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Scott Siskind believes scientific racism is “probably partially correct”
- damnyou 6y agoFor the last several days much of the discussion about Scott Siskind of Slate Star Codex has been about "guilt by association" with Charles Murray, Moldbug and other white supremacist and neoreactionary types. I firmly believe that guilt by association with white supremacists is fundamentally valid, but I was heavily downvoted for my arguments. My priors have been confirmed, as the rationalists would say. Association with white supremacists and neoreactionaries continues to be strong evidence of one's own sympathies, despite loud protestations (perhaps too much?) from the denizens of this hellsite.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoFree clue: Calling a place a hellsite does not make your post more persuasive. Quite the opposite. It indicates that you aren't even bothering to try to persuade.
- mg5150 6y agoFree clue: they probably already know that, and don't give a damn. Learn to distinguish between ignorance and indifference.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIf so, and they post like that anyway, then they are coming close to violating the site guidelines.
- mg5150 6y agoThat's dang's problem, isn't it?
- damnyou 6y agoIf your concern is more about this place being called a hellsite than the actual scientific racism at hand, then perhaps that says more about you than you might think.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIf your concern is for screaming "scientific racism" rather than encouraging an honest look at the scientific evidence and using it as a guide to try to improve the situation, then that says something about you.
- Bostonian 6y agoSiskind is very thoughtful and reads a lot. If, after weighing the evidence, he concluded that some of the white/black difference on IQ tests is probably genetic, that does not make him a bad person or a "white supremacist", unless he has advocated denying civil rights to blacks. He has not done so. There is much current discussion of how to deal with racial disparities in outcomes in employment and education. What to do about them depends on what factors cause them, which should be studied objectively.
- damnyou 6y agoYes, yes, that's the standard scientific racist line. "Oh we just care about educational outcomes".
- mg5150 6y agoIMO, anybody who takes Charles Murray seriously needs to be hit upside the head with a hardcover of Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which exposed race-and-IQ studies for the racist bullshit they are in the 1970s, years before the publication of The Bell Curve.
- ratsmack 6y agoIt seems that everyone wants to talk about science until it involves race and IQ... why is that?
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoIts incredibly socially awkward to float the idea that you could judge someone’s intelligence by their physical features and claim some objective validity. This is quite unfortunate because in my opinion IQ is pseudoscience and intelligence is socially constructed, so its not going to be possible to substantiate that view. But since we can’t even propose such an idea for purposes of argument without the danger of social sanction, those ideas are never properly debunked.
- Khelavaster 6y agoLike nearly any wrong idea, scientific racism is probably partially correct.