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MSU Vice President of research & innovation Steve Hsu has been forced to resign

148 points by ggreer 6y ago

stallmanite 6y ago
I’ve got a CS degree from MSU and haven’t heard anything about this at all. Anyone have more background information?
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  Decent starting point: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de...
  - altcognito 6y ago
    > One of the video clips is taken from an interview I did with YouTuber Stefan Molyneux in 2017. Molyneux was not a controversial figure in 2017, although he has since become one. I’m going with he is in way over his head, and didn’t know who this guy was who interviewed him, or is lying. 10 minutes of research in 2017 easily would have shown this.
    - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
      He wasn't nearly as controversial as today. Your standard for controversial and Steve's are different.
skellera 6y ago
Anyone looking for context. https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de... Does anyone have more information for the opposing side? Seems pretty terrible that people can take things you said over the years out of context and destroy your reputation.
- exolymph 6y ago
  There are some links to the attacks here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/
  - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
    Alexander is probably next up for cancellation. The scuttlebutt is that [the empty shell of] the NY Times has a hit piece on him in the works.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      I recall when LessWrong and Yudkowsky was covered by NYT. They came off as looking like a bunch of hyper-rationalist kooks, a bit New Age and cult-like even, but otherwise harmless. The same will likely happen to Alexander. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-code.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-co...
      - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
        For his sake, I hope you're right. But there have been one or two notable personnel changes at the NYT since that piece on the rationalists, and we're in the midst of a moral panic / cancellation frenzy.
        Apocryphon 6y ago
        I mean, the NYT tackled the tradcath subculture recently and it was sympathetic, even laudatory. [0] I think the NYT treats these subcultures as more curios than targets for cancellation. Not to mention, post-2016 election, they’ve even caught flack for being too sympathetic towards reactionary individuals or groups, even those who are outright hateful. [1] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-christians.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-chri... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/opinion/nazi-sympathizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/opinion/nazi-sympathizer....
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
I predict that what will happen as a result of this type of activity is: At some point an organised advanced threat, or a disorganised mob, will attempt to take down a truly bad individual or group, who will retaliate in a truly disastrous way. Of course, this is inevitable given enough time. My concern now is that we are on a collision course with history, we can see that, and we appear to have no idea how to course-correct.
maximilianroos 6y ago
Relevant post by Scott Alexander earlier this week is support of Steve Hsu: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/
- justinpombrio 6y ago
  And Scott Aaronson: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4859 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4859
  - ylem 6y ago
    He raises a good point that appearing on a podcast is a red herring. Suppose he actually just discussed say physics on the podcast? It would be more a question of what he said. Or, if he just said, "whoops, I had no idea who this guy was". Who he chooses to host on his own podcast is a different story.
anchpop 6y ago
I'm currently a student of Michigan State. While I don't like Dr. Hsu very much (and I see more merit to the criticisms of him than I suspect many here) I see this as grievous damage to my university. This will be proof that researchers should be scared what they say will incite a twitter mob against them and get them fired. Instead, they should be insulated from public backlash and not be afraid to say what they believe no matter how controversial. Lacking that, the entire purpose of research universities (and with it our ability to speak of a consensus among experts) is corrupted.
- WesternStar 6y ago
  I suppose it is fair to say speech of those in leadership positions with executive power is chilled by this. I think that's how its supposed to be though. Part of being in leadership is managing relationships with stakeholders. Part of it is being beyond reproach. Undisclosed conflicts of interest on published papers is not a small thing for an Executive at a university. Being responsible in an academic honesty sense is important in that position I think.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    > Part of it is being beyond reproach The problem is that he was largely removed for refusing to lie about the state of the science. But the state of the science is not politically acceptable.
    - ylem 6y ago
      He seems out of step with scientific consensus--but he wasn't removed as faculty, but rather from an admin position.
      - DuskStar 6y ago
        Scientific consensus is pretty heavily on the side of "50+% of within-group variation in intelligence is genetic, the remainder is non-shared environment" (in the US, barring known negative confounders such as fetal alcohol syndrome), and as far as I know the science on between-group variation is still very much undecided, but genetic components are as far from ruled out as you can get. But that debate won't be settled until you can 1) find the environmental differences that lead to IQ differences between groups, including (IIRC) in adopted children, 2) show that IQ tests only correlate with g within ethnic groups, but not across them, or 3) decode the genetic basis of IQ and show how differing frequencies explain group differences. Which is going to take a number more years, no matter which it ends up being.
unwoundmouse 6y ago
Sometimes, when a cancer gets bad enough, all you can do is enjoy the time you have left
epistasis 6y ago
I'm surprised how one sided the conversation is here. This isn't "mob rule," this is the reasoned opinions of skilled scientists saying that Hsu's political opinions are 1) not backed by the science, and 2) establish strong ground to believe that he will not use his position of power fairly. People have a right to be judged fairly in their careers, and those in leadership positions should not be unfairly prejudiced by bad beliefs. It might be fine for a tenured physics professor, but it's not OK for somebody making hiring and promotion decisions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- natalyarostova 6y ago
  1. The idea that someone’s political views are not backed by science is a pretty bold claim. Who decides what political views are acceptably scientific? 2. Strong grounds? Is it possible to quickly present strong grounds in a twitter thread? Up until today he has done well in his job, and no one seemed to have a problem with him for 8 years. His boss or colleagues. Now, suddenly, we have deep concerns about how he hires people... why exactly? Because his political views aren’t scientific? This is tribal mob rule under the guise of a sophisticated intellectual rationalization.
  - skosuri 6y ago
    Up until today? You have no idea what you are talking about. I have colleagues at the university that have been trying to have him removed for years; several have left in part because of him.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      Can you elaborate on the details that your colleagues conveyed to you?
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      That doesn’t mean much, other than they are probably part of the problem mob.
troughway 6y ago
Exact same playbook used to try to discredit Jordan Peterson, except he told them to shove it and fought back against the mob in public space with a megaphone, while the crowd was hurling insults and jeering at him. I know HN has a bit of an issue with JBP, but look at the this here yet again and think for yourselves.
- ylem 6y ago
  Who?
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
We're likely to see a certain reorientation of academia. The old business model was inherently unsustainable and even if it looks like it's under assault by the culture war it's probably a more systemic issue. The Visigoths didn't bring down Rome. By the time they were on the scene Rome was a house of cards.
jtchang 6y ago
One of the tweets: > Hsu’s beliefs in innate biological differences between human populations, especially regarding intelligence --an unscientific position which makes him unsuited to direct a research institution’s funding or its graduate studies I can see why this belief is controversial and in an ideal world I wish everyone was born exactly the same. However I don't think applying strong scientific research and methods to try and answer this hypothesis is necessarily wrong. Unless it has already been proven otherwise in which case I am unaware of the research.
- natalyarostova 6y ago
  You can’t do scientific research on that! It’s unscientific!
- 542458 6y ago
  It has been studied pretty extensively. For example, see this survey https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-30052-009 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-30052-009 In pretty much every study within group differences are far and away more massive that between group differences. Unlike other things like height, eye colour, or facial hair growth, intelligence is highly variable even between identical twins. The genetic link seems weak at best. It’s also more or less impossible to study with great accuracy - you’re trying to study how race affects intelligence, but how do you correct for non-biological factors? Race is deeply intertwined with economics, education, nutrition, healthcare, and every other aspect of society and culture. Any study you do, regardless of results, will have a mountain or potentially over corrected or under corrected factors. Finally, what are we even studying? Defining intelligence is a nightmare, and a quick glance at history shows how the definition of intelligence has changed over time and between cultures. Trying to look at how race’s biological factors affect intelligence irrespective of sociological factors is in many ways a fool’s errand - the very definition of intelligence is wrapped right up in those sociological factors!
  - centimeter 6y ago
    > In pretty much every study within group differences are far and away more massive that between group differences. You are perpetuating what’s known as Lewontin’s fallacy. This claim is extremely narrowly true: clustering on a 1-dimensional fixation index is insufficient to reliably mechanically classify race. If you don’t know what that means, stop trying to use this claim in your arguments. Here’s what it doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean that there aren’t significant population-level phenotypic differences between ethnic groups. These differences can include intelligence (and 30 years of twin studies suggests they probably do).
xiaolingxiao 6y ago
For those who are unaware or operate under certain assumptions of how Universities work, they tend to be highly politically charged places, and the value of "the brand" is more important than any individual. Regardless of what you think of Steve Hsu's statement ( measured vs tone-deaf, informed vs ignorant/racist), the mistake he made was taking a position to begin with. I was a the University where Trump went to undergrad when he was running for election, Not a single faculty/staff made comment about it because there was a directive from top down to say nothing. This is just how it is.
- rlanday 6y ago
  To jog your memory, this is a university most famous for employing Larry Nassar, who molested hundreds of girls and young woman, and also his boss, William Strampel (former dean of the osteopathic medical school) who was soliciting nude photos from students he was in a position of authority over. MSU’s image as an institute full of perverts and pedophiles was further cemented when the local news ran a story about an employee who was having sex with a basset hound. So, MSU’s not really an institution that will have any sort of moral high ground for the foreseeable future. They had a very talented VP of research who they’ve now fired, and will now have to put out a job posting for “VP of research at university famous for employing Larry Nassar” (I suppose they could promote from within but Steve Hsu was hired from outside).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
skosuri 6y ago
I am very glad this happened and this decision was very supported by the faculty of MSU. He is still a full professor at MSU making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He’s just no longer in charge of the research agenda. His own research on quantitative genetics is terrible and widely ridiculed. It’s great that he’s tenured and is allowed to have his poor scholarship justify his racist and sexist conclusions; but it doesn’t mean he gets to automatically lead a research agenda for a whole university.
tuna-piano 6y ago
Relevant quote from him: "I've always said that I'm agnostic on whether... so there are observed test score differences between groups, I think that's clear, you can't deny that. The causality of that, whether it's partially due to genetics, I've always been agnostic on. Not because I think it's impossible, but because it's such a charged thing we should really make sure the science is solid before we speculate. We shouldn't randomly speculate on something that sensitive. But even just not being willing to categorically rule out that God could have created us with average group differences has gotten me into trouble. And I think that's just absurd. So for someone to attack me for saying 'We don't know the answer to this question, let's do the science first and then talk about it.' Even that position is actually not tenable in the current social justice warrior political climate." https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=XHUSl9FLAmE&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=XHUSl9FLAmE... https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de...
- tuna-piano 6y ago
  Another quote from him: "My personal opinion about it is: A) I hope it's not true. I would much rather live in a world where there are not big group differences. Number 2) I understand why it's a sensitive issue. Because it was used in a way to oppress people for a long time. So I'm not blind to that. Number 3) I am a scientist. So when I say something like 'The results of the studies do not allow us to come to a high confidence conclusion about it.' That's what I'm going to say. So I've been attacked because I haven't been willing to categorically rule something out, which I think is absurd..." "The scores are, as you say, you do the tests, you find differences. However there are differences in average environment that these people experience. So the really difficult statistical question is, is it the difference in average environment these people experience, or is it genes. And it's a very difficult question..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGQdq8mOEd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGQdq8mOEd8 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
andrewem 6y ago
Moderators: Can we please have a different link which attempts to provide more context? Maybe a news article like https://www.wilx.com/content/news/MSU-Vice-President-of-research-and-innovation-Stephen-Hsu-resigns-571381341.html https://www.wilx.com/content/news/MSU-Vice-President-of-rese... or https://statenews.com/article/2020/06/asmsu-advocates-call-to-remove-stephen-hsu-as-vp-of-research https://statenews.com/article/2020/06/asmsu-advocates-call-t... or https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/michigan-state-msu-stephen-hsu-research-removal-petition-graduate-employees-union/5345120002/ https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/mi...
- holler 6y ago
  care to tl;dr?
  - ciarannolan 6y ago
    This is a very quick summary of the opinion he was fired for: https://youtu.be/XHUSl9FLAmE https://youtu.be/XHUSl9FLAmE His firing was called for here: https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829003130261504 https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829003130261504
    - hsuthrownaway 6y ago
      It sounds like he technically resigned. I'm not sure if I read that as MSU President Samuel Stanley giving Hsu an opportunity to save face, or Stanley being a coward.
- lsb 6y ago
  > Hsu sparked outrage again when he cited a 2019 study in a blog post concluding, "there is no widespread racial bias in police shootings." (from link 1)
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    "no racial bias in police shootings" is something I've seen from a few studies. It all depends on how you define "racial bias", of course. (In other words, in a given situation police shootings seem to be even across races - but those situations are less common for non-hispanic whites and far less common for asians than for african americans)
jtdev 6y ago
The Larry Nassar case exposed major cultural issues within the MSU administration. Is this treatment of Steve Hsu the pendulum swinging in the extreme opposite direction, or out of control woke-ism?
- milesdyson_phd 6y ago
  I think ultimately a university cares about its image more than anything. Nuking a tenured professor from a VP position is small potatoes for better optics (no matter the merit of allegations). I think the allegations do have merit at least for someone in an administrative position, not a purely academic one.
- 737maxtw 6y ago
  Trust me, it's just another smokescreen for all the problems they still have.
ciarannolan 6y ago
From the campus group calling for his firing [1]: >However, these categories overlap & are all rooted in Hsu’s beliefs in innate biological differences between human populations, especially regarding intelligence --an unscientific position which makes him unsuited to direct a research institution’s funding or its graduate studies Humans are, biologically, extremely diverse. Visible attributes, disease risk, geometry of the physical body, etc. Some groups are more prone to certain genetic disease risk factors, for example. Doesn't it follow that the brains of different groups of humans might group into certain traits, including intelligence? I'm asking in all sincerity. I'd love to hear if there's some evidence that my thinking is wrong. [1] https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829006439485441 https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829006439485441
- Tarq0n 6y ago
  It's complicated. One thing we do know is that the variance in intelligence is larger than any group differences. People therefore often assume that anyone that insists on emphasizing the average difference is using it as a dog-whistle for some kind of bias. Whether the principle of charity should be applied or not is up to you.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- staplers 6y ago
  There is no singular "intelligence" and measuring it is certainly not linear. Splitting hairs between a population of people (specifically blacks) who only 200 years ago were killed for being able to read certainly doesn't make for a compelling or worthy investment in research.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    > There is no singular "intelligence" and measuring it is certainly not linear. Wanna bet? I think most intelligence researchers would disagree with you, and IQ is predictive of life outcomes. There are areas where you can find fault with Hsu's work, but I don't think "IQ approximates g, and g is real" is one of them. For that matter... If a population was killed according to a trait, wouldn't that make it more likely for there to be genetic causes of group differences in that trait?
jtdev 6y ago
So if you believe something to be a fact and supported by scientific research, and that fact is offensive to someone or a group if people, then you can be “cancelled”? American academia is in trouble.
- skosuri 6y ago
  He’s still a fully tenured professor at MSU; free to research whatever he wants.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    So it’s okay that a Twitter mob had him removed from his previous more senior position?
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      Anyone in such a senior position either understands this is just part of the deal going in+, or is demonstrating their unfitness to be in such a position by failing to understand something like that. + That you are now more visible and you don't have the luxury of anonymity any more, and that this is just an inherent part of the bargain in taking on more responsibility, that now every little thing you say will be held against you by someone somewhere, and that now that you are part of the public face of your larger organization, it may at any time decide your affect on it's image is more important than any other thing about you. It's not that you can't still hold positions, it's just that you can't still hold them for free.
    - skosuri 6y ago
      Do you mean the hundreds of faculty at his university and the grad student union that called for his resignation from a position of power over them? Yeah, I think it’s reasonable. He’s still payed quite well and welcome to his crappy research ideas.
      - lostmsu 6y ago
        Did all group participants support this action?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
A couple of clarifications, from the links: 1. He wasn't forced to resign. He was requested to resign by the president of MSU. 2. He's still a tenured professor, and he will be returning to that role. 3. The group trying to oust him is the GEU (Graduate Employees Union, affiliated with the AFL-CIO), which represents 1200 graduate assistants at the University. Apparently Dr. Hsu has made some controversial statements about genetics. The GEU's accusations appear to be about perceived racism. One of Dr. Hsu's sins was appearing on a program with Stephane Molyneux, a conservative commentator whom they call "a white supremacist". I've watched several of Molyneux's programs and he is hardly a racist. Conservative and white, yes. I guess that's bad enough these days.
- markdown 6y ago
  > I've watched several of Molyneux's programs and he is hardly a racist. Conservative and white, yes. From his Wikipedia page: Stefan Basil Molyneux (/stəˈfæn ˈmɒlɪnjuː/; born September 24, 1966) is a Canadian far-right, white nationalist[2] podcaster and YouTuber who is known for his promotion of scientific racism and white supremacist views. Molyneux is described as a leading figure of the alt-right movement by Politico and The Washington Post, and as a far-right activist.[8][9][10][11] Tom Clements in The Independent described Molyneux as having "a perverse fixation on race and IQ".[12] The Freedomain internet community which Molyneux leads has been described as a cult, and Molyneux has been described as a cult leader, using cult indoctrination techniques on his followers. Molyneux is a proponent of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theo...
  - mistermann 6y ago
    Be careful to distinguish between rhetoric, opinions, and facts.
    - markdown 6y ago
      How about from the horse's mouth: https://i.redd.it/cc8wtw97vo931.jpg https://i.redd.it/cc8wtw97vo931.jpg
hsuthrownaway 6y ago
Throwaway because with headlines like this, you can't be too careful. It's getting scary seeing people keeping quiet in predominantly progressive sectors like media, academia, and tech, out of fear that what they say today will get them fired tomorrow, fear that something they say will draw attention to something from five years ago, or that something they say today will cost them in five years. There's a class of under-researched things that we know too little about, but for political reasons, no one can research. Anything around genetic traits of races, differences between men and women, research around causes of LGBT orientations and identities that could lead to preventing people from being LGBT. These aren't even the ethically hard ones like genetic modifications in humans. These are just political suicide.
vonsydov 6y ago
What if the causality is primarily the individual or societal belief that someone is some way primarily due to their skin color ? The couldn't come up with this theory could he ?
tuna-piano 6y ago
We all look at history and view the Church as both stupid and evil for arresting Galileo when he published evidence that Earth revolved around the sun. Why do we look at history that way and how is Steve Hsu different from Galileo? Don't like his facts/scientific methods/conclusions? Fight them with other facts and methods and conclusions! When you try and suppress the scientific method (especially in the age of the internet), you give the conspiracy theorists and white supremacists ammunition for a new generation of recruits. "Here are the facts they are hiding from you!"- they'll say. Fight ideas with better ideas, not by firings.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  “But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan
  - tuna-piano 6y ago
    Lol. To clarify, I'm not saying I know if Steve Hsu is right, wrong, genius, etc. I hardly even read anything he said. Only that ideas and science are good and forcing resignations for unpopular theories is bad.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Hsu remains a professor with tenure at MSU. Faculty and students only called for him to be removed from an administrative position.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    It is naturally great progress they did not burn him on spot then, heh.
acjohnson55 6y ago
People really get their backs up about someone having to step down from a position of great power to a position of somewhat less, but still considerable, power. I suspect it speaks to people's feeling that there may be things they can't achieve if they don't behave or present a certain way. But even if there was an injustice here, there are far greater injustices in the world, done to people who don't wield any power, who are just trying to get by. People who are denied even a modicum of self-determination, let alone power.
- Trill-I-Am 6y ago
  A lot of the readers of HN identify more with people at the top of society than at the bottom
mikedilger 6y ago
"It is not within the power of practitioners of demonstrative sciences to change opinion at will, chooing now this and now that one; there is a great difference between giving orders to a mathematician or a philosopher and given them to a merchant or a lawyer; as demonstrated conclusions about natural and celestial phenomena cannot be changed with the same ease as opinions about what is or is not legitimate in a contract, in a rental, or in commerce." -Galileo
afastow 6y ago
People keep assuming that asking the question "what relationship (if any) is there between race and intelligence from a biological standpoint?" is the racist part. The question by itself isn't really the problem. The racist part is pretending that it's still an open question. It isn't. There is no measurable biological relationship between race and intelligence. There has been a massive amount of research into what influences "intelligence", and the sum of it makes it clear that environmental factors easily have a significant enough effect to explain differences in scores between racial groups on different metrics. Someone might bring up the fact that often even when controlling for factors like education and family income, the racial gap narrows but might not disappear completely. The response is that it is fundamentally impossible to fully control for the effect of race on the environment someone grows up in. Even when absolutely every other factor is identical, a white person and a black person are not going to have the same environment because their race constantly affects how the rest of the world interacts with them. Essentially: We know environmental factors can affect any given metric of intelligence on a magnitude consistent with racial performance gaps on those metrics. Proof of this can be found in things like the fact that average IQ scores have increased over time, and the average IQ of black people in the 1990s was equivalent to the average white IQ in the 1940s. Biology does not change in 50 years so the improvement must be entirely from changes in environmental factors. In addition, race itself intrinsically has a significant effect on one's environment. Those two facts alone are enough to make it clear that any hypothetical biological component is too insignificant to be measured.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  I’m no expert. But how can this be a settled question when people are still arguing what intelligence even is?
ykevinator 6y ago
What is this about?
kthxbye123 6y ago
There are an incredible number of people on HN and in Silicon Valley who clearly believe that black people are on average genetically inferior to whites and Asians and also think they're being incredibly clever when they tap-dance around that core belief. Maybe now some of them will at least do the rest of us the courtesy of saying it outright.

148 points by ggreer 6y ago

stallmanite 6y ago

I’ve got a CS degree from MSU and haven’t heard anything about this at all. Anyone have more background information?

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Decent starting point: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de...
- altcognito 6y ago
  > One of the video clips is taken from an interview I did with YouTuber Stefan Molyneux in 2017. Molyneux was not a controversial figure in 2017, although he has since become one. I’m going with he is in way over his head, and didn’t know who this guy was who interviewed him, or is lying. 10 minutes of research in 2017 easily would have shown this.
  - amznthrowaway5 6y ago
    He wasn't nearly as controversial as today. Your standard for controversial and Steve's are different.

skellera 6y ago

Anyone looking for context. https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de... Does anyone have more information for the opposing side? Seems pretty terrible that people can take things you said over the years out of context and destroy your reputation.

exolymph 6y ago
There are some links to the attacks here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  Alexander is probably next up for cancellation. The scuttlebutt is that [the empty shell of] the NY Times has a hit piece on him in the works.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    I recall when LessWrong and Yudkowsky was covered by NYT. They came off as looking like a bunch of hyper-rationalist kooks, a bit New Age and cult-like even, but otherwise harmless. The same will likely happen to Alexander. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-code.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-co...
    - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
      For his sake, I hope you're right. But there have been one or two notable personnel changes at the NYT since that piece on the rationalists, and we're in the midst of a moral panic / cancellation frenzy.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        I mean, the NYT tackled the tradcath subculture recently and it was sympathetic, even laudatory. [0] I think the NYT treats these subcultures as more curios than targets for cancellation. Not to mention, post-2016 election, they’ve even caught flack for being too sympathetic towards reactionary individuals or groups, even those who are outright hateful. [1] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-christians.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-chri... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/opinion/nazi-sympathizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/opinion/nazi-sympathizer....

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

I predict that what will happen as a result of this type of activity is: At some point an organised advanced threat, or a disorganised mob, will attempt to take down a truly bad individual or group, who will retaliate in a truly disastrous way. Of course, this is inevitable given enough time. My concern now is that we are on a collision course with history, we can see that, and we appear to have no idea how to course-correct.

maximilianroos 6y ago

Relevant post by Scott Alexander earlier this week is support of Steve Hsu: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/

justinpombrio 6y ago
And Scott Aaronson: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4859 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4859
- ylem 6y ago
  He raises a good point that appearing on a podcast is a red herring. Suppose he actually just discussed say physics on the podcast? It would be more a question of what he said. Or, if he just said, "whoops, I had no idea who this guy was". Who he chooses to host on his own podcast is a different story.

anchpop 6y ago

I'm currently a student of Michigan State. While I don't like Dr. Hsu very much (and I see more merit to the criticisms of him than I suspect many here) I see this as grievous damage to my university. This will be proof that researchers should be scared what they say will incite a twitter mob against them and get them fired. Instead, they should be insulated from public backlash and not be afraid to say what they believe no matter how controversial. Lacking that, the entire purpose of research universities (and with it our ability to speak of a consensus among experts) is corrupted.

WesternStar 6y ago
I suppose it is fair to say speech of those in leadership positions with executive power is chilled by this. I think that's how its supposed to be though. Part of being in leadership is managing relationships with stakeholders. Part of it is being beyond reproach. Undisclosed conflicts of interest on published papers is not a small thing for an Executive at a university. Being responsible in an academic honesty sense is important in that position I think.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  > Part of it is being beyond reproach The problem is that he was largely removed for refusing to lie about the state of the science. But the state of the science is not politically acceptable.
  - ylem 6y ago
    He seems out of step with scientific consensus--but he wasn't removed as faculty, but rather from an admin position.
    - DuskStar 6y ago
      Scientific consensus is pretty heavily on the side of "50+% of within-group variation in intelligence is genetic, the remainder is non-shared environment" (in the US, barring known negative confounders such as fetal alcohol syndrome), and as far as I know the science on between-group variation is still very much undecided, but genetic components are as far from ruled out as you can get. But that debate won't be settled until you can 1) find the environmental differences that lead to IQ differences between groups, including (IIRC) in adopted children, 2) show that IQ tests only correlate with g within ethnic groups, but not across them, or 3) decode the genetic basis of IQ and show how differing frequencies explain group differences. Which is going to take a number more years, no matter which it ends up being.

unwoundmouse 6y ago

Sometimes, when a cancer gets bad enough, all you can do is enjoy the time you have left

epistasis 6y ago

I'm surprised how one sided the conversation is here. This isn't "mob rule," this is the reasoned opinions of skilled scientists saying that Hsu's political opinions are 1) not backed by the science, and 2) establish strong ground to believe that he will not use his position of power fairly. People have a right to be judged fairly in their careers, and those in leadership positions should not be unfairly prejudiced by bad beliefs. It might be fine for a tenured physics professor, but it's not OK for somebody making hiring and promotion decisions.

deleted 6y ago
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natalyarostova 6y ago
1. The idea that someone’s political views are not backed by science is a pretty bold claim. Who decides what political views are acceptably scientific? 2. Strong grounds? Is it possible to quickly present strong grounds in a twitter thread? Up until today he has done well in his job, and no one seemed to have a problem with him for 8 years. His boss or colleagues. Now, suddenly, we have deep concerns about how he hires people... why exactly? Because his political views aren’t scientific? This is tribal mob rule under the guise of a sophisticated intellectual rationalization.
- skosuri 6y ago
  Up until today? You have no idea what you are talking about. I have colleagues at the university that have been trying to have him removed for years; several have left in part because of him.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on the details that your colleagues conveyed to you?
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    That doesn’t mean much, other than they are probably part of the problem mob.

troughway 6y ago

Exact same playbook used to try to discredit Jordan Peterson, except he told them to shove it and fought back against the mob in public space with a megaphone, while the crowd was hurling insults and jeering at him. I know HN has a bit of an issue with JBP, but look at the this here yet again and think for yourselves.

ylem 6y ago
Who?

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

We're likely to see a certain reorientation of academia. The old business model was inherently unsustainable and even if it looks like it's under assault by the culture war it's probably a more systemic issue. The Visigoths didn't bring down Rome. By the time they were on the scene Rome was a house of cards.

jtchang 6y ago

One of the tweets: > Hsu’s beliefs in innate biological differences between human populations, especially regarding intelligence --an unscientific position which makes him unsuited to direct a research institution’s funding or its graduate studies I can see why this belief is controversial and in an ideal world I wish everyone was born exactly the same. However I don't think applying strong scientific research and methods to try and answer this hypothesis is necessarily wrong. Unless it has already been proven otherwise in which case I am unaware of the research.

natalyarostova 6y ago
You can’t do scientific research on that! It’s unscientific!
542458 6y ago
It has been studied pretty extensively. For example, see this survey https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-30052-009 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-30052-009 In pretty much every study within group differences are far and away more massive that between group differences. Unlike other things like height, eye colour, or facial hair growth, intelligence is highly variable even between identical twins. The genetic link seems weak at best. It’s also more or less impossible to study with great accuracy - you’re trying to study how race affects intelligence, but how do you correct for non-biological factors? Race is deeply intertwined with economics, education, nutrition, healthcare, and every other aspect of society and culture. Any study you do, regardless of results, will have a mountain or potentially over corrected or under corrected factors. Finally, what are we even studying? Defining intelligence is a nightmare, and a quick glance at history shows how the definition of intelligence has changed over time and between cultures. Trying to look at how race’s biological factors affect intelligence irrespective of sociological factors is in many ways a fool’s errand - the very definition of intelligence is wrapped right up in those sociological factors!
- centimeter 6y ago
  > In pretty much every study within group differences are far and away more massive that between group differences. You are perpetuating what’s known as Lewontin’s fallacy. This claim is extremely narrowly true: clustering on a 1-dimensional fixation index is insufficient to reliably mechanically classify race. If you don’t know what that means, stop trying to use this claim in your arguments. Here’s what it doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean that there aren’t significant population-level phenotypic differences between ethnic groups. These differences can include intelligence (and 30 years of twin studies suggests they probably do).

xiaolingxiao 6y ago

For those who are unaware or operate under certain assumptions of how Universities work, they tend to be highly politically charged places, and the value of "the brand" is more important than any individual. Regardless of what you think of Steve Hsu's statement ( measured vs tone-deaf, informed vs ignorant/racist), the mistake he made was taking a position to begin with. I was a the University where Trump went to undergrad when he was running for election, Not a single faculty/staff made comment about it because there was a directive from top down to say nothing. This is just how it is.

rlanday 6y ago
To jog your memory, this is a university most famous for employing Larry Nassar, who molested hundreds of girls and young woman, and also his boss, William Strampel (former dean of the osteopathic medical school) who was soliciting nude photos from students he was in a position of authority over. MSU’s image as an institute full of perverts and pedophiles was further cemented when the local news ran a story about an employee who was having sex with a basset hound. So, MSU’s not really an institution that will have any sort of moral high ground for the foreseeable future. They had a very talented VP of research who they’ve now fired, and will now have to put out a job posting for “VP of research at university famous for employing Larry Nassar” (I suppose they could promote from within but Steve Hsu was hired from outside).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

skosuri 6y ago

I am very glad this happened and this decision was very supported by the faculty of MSU. He is still a full professor at MSU making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He’s just no longer in charge of the research agenda. His own research on quantitative genetics is terrible and widely ridiculed. It’s great that he’s tenured and is allowed to have his poor scholarship justify his racist and sexist conclusions; but it doesn’t mean he gets to automatically lead a research agenda for a whole university.

tuna-piano 6y ago

Relevant quote from him: "I've always said that I'm agnostic on whether... so there are observed test score differences between groups, I think that's clear, you can't deny that. The causality of that, whether it's partially due to genetics, I've always been agnostic on. Not because I think it's impossible, but because it's such a charged thing we should really make sure the science is solid before we speculate. We shouldn't randomly speculate on something that sensitive. But even just not being willing to categorically rule out that God could have created us with average group differences has gotten me into trouble. And I think that's just absurd. So for someone to attack me for saying 'We don't know the answer to this question, let's do the science first and then talk about it.' Even that position is actually not tenable in the current social justice warrior political climate." https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=XHUSl9FLAmE&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=XHUSl9FLAmE... https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de...

tuna-piano 6y ago
Another quote from him: "My personal opinion about it is: A) I hope it's not true. I would much rather live in a world where there are not big group differences. Number 2) I understand why it's a sensitive issue. Because it was used in a way to oppress people for a long time. So I'm not blind to that. Number 3) I am a scientist. So when I say something like 'The results of the studies do not allow us to come to a high confidence conclusion about it.' That's what I'm going to say. So I've been attacked because I haven't been willing to categorically rule something out, which I think is absurd..." "The scores are, as you say, you do the tests, you find differences. However there are differences in average environment that these people experience. So the really difficult statistical question is, is it the difference in average environment these people experience, or is it genes. And it's a very difficult question..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGQdq8mOEd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGQdq8mOEd8 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-defense-of.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/twitter-attacks-and-de...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago

andrewem 6y ago

Moderators: Can we please have a different link which attempts to provide more context? Maybe a news article like https://www.wilx.com/content/news/MSU-Vice-President-of-research-and-innovation-Stephen-Hsu-resigns-571381341.html https://www.wilx.com/content/news/MSU-Vice-President-of-rese... or https://statenews.com/article/2020/06/asmsu-advocates-call-to-remove-stephen-hsu-as-vp-of-research https://statenews.com/article/2020/06/asmsu-advocates-call-t... or https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/michigan-state-msu-stephen-hsu-research-removal-petition-graduate-employees-union/5345120002/ https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/mi...

holler 6y ago
care to tl;dr?
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  This is a very quick summary of the opinion he was fired for: https://youtu.be/XHUSl9FLAmE https://youtu.be/XHUSl9FLAmE His firing was called for here: https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829003130261504 https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829003130261504
  - hsuthrownaway 6y ago
    It sounds like he technically resigned. I'm not sure if I read that as MSU President Samuel Stanley giving Hsu an opportunity to save face, or Stanley being a coward.
lsb 6y ago
> Hsu sparked outrage again when he cited a 2019 study in a blog post concluding, "there is no widespread racial bias in police shootings." (from link 1)
- DuskStar 6y ago
  "no racial bias in police shootings" is something I've seen from a few studies. It all depends on how you define "racial bias", of course. (In other words, in a given situation police shootings seem to be even across races - but those situations are less common for non-hispanic whites and far less common for asians than for african americans)

jtdev 6y ago

The Larry Nassar case exposed major cultural issues within the MSU administration. Is this treatment of Steve Hsu the pendulum swinging in the extreme opposite direction, or out of control woke-ism?

milesdyson_phd 6y ago
I think ultimately a university cares about its image more than anything. Nuking a tenured professor from a VP position is small potatoes for better optics (no matter the merit of allegations). I think the allegations do have merit at least for someone in an administrative position, not a purely academic one.
737maxtw 6y ago
Trust me, it's just another smokescreen for all the problems they still have.

ciarannolan 6y ago

From the campus group calling for his firing [1]: >However, these categories overlap & are all rooted in Hsu’s beliefs in innate biological differences between human populations, especially regarding intelligence --an unscientific position which makes him unsuited to direct a research institution’s funding or its graduate studies Humans are, biologically, extremely diverse. Visible attributes, disease risk, geometry of the physical body, etc. Some groups are more prone to certain genetic disease risk factors, for example. Doesn't it follow that the brains of different groups of humans might group into certain traits, including intelligence? I'm asking in all sincerity. I'd love to hear if there's some evidence that my thinking is wrong. [1] https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829006439485441 https://twitter.com/GradEmpUnion/status/1270829006439485441

Tarq0n 6y ago
It's complicated. One thing we do know is that the variance in intelligence is larger than any group differences. People therefore often assume that anyone that insists on emphasizing the average difference is using it as a dog-whistle for some kind of bias. Whether the principle of charity should be applied or not is up to you.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
staplers 6y ago
There is no singular "intelligence" and measuring it is certainly not linear. Splitting hairs between a population of people (specifically blacks) who only 200 years ago were killed for being able to read certainly doesn't make for a compelling or worthy investment in research.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  > There is no singular "intelligence" and measuring it is certainly not linear. Wanna bet? I think most intelligence researchers would disagree with you, and IQ is predictive of life outcomes. There are areas where you can find fault with Hsu's work, but I don't think "IQ approximates g, and g is real" is one of them. For that matter... If a population was killed according to a trait, wouldn't that make it more likely for there to be genetic causes of group differences in that trait?

jtdev 6y ago

So if you believe something to be a fact and supported by scientific research, and that fact is offensive to someone or a group if people, then you can be “cancelled”? American academia is in trouble.

skosuri 6y ago
He’s still a fully tenured professor at MSU; free to research whatever he wants.
- jtdev 6y ago
  So it’s okay that a Twitter mob had him removed from his previous more senior position?
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    Anyone in such a senior position either understands this is just part of the deal going in+, or is demonstrating their unfitness to be in such a position by failing to understand something like that. + That you are now more visible and you don't have the luxury of anonymity any more, and that this is just an inherent part of the bargain in taking on more responsibility, that now every little thing you say will be held against you by someone somewhere, and that now that you are part of the public face of your larger organization, it may at any time decide your affect on it's image is more important than any other thing about you. It's not that you can't still hold positions, it's just that you can't still hold them for free.
  - skosuri 6y ago
    Do you mean the hundreds of faculty at his university and the grad student union that called for his resignation from a position of power over them? Yeah, I think it’s reasonable. He’s still payed quite well and welcome to his crappy research ideas.
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      Did all group participants support this action?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

A couple of clarifications, from the links: 1. He wasn't forced to resign. He was requested to resign by the president of MSU. 2. He's still a tenured professor, and he will be returning to that role. 3. The group trying to oust him is the GEU (Graduate Employees Union, affiliated with the AFL-CIO), which represents 1200 graduate assistants at the University. Apparently Dr. Hsu has made some controversial statements about genetics. The GEU's accusations appear to be about perceived racism. One of Dr. Hsu's sins was appearing on a program with Stephane Molyneux, a conservative commentator whom they call "a white supremacist". I've watched several of Molyneux's programs and he is hardly a racist. Conservative and white, yes. I guess that's bad enough these days.

markdown 6y ago
> I've watched several of Molyneux's programs and he is hardly a racist. Conservative and white, yes. From his Wikipedia page: Stefan Basil Molyneux (/stəˈfæn ˈmɒlɪnjuː/; born September 24, 1966) is a Canadian far-right, white nationalist[2] podcaster and YouTuber who is known for his promotion of scientific racism and white supremacist views. Molyneux is described as a leading figure of the alt-right movement by Politico and The Washington Post, and as a far-right activist.[8][9][10][11] Tom Clements in The Independent described Molyneux as having "a perverse fixation on race and IQ".[12] The Freedomain internet community which Molyneux leads has been described as a cult, and Molyneux has been described as a cult leader, using cult indoctrination techniques on his followers. Molyneux is a proponent of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theo...
- mistermann 6y ago
  Be careful to distinguish between rhetoric, opinions, and facts.
  - markdown 6y ago
    How about from the horse's mouth: https://i.redd.it/cc8wtw97vo931.jpg https://i.redd.it/cc8wtw97vo931.jpg

hsuthrownaway 6y ago

Throwaway because with headlines like this, you can't be too careful. It's getting scary seeing people keeping quiet in predominantly progressive sectors like media, academia, and tech, out of fear that what they say today will get them fired tomorrow, fear that something they say will draw attention to something from five years ago, or that something they say today will cost them in five years. There's a class of under-researched things that we know too little about, but for political reasons, no one can research. Anything around genetic traits of races, differences between men and women, research around causes of LGBT orientations and identities that could lead to preventing people from being LGBT. These aren't even the ethically hard ones like genetic modifications in humans. These are just political suicide.

vonsydov 6y ago

What if the causality is primarily the individual or societal belief that someone is some way primarily due to their skin color ? The couldn't come up with this theory could he ?

tuna-piano 6y ago

We all look at history and view the Church as both stupid and evil for arresting Galileo when he published evidence that Earth revolved around the sun. Why do we look at history that way and how is Steve Hsu different from Galileo? Don't like his facts/scientific methods/conclusions? Fight them with other facts and methods and conclusions! When you try and suppress the scientific method (especially in the age of the internet), you give the conspiracy theorists and white supremacists ammunition for a new generation of recruits. "Here are the facts they are hiding from you!"- they'll say. Fight ideas with better ideas, not by firings.

Apocryphon 6y ago
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan
- tuna-piano 6y ago
  Lol. To clarify, I'm not saying I know if Steve Hsu is right, wrong, genius, etc. I hardly even read anything he said. Only that ideas and science are good and forcing resignations for unpopular theories is bad.
pseudalopex 6y ago
Hsu remains a professor with tenure at MSU. Faculty and students only called for him to be removed from an administrative position.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  It is naturally great progress they did not burn him on spot then, heh.

acjohnson55 6y ago

People really get their backs up about someone having to step down from a position of great power to a position of somewhat less, but still considerable, power. I suspect it speaks to people's feeling that there may be things they can't achieve if they don't behave or present a certain way. But even if there was an injustice here, there are far greater injustices in the world, done to people who don't wield any power, who are just trying to get by. People who are denied even a modicum of self-determination, let alone power.

Trill-I-Am 6y ago
A lot of the readers of HN identify more with people at the top of society than at the bottom

mikedilger 6y ago

"It is not within the power of practitioners of demonstrative sciences to change opinion at will, chooing now this and now that one; there is a great difference between giving orders to a mathematician or a philosopher and given them to a merchant or a lawyer; as demonstrated conclusions about natural and celestial phenomena cannot be changed with the same ease as opinions about what is or is not legitimate in a contract, in a rental, or in commerce." -Galileo

afastow 6y ago

People keep assuming that asking the question "what relationship (if any) is there between race and intelligence from a biological standpoint?" is the racist part. The question by itself isn't really the problem. The racist part is pretending that it's still an open question. It isn't. There is no measurable biological relationship between race and intelligence. There has been a massive amount of research into what influences "intelligence", and the sum of it makes it clear that environmental factors easily have a significant enough effect to explain differences in scores between racial groups on different metrics. Someone might bring up the fact that often even when controlling for factors like education and family income, the racial gap narrows but might not disappear completely. The response is that it is fundamentally impossible to fully control for the effect of race on the environment someone grows up in. Even when absolutely every other factor is identical, a white person and a black person are not going to have the same environment because their race constantly affects how the rest of the world interacts with them. Essentially: We know environmental factors can affect any given metric of intelligence on a magnitude consistent with racial performance gaps on those metrics. Proof of this can be found in things like the fact that average IQ scores have increased over time, and the average IQ of black people in the 1990s was equivalent to the average white IQ in the 1940s. Biology does not change in 50 years so the improvement must be entirely from changes in environmental factors. In addition, race itself intrinsically has a significant effect on one's environment. Those two facts alone are enough to make it clear that any hypothetical biological component is too insignificant to be measured.

therealdrag0 6y ago
I’m no expert. But how can this be a settled question when people are still arguing what intelligence even is?

ykevinator 6y ago

What is this about?

kthxbye123 6y ago

There are an incredible number of people on HN and in Silicon Valley who clearly believe that black people are on average genetically inferior to whites and Asians and also think they're being incredibly clever when they tap-dance around that core belief. Maybe now some of them will at least do the rest of us the courtesy of saying it outright.