Nick_Tarleton comments on Open Thread: May 2010 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Jack 01 May 2010 05:29AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 01 May 2010 06:25:05PM *  38 points [-]

Is anyone else here disturbed over the recent Harvard incident where Stephanie Grace's perfectly reasonable email where she merley expreses agnosticism over the posiblity that the well documented IQ differences between groups are partially genetic is worthy of harsh and inaccurate condemnation from the Harvard Law school dean?

I feel sorry for the girl since she trusted the wrong people (the email was alegedly leaked by one of her girlfriends who got into a dispute with her over a man). We need to be extra carefull to selfcensure any rationalist discusions about cows "everyone" agrees are holy. These are things I don't feel comfortable even discussing here since they have ruined many carrers and lives due to relentless persecution. Even recanting dosen't help at the end of the day, since you are a google away and people who may not even understand the argument will hate you intensly. Scary.

I mean surley everyone here agrees that the only way to discover truth is to allow all the hypothesies to stand on their own without giving them the privilige of supressing competition to a few. Why is our society so insane that this regurarly happens even concerning views that many relevant academics hold in private (or even the majority of if in certain fields if the polling is anon)?

PS Also why does the Dean equate inteligence with genetic superiority and imlicitly even worth as a person? This is a disturbing view since half by definition will always be below average. And we're all going to be terribly stupid compared to AIs in the near future, such implicit values are dangerus in the context of the time we may be living in.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 02 May 2010 11:55:52PM *  12 points [-]

PS Also why does the Dean equate inteligence with genetic superiority and imlicitly even worth as a person?

See Michael Vassar's discussion of this phenomenon. Also, I think that people discussing statements they see as dangerous often implicitly (and unconsciously) adopt the frames that make those statements dangerous, which they (correctly) believe many people unreflectively hold and can't easily be talked out of, and treat those frames as simple reality, in order to more simply and credibly call the statement and the person who made it dangerous and Bad.