and anything evil [...] we truly apologize to all of our collaborators who might get problems because of the Essen swastika scandal (except for the untermensch owner of that club; you can go suck a Muslim!)!<
It was 1995. Email was certainly used, but didn’t yet have widespread adoption outside the academic community. The idea of free personal email not tied to your internet provider was not really available. Yahoo didn’t start offering email to consumers until 1997.
I'm not sure how surprised I'd even be today to see a professor (particularly an older one) using their academic email as a personal email. Certainly the things he's saying on that email are nuts, and it would probably be better opsec to say them on something that's not connected to his job, but if he's dumb enough to believe them I doubt he's thinking that hard about opsec.
What are my actual views? […I think] that unequal access to
education, nutrients, and basic healthcare leads to inequality in social
outcomes, including sometimes disparities in skills and cognitive
capacity
What kind of apology is this? As far as I can tell, he supports the
original “blacks are more stupid than whites” formulation in accordance
with his original explanation of what that meant. This is the sort of
person I expect to drop a hard R once he gets excited.
Let's give that the most generous take: EAs have historically been **against** institutional change. Which is what you need to implement that stuff. There is a whole essay that argues institutional change isn't effective.
Well it doesn’t seem to be given over 6 decades of systemic change, an overhaul of our legal system and how we can associate, and literally zero (0) change in cognitive inequality. But I guess it has to be the CIA secretly installing Fascists everywhere in our government or something. XD
Sorry, this archive is not loading. Is this the Dickens/Flynn paper?
Edit: careful arguing with me here, could easily get you banned, jsyk. You can always PM me instead if you’re interesting in further discussion, too.
It's the 2017 THN ["response to criticisms"](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics) in Vox. Nisbett's section - "Has the black-white gap in test scores narrowed in the past 25 years?" Yes, it references Dickens/Flynn.
Translation: “I apologize for someone having found something
embarrassing about me. I’ll give some token progressive views but I’m
actually an eugenicist and I’m also sympathetic to people who focus on
alleged genetic intelligence differences between races.”
Interesting that he pivots to discussing his views on eugenics when,
as far as I can tell, the post he is apologizing for doesn’t have
anything to do with eugenics. Gotta wonder if he is trying to bury
something worse.
Also, the N word in that original post is not the offensive part and
that he thinks it is the most specific thing to immediately apologize
for is telling. That he essentially doubles down on the idea that blacks
are intellectually inferior to whites in the apology itself is also
telling. Rather than offering a personal view that they are not, he
defers to the “I’m not an expert” excuse after having giving a laundry
list of ways in which he think black intellectual inferiority comes
about.
Fuck man, at least learn how to write an apology and stop protecting
your ego. That’s literally the least thing he could do.
Agreeing / adding.
That he even mentions genetic causes implies so much about him. Like, the safe move would be to frame his comments as being about environmental factors.
The infuriating move would be to cite and (pretend to) read works by black people -- assuming his racism doesn't prevent that -- discussing Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome or about higher lead rates in urban areas.
Any decent person would know he was lying, but I don't think the excerpted email directly contradicts that interpretation. Classic rationalist dissimulation.
But he can't do it; he has to talk about genetics. Which suggests to me that:
1. He believes in a genetic explanation strongly. Saying he's undecided is his attempt at lying. Or
2. He knows that he's made statements in support of a genetic explanation for racial differences in IQ in the past and wants to get ahead of them.
(List is non-exhaustive and non-exclusive.)
Basically, lol guess I'm updating more towards everyone tangentially associated with the cult is a racist. I'm sure Bostrom would have a good explanation for why my learning process is so slow lol.
lol the amount of caveats in that thread. Don’t judge people in the
past for the mores of today! (I see this a lot (also happens a lot with
neonazi shit used in metal, a lot of racist metalheads oddly don’t seem
to know about the swastika incident from Siouxsie and the Banshees which
predates the existence of the whole black metal genre)). This whole
thing would have been a better apology if he didn’t join the ‘we want to
do eugenics, but light eugenics’ people afterwards (And if his apologies
didn’t seem to be more concerned about the damage his remarks did to his
cause vs the shit he actually said).
E: ow god the actual pdf
What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is
commonly understood
The best part is that at no time was it chill for a white dude to drop the hard R in a fucking post in 1995. It just went unseen because he was a relative nobody.
> at no time was it chill for a white dude to drop the hard R in a fucking post in 1995
Maybe if legit quoting something, like a passage by Mark Twain.
not in America, but honestly in the UK or Europe I can see it being not a big deal - heck they make monkey noises at every other fucking European league soccer game in recent years
>What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood
why because it's commonly understood to be bad despite the prefix clearly stating otherwise
On the EA forum way too many people are treating this as a
sincere and heartfelt apology. Unfortunately for Bostrom, prominent EA
orgs have some staff members who aren’t white, and they see
right through his bullshit: one,
two
Someone's reply to the second one: "Moreover, accusing Bostrom of racism in this manner could legitimately be viewed as borderline slanderous. The accusation of racism can destroy a persons career, career-prospects, and reputation. In effect it can be a social death sentence."
Good lord these people. And what of the effects of believing and arguing that Black people are less intelligent? I thought these geniuses were all about coolly weighing relative impacts of different actions and priorities? (sarcasm)
Sounds like they are transhumanists - nowadays a faction within longtermism and rationalism. Pretty sure Yudkowsky was part of this list or a similar one, when he opened the Sentience Institute (later MIRI) in order to *build an AGI to fight dangerous nanobots*.
yes - SL4 is the old VHS tapes before LessWrong, and the Extropians is the super-8 movies before that
it's all the same bunch of racist brain boys and always was
I’ll go on and record and say that I never liked this creep. First of
all, he’s Swedish. And second of all, Elon probably watched a Youtube
video of him or heard him talking about the simulation argument and it
became mainstream and I had to spend hours telling my family/friends
that “No, this is not how science works”.
Here, for those like me who hate twitter >
https://nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf
And IDC, this is good:
Are there any genetic contributors to differences between groups in
cognitive abilities? It is not my area of expertise, and I don’t have
any particular interest in the question. I would leave to others, who
have more relevant knowledge, to debate whether or not in addition to
environmental factors, epigenetic or genetic factors play any role.
Which institution would ever publish it? Which scholars would suicide
their careers for the right answers? If Bostrom himself is chickening
out..
someone found the original “apology” he made at the time: https://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.96/0484.html
Notably lacking: the whole “apology” part. He does say he’s NOT racist though, so I guess that counts.
Lol.
What kind of apology is this? As far as I can tell, he supports the original “blacks are more stupid than whites” formulation in accordance with his original explanation of what that meant. This is the sort of person I expect to drop a hard R once he gets excited.
Translation: “I apologize for someone having found something embarrassing about me. I’ll give some token progressive views but I’m actually an eugenicist and I’m also sympathetic to people who focus on alleged genetic intelligence differences between races.”
Interesting that he pivots to discussing his views on eugenics when, as far as I can tell, the post he is apologizing for doesn’t have anything to do with eugenics. Gotta wonder if he is trying to bury something worse.
Also, the N word in that original post is not the offensive part and that he thinks it is the most specific thing to immediately apologize for is telling. That he essentially doubles down on the idea that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites in the apology itself is also telling. Rather than offering a personal view that they are not, he defers to the “I’m not an expert” excuse after having giving a laundry list of ways in which he think black intellectual inferiority comes about.
Fuck man, at least learn how to write an apology and stop protecting your ego. That’s literally the least thing he could do.
lol the amount of caveats in that thread. Don’t judge people in the past for the mores of today! (I see this a lot (also happens a lot with neonazi shit used in metal, a lot of racist metalheads oddly don’t seem to know about the swastika incident from Siouxsie and the Banshees which predates the existence of the whole black metal genre)). This whole thing would have been a better apology if he didn’t join the ‘we want to do eugenics, but light eugenics’ people afterwards (And if his apologies didn’t seem to be more concerned about the damage his remarks did to his cause vs the shit he actually said).
E: ow god the actual pdf
oh no
Why can’t people write proper apologies?
From the reaction tweets:
Indeed. (The tweet brings up more important points re why this apology is worse)
On the EA forum way too many people are treating this as a sincere and heartfelt apology. Unfortunately for Bostrom, prominent EA orgs have some staff members who aren’t white, and they see right through his bullshit: one, two
I am shocked—shocked!—to learn the eugenics dude would be racist. Who could’ve seen this coming?
I love the pre-emptive victimism: “somebody might find this and use it to smear me” gimme a break
These Extropians seem like an interesting precursor to modern rational/EA movement, never heard of them before.
But yeah, that apology is simultaneously direct in what he’s apologizing for and completely missing what most people find offensive.
Absolutely loving it. The sealions are in full swing but it seems nobody is buying it.
IMO what a difference with 2 years ago and we can thank NFTs and Elon Musk for that.
I’ll go on and record and say that I never liked this creep. First of all, he’s Swedish. And second of all, Elon probably watched a Youtube video of him or heard him talking about the simulation argument and it became mainstream and I had to spend hours telling my family/friends that “No, this is not how science works”.
They are all like this.
Here, for those like me who hate twitter > https://nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf
And IDC, this is good:
Which institution would ever publish it? Which scholars would suicide their careers for the right answers? If Bostrom himself is chickening out..
Omg this planet is infested with cowards.
I’m out the loop, can someone link to an explanation of this whole thing?