4 ms·

> As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he

by jolux 5y ago

> As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he thought his views should be forced upon other people rather than having to convince them of their correctness in the public sphere. > I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not dictatorship. You should read more about his views. I can't in good conscience recommend his writing because it's riddled with factual errors, but he definitely went far beyond libertarianism. He sees democracy as a failure and believes that absolute rule is more stable and prosperous and even more free than liberal democracy, and he's also unquestionably a racist.

dcow 5y ago
Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a racist ideology makes, not a western rationalist position that allows complex topics to be, well, complex.
- dwb 5y ago
  > evolutionary biology is inevitably racist In the current historical context, yes, it is. If you could somehow neutrally float outside context (you can't), or we lived in a different world, then maybe it wouldn't be.
  - dcow 5y ago
    That's not even close to wholesale truth at any meaningful or useful level. To a very specific subset of loud people the idea that biology may play some role in expressed traits is problematic only because those traits have been deemed by some other portion of society to be a proxy for either the capacity or quality of some human or possibly also because the notion violates some axiomatic belief that heredity can't possibly play any role in any difference you can measure when there also exists a "racial" or "gender" associated partitioning of the data set. The problem is not that studies and results themselves are racist (data can't be racist). The problem is that parts of society (across the board) want to find racism in the data and draw problematic conclusions, even when the practitioners who just want to explore the data avoid any such narrative conclusion, so they will. They'll even brand the practitioners as racist for engaging in the pursuit of a scientific understanding of the world and generating the data in the first place. Rather than throw out an entire field of study that's relevant and important in medicine, psychology, biology, real sociology, education, politics, etc. a much more honest/level approach would be to attack the meta-level discussion around how we apply the results even when they might be problematic instead of branding anybody who references the data a racist. For example, if studies show that IQ can be associated at least at some level with gene expression (the reality is it's a complex mix of both biological lottery and social nurturing) then perhaps question the validity of applying IQ tests as gating functions in areas where they may be miss applied. Question whether the traits that IQ tests end up fuzzily measuring are in fact necessary, important, relevant, whatever. Perform your own studies to shed more light on the topic and evolve our understanding. And if the answer is still, "there seems to be a measurable, relevant, practical genetic difference" the fix your fucked up society (if that requires active political patches, so be it) and figure out how to incorporate the reality into your narrative, don't brand the data and anybody adjacent to it as deplorable. The idea that you can dismiss an entire field of rational study because it yields uncomfortable data or even just asks uncomfortable questions is immensely reductive and frankly harmful to a healthy society. Traditional religious institutions learned how to incorporate science but not before bloody fights and unhealthy/illiberal attempts to brand and silence practitioners, heretics. Regardless, the cults lost and rationalism prevailed. Historical context is dynamic, not static, and attempts to apply anecdotal interpretations based on a first order derivative of the current context really miss a lot of the picture.
- jolux 5y ago
  > Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. Race is a social category, not a genetic one, so his claim is ill-founded from the start. It is scientific consensus that genetics does not explain variations in IQ between racial groups. I don't think evolutionary biology is racist, I think people who believe it supports racism are hiding their basic racism behind scientists who don't agree with them about the nature of race.
  - dcow 5y ago
    Totally agree race is a social construct. There seem to be open questions which I wouldn't expect if there was strong consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption... There are a lot of “problems” with that study and my intention is not to imply anything by linking it. My point is simply that I don’t think it’s honest to say scientists everywhere agree case closed. I think a more accurate snapshot of the state of the art is: “the subject is incredibly difficult to study at all because we frankly don't really have a clue how the brain works. It seems there is a blend of both biological and social factors that contribute to a person’s perceived intellectual capacity. Whether any of those (genetic or social) factors are specific to a given race is essentially impossible to discern”.
    - jolux 5y ago
      It’s perfectly conceivable that social factors contingent on race (and importantly income and wealth background too) could impact IQ though. That is a lot of the argument that racial differences in IQ do not describe biological differences. > Totally agree race is a social construct. Right, and if this is the case, then racial disparities in IQ are describing social differences, not genetic ones, because race is not genetic.

by jolux 5y ago

dcow 5y ago

Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a racist ideology makes, not a western rationalist position that allows complex topics to be, well, complex.

dwb 5y ago
> evolutionary biology is inevitably racist In the current historical context, yes, it is. If you could somehow neutrally float outside context (you can't), or we lived in a different world, then maybe it wouldn't be.
- dcow 5y ago
  That's not even close to wholesale truth at any meaningful or useful level. To a very specific subset of loud people the idea that biology may play some role in expressed traits is problematic only because those traits have been deemed by some other portion of society to be a proxy for either the capacity or quality of some human or possibly also because the notion violates some axiomatic belief that heredity can't possibly play any role in any difference you can measure when there also exists a "racial" or "gender" associated partitioning of the data set. The problem is not that studies and results themselves are racist (data can't be racist). The problem is that parts of society (across the board) want to find racism in the data and draw problematic conclusions, even when the practitioners who just want to explore the data avoid any such narrative conclusion, so they will. They'll even brand the practitioners as racist for engaging in the pursuit of a scientific understanding of the world and generating the data in the first place. Rather than throw out an entire field of study that's relevant and important in medicine, psychology, biology, real sociology, education, politics, etc. a much more honest/level approach would be to attack the meta-level discussion around how we apply the results even when they might be problematic instead of branding anybody who references the data a racist. For example, if studies show that IQ can be associated at least at some level with gene expression (the reality is it's a complex mix of both biological lottery and social nurturing) then perhaps question the validity of applying IQ tests as gating functions in areas where they may be miss applied. Question whether the traits that IQ tests end up fuzzily measuring are in fact necessary, important, relevant, whatever. Perform your own studies to shed more light on the topic and evolve our understanding. And if the answer is still, "there seems to be a measurable, relevant, practical genetic difference" the fix your fucked up society (if that requires active political patches, so be it) and figure out how to incorporate the reality into your narrative, don't brand the data and anybody adjacent to it as deplorable. The idea that you can dismiss an entire field of rational study because it yields uncomfortable data or even just asks uncomfortable questions is immensely reductive and frankly harmful to a healthy society. Traditional religious institutions learned how to incorporate science but not before bloody fights and unhealthy/illiberal attempts to brand and silence practitioners, heretics. Regardless, the cults lost and rationalism prevailed. Historical context is dynamic, not static, and attempts to apply anecdotal interpretations based on a first order derivative of the current context really miss a lot of the picture.
jolux 5y ago
> Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. Race is a social category, not a genetic one, so his claim is ill-founded from the start. It is scientific consensus that genetics does not explain variations in IQ between racial groups. I don't think evolutionary biology is racist, I think people who believe it supports racism are hiding their basic racism behind scientists who don't agree with them about the nature of race.
- dcow 5y ago
  Totally agree race is a social construct. There seem to be open questions which I wouldn't expect if there was strong consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption... There are a lot of “problems” with that study and my intention is not to imply anything by linking it. My point is simply that I don’t think it’s honest to say scientists everywhere agree case closed. I think a more accurate snapshot of the state of the art is: “the subject is incredibly difficult to study at all because we frankly don't really have a clue how the brain works. It seems there is a blend of both biological and social factors that contribute to a person’s perceived intellectual capacity. Whether any of those (genetic or social) factors are specific to a given race is essentially impossible to discern”.
  - jolux 5y ago
    It’s perfectly conceivable that social factors contingent on race (and importantly income and wealth background too) could impact IQ though. That is a lot of the argument that racial differences in IQ do not describe biological differences. > Totally agree race is a social construct. Right, and if this is the case, then racial disparities in IQ are describing social differences, not genetic ones, because race is not genetic.