If there truly are meaningful genetic differences between races, then so be it. But that seems to be the justification for the portion of "white supremacist" Trump supporters I mentioned above. It's an angry racism that seems likely to be problematic.

Well, as compared the hypothetical problems this "racism" or "white supremacism" might supposedly cause in the future; the type of "police and all whites are racist" anti-racism you are promoting is having problematic consequences right now, in the form of anti-police and generally anti-white rioting by blacks in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlotte, etc. Not to mention that we'll never solve the problem of large amount of black-on-black crime if we can't admit it's cause.

Do you expect me to give you the complete solution to AI right here, right now? What are you even trying to say? You seem to be arguing that FAI is impossible. How can you possibly know that? Just because you can't immediately see a solution to the problem, doesn't mean a solution doesn't exist.

I think an AI will easily be able to learn human values from observations. It will be able to build a model of humans, and predict what we will do and say. It certainly won't base all it's understanding on a stupid movie quote. The AI will know what you want.

Hm. These views seem very likely to lead to racism.

I've read Breitbart frequently since Steve Bannon was added to Trump's campaign because I'm fascinated with how Trump (an obvious hustler/fraud/charlatan in my view) has managed to get this close to the Oval Office. It's been illuminating (in a disturbing way) in understanding where I now believe a lot of the Trump support is coming from.

I'm confident a portion of his support is just Red-Team-no-matter-what Repubs. And some are one issue Pro-Life Christians. And some are fiscal conservatives who are sincerely just concerned about the debt and spending. And some are blue collar workers in areas (Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.) where the global economy/technology caused manufacturing to dry up decades ago and they are mad as hell about the facts of the world and will just keep voting to change something, anything until they day they die...

But there is also this (disturbingly large) element of the movement that think non-white people are less than white people. Like, this group of Trump supporters are literally white supremacists—they believe white people are better suited for civilization. And, of course, no one can say that and politically get away with it in 2016, so they use all sorts of dog whistle-y language to imply it—including the main Trumpian slogan, "Make America Great Again­™"

There are smart people, there are stupid people, and the correlation to some outwardly visible feature like the colour of the skin doesn't matter much.

How do you mean? You're saying you believe it to be true that, generally, people with black skin color are more likely to have a significantly lower IQ than people with white skin color... And you believe that IQ is correlated with life outcomes. How can this not matter much?

I find affirmative action counter-productive.

I also have the sense this may be true in many instances. The theory seems solid, but I'm not sure it works as intended in practice.

For another example, I don't believe the claims that inner-city schools (read: black) lag behind suburban schools (read: not black) because of lack of funding or because of surrounding poverty.

Why do they lag behind? Is it because of the IQ difference you believe exists between black and whites?

...

You say you're not a white nationalist...I'm curious about your reaction to those who are? In regard to segregation, for instance... You say you don't think the Europeans should re-colonise Africa for the natives' own good—Why not?

Will it? I agree that it will cause some harm, but I'm not sure about "significant".

I'd submit it's a matter of definition.

Note that race-based discrimination is explicitly illegal and agencies such as EEOC do prosecute. Moreover, EEOC uses the concept of "disparate impact" which basically means that if you statistically discriminate regardless of your intent, you are in trouble.

Great point. I didn't know this. I'll have to do more reading. Generally though, I'd concede anti-discrimination laws have an impact.

Also, did a bias against those-not-like-me cause employment problems for, say, the Chinese? Why not?

Well, the Chinese weren't enslaved. And it's my experience there is not nearly as much racism against Asians as against blacks in America, but that is just my anecdotal experience.

I am saying people with African ancestry (regardless of their citizenship) belong to a gene pool which has average IQ lower than that of people with European ancestry. Lest you think that the whites are the pinnacle of evolution, the European gene pool has lower average IQ than, say, Han Chinese.

I've looked into this only briefly, and I'll take your word for it.

There are two separable questions here. The first one is do you agree that people with African ancestry have lower average IQ (by about one standard deviation) than people with European ancestry? That question has nothing to do with slavery and segregation. If you do not, we hit a major disagreement right here and there's not much point in discussing why contemporary black Americans have different outcomes than whites or Asians. If you do, we can move on to the second question: what is the relative role of various factors which determine the current state of the black Americans?

It makes sense to me to separate this into two questions like you propose. As I said, I'll defer to your research and knowledge on the first point (and suspend my skepticism in the process), and move to your second question.

As to that second question—what is the relative role of various factors which determine the current state of the black Americans—I'm interested to know what you think, given your view that people with African ancestry have lower IQs...

I might suggest the following approach. If you agree that the average IQ of blacks is lower, then let's estimate the effect of that on social outcomes. It might be that this cause will explain a great deal of what we observe. If so, there's no need to bring in the history of slavery and segregation as a major factor because there wouldn't be much left to explain.

...You've stated it's complex, but roughly, what percentage of contemporary social outcomes experienced by blacks in America are a result of genetic differences ("nature"), and what percentage are a result of environmental factors (nurture)? Of that percentage that you deem to be the result of environmental factors, what portion is a result of slavery/segregation/discrimination? Again, just looking for a rough sketch from your mind here, as I recognize you have stated it's complex and difficult to parse.

Also, I'm wondering how the idea people with African ancestry have lower average IQ than people with European ancestry informs your politics?

Mmm, that's not quite the right abstraction. You're probably against innocents going to jail in general, no?

Whereas some Roman might not care, as long as it's no one they care about.

All I'm getting at is that the Romans didn't think certain things were wrong, but if they were shown in a sufficiently deep way everything we know, they would be moved by it, whereas if we were shown everything they know, we would not find it persuasive of their position. Neither would they, after they had seen what we've seen.

I'm talking metaethics, what makes something moral, what it means for something to be moral. Failed ones include divine command theory, the "whatever contributes to human flourishing" idea, whatever makes people happy, whatever matches some platonic ideals out there somehow, whatever leads to selfish interest, etc.

If I train a neural network to recognize dogs, I have no way of knowing if it learned correctly. I can't look at the weights and see if they are correct dog image recognizing weights and not something else. But I can trust the process of training and validation, that the AI has learned to recognize what dogs look like.

It's a similar principle with learning human values. Of course it's more complicated than just feeding it images of dogs, but the principle of letting AIs learn models from real world data is the important part.

Right. Someone could be against slavery for THEM personally without being against slavery in general if they didn't realize that what was wrong for them was also wrong for others. That's all I'm getting at, there.

Or do you mean that they should have opposed slavery for everybody as a sort of game theory move to reduce their chance of ever becoming a slave?

"You do understand that debates about objective vs relative morality has been going on for millenia?"

What I'm getting at here is that most moral theories are so bad you don't even need to talk about evidence. You can show them to be wrong just because they're incoherent or self-contradictory.

It's a pretty low standard, but I'm asking if this theory is at least coherent and consistent enough that you have to look at evidence to know if it's wrong, instead of just pointing at its self-defeating nature to show it's wrong. If so, yay, it might be the best I've ever seen. :)

You're right; I've provided no evidence.

Do you think the idea is sufficiently coherent and non-self-contradictory that the way to find out if it's right or wrong is to look for evidence?

If it was incoherent or contradicted itself, it wouldn't even need evidence to be disproven; we would already know it's wrong. Have I avoided being wrong in that way?

(by the way, understanding slavery might be necessary, but not sufficient to get someone to be against it. They might also need to figure out that people are equal, too. Good point, I might need to add that note into the post).

People certainly have a bias towards those-like-me, but it's not specifically anti-black, it's against anyone who looks/feels/smells different.

It's debatable whether or not it's specifically anti-black. Or anti-some-other-group. At any rate, a bias against those-not-like-me would be sufficient in this case to cause blacks a significant deficit in opportunity for employment in a historically majority white nation.

Um, the IQ would be different?...

As usual, I phrased my comment poorly. Let me try a different tack...

You are saying black Americans have a genetic deficit in the form of lower average IQ. Because IQ is heritable and very important toward social "success", this is a (or even the?) major factor in why they lag behind in certain social metrics (avg. income/wealth, crime rates, etc.) in American society.

I'm saying slavery/segregation/discrimination has created a very significant deficit for blacks to overcome in America, to the extent that we would expect to see something like we see in terms of the disparity in avg. income/wealth, crime rates, etc. I'd hypothesize slavery/segregation/discrimination has been consequential to the extent that even if blacks had a higher average IQ than whites, they would still be in a similar situation. (i.e. the discrimination is that bad and that significant.)

Plainly, advanced IQ (or other genetic advantages) aren't enough to overcome significant discrimination in all cases. The disadvantages can be too steep in a given society.

I'd propose a good portion of the U.S. is a bit more racist than I think you are taking into consideration. And this may have caused a deeper deficit for blacks than you are appreciating.

As to similarities, I was about to write that the discriminated-against will never rise to the highest positions in the society, but oh look! there is that Barack Hussain fellow...

Things can change. Slowly.