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Can Sneerers help give me a clearer understanding of Stuart Ritchie? (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/y25xzo/can_sneerers_help_give_me_a_clearer_understanding/)
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Definitely a borderline non-appropriate post for the sub, but since mods allowed this one discussing Kathryn Paige Harden - and I’m just really curious about finding an answer here and don’t subscibe to any other subs I can think of with users with relevant, knowledgeable backgrounds - I’m hoping it’ll barely fit or the mods will find the topic interesting enough to arbitrarily allow it. Even if it’s to tell me that I’m off-base here.

Obvious he’s a real scientist and science communicator, but he also seems present enough in the “There’s a left-wing war on reason and free inquiry, and this includes IQ heritability”-sphere (albeit in a calm, non-confrontational and even charming style) that I’m getting bad vibes.

Initially I considered him maybe akin to David Reich, another legitimate researcher who nevertheless is naive in a frustratingly blinkered way about the political ramifications of his public remarks, but he’s also appeared on enough shows with the likes of Pinker, and culture-war content-creators, and written articles for UnHerd, that I see him as more actively engaged with caliper-types than Reich, even if he’s still fairly tangential to the worst of them.

Am example of what I’m thinking of is his appearance on this podcast/YouTube channel (suggested to me just this morning, I assume because I lift weights, and the host seems like he’s in the “physical fitness + Western chauvinism with a veneer of intellectual curiousity” genre), where Ritchie gives a brief and uncharitable explanation of why Behavioral Genetics would attract critics: which is that the field makes politically-correct folks anxious, and they let their biases, and misconceptions about what links between behavioral traits and genetics mean, govern their responses to data.

Maybe I’m misapplying American science history to a specifically British context here, and Behavioral Genetics in the UK sprung forth fully-formed, pristine and politically-neutral, but ignoring that the field in its inception at least in North America included devout racists, and not taking a brief moment to explain why current research represents a different paradigm, to me is a specific choice that implicitly casts critics as hysterical rather than having grounded concerns, even if he disagrees with them. I dunno.

I used to know a guy who went to school with him who said he was alright.

I think he’s just a defensive genuine liberal-minded centrist who really has a hard-on for data and not a massive capacity for self-awareness, who in that mould particularly seems to feel that attacks on people in his general area (even bad people!) are implicitly attacks on him, and isn’t enormously skilled at separating that out

I don’t think he’ll ever go full nazi but I also don’t carry any particular water for the guy

He reacts badly to fame though, and it will/has got the better of him (I don’t mean that in a kind way)

This seems to track with what I was seeing. He's popped up on a few popular science podcasts I listen to, and he's a talented communicator as far as being listenable and engaging, so I've read more (articles, none of his books so far), and that's where I found him hanging out with some actual goons. I also never got the impression he himself is in danger of fully falling for far-right politics; he's more like an Anne Applebaum (to use someone from the History field, where I consume more actual academic literature) who is also more or less incapable of self-awareness, and would never accept that Liberal thought itself can oscillate between freedom and compulsion, and can lend itself towards bigoted politics, without needing a vague, Authoritarian Left and/or Right-wing boogeyman to be corrupting it.
For what it’s worth any (recent) dodgy history with behavioural genetics in the UK is more about class than race, in that every few years there’s a new wave of nature/nurture pieces in the press off the back of somebody’s book purporting to explain away education performance across class and gender using the latest link between [nebulous psychological metric that stands in for “good character”] and somebody’s genes
I see him as a (right now) less malevolent Steven Pinker
So Pinker from 1994?
I was kind of taking the piss, I actually liked Ritchie in the past much more than I do now and more than I can say I ever liked Pinker, and that change is down to the stuff highlighted in this post about hanging out with just plain arseholes
Sure. I liked Pinker a lot the first time I read him, though. It’s kinda like Chomsky: if you read his linguistics before his politics he makes sense in both contexts, but if you read stuff on the universal grammar expecting it to show you the way to Manufacturing Consent you’ll have a very different experience.
Too many people told me to read Steven Pinker for me to enjoy anything by Steven Pinker; I instinctively found Chomsky’s universal grammar implausible in my late teens and earliest twenties but now I’m just unimpressed by the payoff (edit: I am not a linguist, these are an idle idiots opinions); I do think there’s something more than surface level to the link between the universality of universal grammar and his views on politics and political discourse these days
> He reacts badly to fame though, and it will/has got the better of him (I don’t mean that in a kind way) so one month to full chud, or three? i mean, i just flat out don't believe that good British totally not scientific racism is somehow nicer than the US version
Oh it’s nicer. Assuming you believe an Oxbridge RP racist is less racist than an American.
funnily enough,
I’m going back to thinking of the amount of time I’ve known of him, which is going on about 6 years, without having seen him go full mental jacket

Stuart Ritchie is good stuff. I’ve read both his books and his substack or newsletter is mostly focused on digging into the messy data on interesting topics where strong or credulous opinions are often held.

His recent post on growth mindset is a great example of science writing for a popular audience and addresses a very trendy idea uncritically adopted by many in education and business. I’d recommended it.

You might not like his behavioural genetics stuff, but side eyeing good writers like Ritchie because you don’t agree with him on that contentious topic looks a lot like looking for an excuse to call him ignorant or lacking in self-awareness because you don’t like that he writes openly about where he sees the evidence leaning.

I wish this sub was a bit less dogmatic in who it despises. Jordan Peterson, yes please, that dingbat writing about AGI risk, give me more, but Ritchie isn’t your guy and he’s not an easy target because he doesn’t say stupid things.

I don't take issue with his overall output, like I said, I know he's an actual, professional scientist. If I hone in on his Behavioral Genetics stuff, and focus on that for criticism, it's because of his own decisions to react to critique of the field by associating with its bad actors and non-credible non-scientists like Khan. I'm not saying throw the guy in the Nazi pile, I'm trying to gauge where he fits as someone who might launder more extreme figures in the scene out of his own defensiveness towards what he sees as unfair criticism *in this area*.
you mean, he'll be nice until he gets the slightest pushback on the worst ideas, at which point he goes cancel culture? you raised a stupendous array of scarlet bunting in your post, of the sort to indicate he's got a direction and will be heading downhill toward it
Yeah I can't tell. My impression as just some fucking guy is that he has more emotional resiliency and maturity than most public woke-panic hystericals, and I don't think that's a small thing when it comes to which people make that shit their brand, but kicking it with the skull-measurers is weird, for sure. I guess my personal stance as someone far further to the left than him is that one can remain a solid, "polite," liberal and still promote some pretty ugly ideas; you don't need to flip into a right-wing grievance warrior for that.
oh yeah, the early stages of terfposting for example
You can call me out for the self-awareness comment to me personally, my comment is right there and you read it, and it has nothing to do with whether or not I like his behavioural genetics stuff
lol ok, [gender critical](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/x55am5/episode_54_interview_with_helen_lewis_on_culture/in3tldi/)
oh. Well it’s not like gender subject to selection pressure. Wait, let me try again…
Do you understand the point I was drawing attention to? It was undermining the claims that gender critical people make.
Sis you’re in the wrong subreddit. This is not a place of healthy, happy people offering good faith criticism, it’s a place for broken losers to … sneer.
you have read both of his books and think he doesn't say stupid things? his pop-science book about IQ has several lines that could only be read as parody. Like, I remember rolling my eyes while reading that book more than a couple of times. It seemed like a parody of how snob statisticians think of psychologists as statistically illiterate.
Stuart Ritchie is a psychologist
it shows
Are there any pop sci books on IQ you would recommend?
nope

[removed]

That’s literally just not true of intelligence research

Genetic engineering is a great idea. It’s such a great idea that its what feeds the planets humans and has bred its livestock: selective breeding of plants and animals.

Give a retard a calculator…

Instead of using genetic engineering to modify human genes for longevity, disease resistance, and overall better life outcomes these idiots singlemindedly focus on dumb shit like skin color and other irrelevant features.