MugaSofer comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong

27 Post author: orthonormal 01 April 2013 04:19PM

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Comment author: MugaSofer 08 April 2013 09:57:20PM 0 points [-]

Some people might object to calling racism-1 racism, and instead will decide to call it "human biodiversity" or "race realism". I think this is bullshit. Just fucking call it what it is. Own up to your beliefs.

Well, if you think races are a real thing, then calling this belief race realism seems fairly clear, and helps distinguish your belief from type-3 racism. Human biodiversity implies something more like support for eugenics, to me, since you're saying that humans are diverse, not that race is a functional Schelling point.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 April 2013 10:18:58PM *  3 points [-]

Stripped of connotations, "race realism" to me implies the belief that empirical clusters exist within the space of human diversity and that they map to the traditional racial classifications, but not necessarily that those clusters affect intellectual or ethical dimensions to any significant degree. I'm not sure if there's an non-euphemistic value-neutral term for racism-1 in the ancestor's typology, but that isn't it.

(The first thing that comes to mind is "scientific racism", which I'd happily use for ideas like this in a 19th- or early 20th-century context, but I have qualms about using it in a present-day context.)

Comment author: MugaSofer 09 April 2013 01:00:03PM 0 points [-]

Stripped of connotations, "race realism" to me implies the belief that empirical clusters exist within the space of human diversity and that they map to the traditional racial classifications, but not necessarily that those clusters affect intellectual or ethical dimensions to any significant degree.

Ah, good point.