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This is one of the worst comments I've seen on LessWrong and I think the fact that this is being upvoted is disgraceful. (Note: this reply refers to a comment that has since been deleted.)
This is one of the worst comments I've seen on LessWrong
Care to expand on that? Are you saying it's false or that it's true but you'd rather not think about it?
When it comes to scientific importance, it's important to separate out popular visibility and scientific visibility. If you're not a string theorist, for example, you might have difficulty sorting the names on this list by impact instead of alphabetically. It's probably easier to recognize who on that list have written books or TV shows targeted at the popular audience that it is to recognize which of them have won Nobels!
(Sylvester James Gates, Jr., on that list, is black. But is he important? I'm not a string theorist, and I only know about him because he taught at my alma mater.)
Well neither George Washington Carver nor Neil deGrasse Tyson were string theorists, so will you answer my original question?
Cloud Atlas is my favorite movie ever and I recommend it to anyone reading this. In fact, it is my opinion that it is one of the most important pieces of early 21st century art.
The downvote is however not for your bad taste in movies, but for intentionally misgendering Lana. More generally, you can consider it payback for your efforts to make Less Wrong an unwelcoming place. I care about this community, and you are doing your best to break it.
At this stage, I call for an IP ban.
I care about this community
Well, calling for IP bans for refusing to play along with someone's delusions seems a rather strange way of expressing you caring for a rationalist community.
Still, off the top of my head I'll name Wendy Carlos, musician, and Sophie Wilson, engineer, both of whom were world-famous (as men) for things that had nothing to do with gender identity before coming out as trans.
Off the top of mine, Lana Wachowski.
Lana Wachowski.
Has he done anything impressive since transitioning? Really since the first Matrix movie?
none of the others were anywhere near this impressive
The original question was not about "impressive" but about "successful". Are you willing to agree that being elected President of the United States constitutes success?
The original question was about being a source of vicarious pride. So, does being one of the worst US presidents count? Well, depends how desperate are you for pride.
Well, if we go with skin colour as the dividing line, I can certainly come up with quite a number of successful non-whites under several definitions of success.
Wealth? Consider Cyril Ramaphosa, whose current net worth is estimated (by Forbes) at US$450 million.
Politics? Consider Barack Obama.
Those are two fairly well-known definitions of success; there are plenty of successful non-whites for non-whites to be vicariously attached to.
(I notice that other comments have already provided a number of examples of successful gay people.)
Consider Cyril Ramaphosa, whose current net worth is estimated (by Forbes) at US$450 million.
His Wikipedia article is rather vague on how he made his wealth, but given that his previous jobs were activist and politician one is inclined to suspect corruption.
Consider Barack Obama.
So is being one of the worst presidents in US history something to be proud of?
I agree. But the less hyperbolically you make the point, the more reasonable it is to suggest that the shortage of Einstein-level black scientists is the result of factors other than a fundamental mental inferiority in the black population. And that wouldn't suit Eugine's purposes at all.
(It seems to me, though, that even quite a strong "race realist" position would not come close to justifying Eugine's talk of dancing bears.)
It seems to me, though, that even quite a strong "race realist" position would not come close to justifying Eugine's talk of dancing bears.
So are you saying George Washington Carver, or even Neil deGrasse Tyson would be considered at all important scientists without being black?
I'm not sure the connotation of the term (i.e. a black person being successful at anything is so shocking it's entertainment value all on it's own) makes the statement any better. Especially when discussing, say, one of the most important American musicians of all time (among others).
I'm not sure the connotation of the term (i.e. a black person being successful at anything is so shocking it's entertainment value all on it's own) makes the statement any better.
Of course, it's still true whether you want to acknowledge it or not (Edit: especially outside the fields of sports and Entertainment).
I'm pretty sure that MLK and Desmond Tutu would be quite notable even if their minority status wasn't a factor. I'm not familiar enough with jazz music to be able to say much about Louis Armstrong one way or the other, but Scott Joplin certainly qualifies as successful (The Entertainer is possibly his most popular piece, but he wrote plenty more of course). And what about sportspeople like Pelé (one of the greatest soccer players of all time)?
Well Desmond Tutu is only as famous as he is because he was involved in a struggle that fit a currently popular narrative. There are many ethnic conflicts around the world, e.g., Congo, Eritrea, Burma, Philippines, that almost no one outside the countries involved bothers to pay attention to.
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I have no idea whether anyone to speak of actually does consider George Washington Carver an important scientist, though the available evidence suggests he was a very clever guy. Neil deGrasse Tyson, so far as I know, isn't considered important as a scientist by anyone, including himself, but he seems to me very obviously an outstanding popularizer of science on his own merits.
None of which is actually relevant to your remark about dancing bears. The point about the dancing bear, remember, is that it may be an absolutely hopeless dancer by the standards we usually use, and that the only thing interesting about it is that it's astonishing that a bear can dance at all. Was George Washington Carver a hopeless scientist? Nope. Are black people so uniformly unintelligent that it's astonishing that one can be a scientist at all? Nope. (Even on a stronger "race realist" position than seems to me in any way credible.)
And the bear does in fact dance. The point is that the fact that it's necessary to drag out someone like George Washington Carver (and as Vaniver mentioned above stick him next to Albert Einstein) is evidence against blacks in general being good at science.