Remember when Einstein sent that one letter about a hypothetical city-flattening bomb?
You mean the Einstein–Szilárd letter? That was a rather unique situation, historically; the experiments laying the groundwork had been performed only a year previously, a world war was imminent, and enormous weapons potential was there to be taken by any government with the requisite technical and scientific resources. It's also worth mentioning that the physics behind nuclear weapons is rather simple, undergraduate-level stuff by modern standards; the real challenge is in materials and engineering, which, far more than the basic theory, is what made getting a head start so important back in 1939.
I don't have an informed opinion on the race-and-IQ issue, nor do I care to pursue one. But whatever the raw data says, it describes a condition that we're already dealing with. There are plausible ways of placing some of the possible results on the spectrum of information hazards, but no direct way to turn them into megadeaths without a lot of unpredictable social intermediaries.
Here's an upvote and a sincere thanks for your moderating and thoughtful intervention.
Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it