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Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

futureofhumanityinstitute.org

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Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#241

Post by sandspar »

daveguy wrote: post #60
exo-pla-net wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild: > “I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sen…

Bostrom's original statement was not remotely accurate or mild. The statement, "Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true." -- is a classic example of racism. It is racist to the core. Not only that, Bostrom knew at the time racism like that would make things more difficult for him and he was correct. Sometimes cancel culture is deserved.…

[flagged]

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#242

Post by gizajob »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #238
gizajob wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fuck are you on about

[flagged]

You seem to be using my post as a mirror for the same.

I really have no idea what your strange dialogue in Simpson's-parody English is about or where it comes from, or the need, from me basically commenting "Nick Bostrom is not a genius".

I also have zero clue what you mean by "[T]he whole “smash the patriarchy” movement might overlook that we actually live in a matriarchy, and this is just what it imperceptibly looks like." I've never written anything like this. I work at Google.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#243

Post by esailija »

StressedDev wrote: post #234
arduanika wrote: post #92

Good riddance to these ideologues. It's a shame that the announcement shows no trace of remorse for the crimes they inspired (e.g. at FTX) or the lives that have been ruined by the cults to which they lent academic legitimacy. Instead, their demise is chalked up to some bland moaning about "administrative headwinds". Realistically, we're probably only looking at a brief respite before they regroup under some other be…

I really don't think you can blame Effective Alterism (EA) or these guy for FTX. FTX was a fraud and it occurred because Sam Bankman-Fried used customer money to prop up his failing investment company (Almeada Research). To be blunt he stole from his customers to try and prop up a failing business. He also lied, used customer money to fund a lavish lifestyle, used customer money to donate to political causes, etc. Ba…

Actually the belief that you're good or "doing altruism" is exactly the kind of thing that would cause a person to do such evil things.

If we take bible metaphorically it's pretty smart because believing you are a inherently unworthy sinner will actually encourage you to do good things instead of the opposite which just causes people to do evil things and virtue signal.

Basically "But we're the good guys" <- that's how you know who is truly evil.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#244

Post by robertlagrant »

pfdietz wrote: post #194
nwiswell wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never mind the same is true of nuclear; not even France is fully nuclear powered This seems somewhat bad-faith: nuclear does supply the majority of France's power, and since nuclear is a "base load" part of the mix, it would be inefficient to get 100% of power from nuclear rather than a peaking-friendly mix that includes e.g. hydro and gas.

Focusing only on the grid is bad faith; if one includes non-grid energy use, France doesn't even get 50% of its energy from nuclear.

What's the non-grid energy use?

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#245

Post by skissane »

cauch wrote: post #219
skissane wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - why a "color-of-the-skin" would be linked to IQ when a "color-of-the-eye" would not? To try to steel-man the argument: there is no reason to think, at a long-term global level , there would be any correlation between genes for any particular physical appearance traits and genes for intelligence However, at the level of a specific nation, during a specific period in its history: that nation may be composed of a sm…

> However, at the level of a specific nation, during a specific period in its history: that nation may be composed of a small number of major descent groups. ... and groups A and B may also differ in their frequency of physical appearance traits genes. That's exactly my argument. Isn't it funny that people interested in the Black IQ question just consider that the only physical appearance worth studying is the color…

> Isn't it funny that people interested in the Black IQ question just consider that the only physical appearance worth studying is the color of the skin?

"Black" isn't a proper descent group, it is a term applied to everyone from American Descendants of Slavery to Indigenous Australians to Melanesians to umpteen different distantly related groups in Africa (a continent with massive internal genetic diversity). There is no meaningful question to ask about "Black IQ"

> In reality, the reason is simpler: color-of-skin is a clear and popular ingroup / outgroup separator. Some people see black skin people, and they say "they are not like us", and it is a catalyser for the idea that color-of-skin is a good proxy: they like to think that they are different from them, especially if this difference rationalizes their opinions of them or justifies some of their biased conclusions (such as ultimate attribution error between ingroup and outgroup).

Is that actually what happened though? Imagine a parallel universe which is uncannily like this one, except for the fact that Europeans and Africans happened to have largely similar skin colours (it doesn't matter whether we suppose they be equally dark or equally pale or equally blue-green). Would that have resulted in European-Americans treating African-American descendants of slaves equally? Or would they have still been oppressed about as much, and if some other physically visible marker could have been found to distinguish them, discrimination would have been based on that instead?

> But again, strangely, people interested in the Black IQ question are not really interested in the Askhenazi IQ question

I think human genetic diversity and the heritability of intelligence is an interesting topic–albeit one about which our knowledge is (at least at present) greatly outweighed by our ignorance. But my impression is a lot of people want to approach that topic primarily through the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country: a lens which adds more heat than light, and as someone who has lived their whole life on the other side of the planet, looks like just excessively focusing on just one question and ignoring a hundred others like it

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#246

Post by helboi4 »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #87
daveguy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways. It's odd to me that calling racism racism when a parent called it not racism is either non-contributing or inflamatory. Seems to me it is warranted.

An assertion without rationale is noise or worse. "That's racist; cancel them!" falls in the latter category. It's the mindless baying of the rabble. You don't engage with the rabble, as there's no fixing stupid. You just hope they shut up, so that you and the other adults can think, and you hope that the rabble burns down someone else's house. Analogously, there's not much to be gained from engaging with someone sho…

Yeah bro I never said anyone should be cancelled. I have a problem with people calling the statement "Blacks are stupider than whites" "accurate".

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#247

Post by helboi4 »

notahacker wrote: post #120
exo-pla-net wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you saying that the author has no rational to say that? Sure, instrumental rationale: PR. And, because I believe that Bostrom says what he means, Bostrom probably does think what he said was repugnant, but probably not in a way that you would find satisfying. Bostrom probably thinks that speaking truthfully about vulnerable people, in a manner that could distress them (e.g. owing to their misunderstanding of th…

A statement that Race X is "more stupid" than Race Y is almost tautologically racist. The idea that Nick denigrating an entire race as 'stupid' is "accurate and mild", whereas any suggestion that the statement contains racism requires a "license to denigrate" is truly through the looking glass...

Yup. Like are we moving the goalposts as to what racism is. I'm not sure how you could come up with a statement which is more unequivocally racist.

It really is telling that somehow none of these people that care about reasonable debate are criticising the guy saying that implying some racists are stupider than others is "accurate and mild". Apparently, him saying that is fine. But ever suggesting anything is racist is not.

Clearly, the only logical conclusion here is that nobody is allowed to call anything racist. This sounds like something you would only try and enforce if you are invested in more rampant racism.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#248

Post by helboi4 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #229
frozenseven wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Asians are a wholly different and distinct group. Most Indonesians are South-East Asian, except for Chinese migrants and those living on the island of New Guinea. Africa is a continent, not a race. What you're saying is all over the place. And I'm not here to discuss politics.

South Asians in the UK in the 80s and 90s were classed as black, n____, etc.

Yup, I"m British and can confirm this was the case and it makes just as much sense as any other categorisation of black. Its almost as if race is a made up social construct. Even within Africa there are many different ethnicities, many of which are not very represented amongst African Americans, which is probably what the majority of people here see as black. That's just a subset of West Africans who are pretty mixed at this point.

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#249

Post by helboi4 »

goatlover wrote: post #171
frozenseven wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>categorizing people by skin colour is ridiculous for almost all purposes Sure. But race is most often about genetic (or ethno-linguistic) heritage, not skin color. A person from Japan might have the same skin color as someone from Greece.

Sub-saharan Africans have greater genetic diversity than other continental populations. Race is just not an accurate categorization.

Yup. Thanks for talking sense. There are tons of ethnicities in Africa. Which one exactly is the genetically stupid one?

Re: Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

#250

Post by n4r9 »

goatlover wrote: post #157
n4r9 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd interested to take a look if you have any further info about which moral philosophers and which works cite The Discarded Image? I admit I haven't read that one myself; my own take on him as a philosopher stems from reading Mere Christianity and summaries of Surprised by Joy, and not being aware of any references to his work by more recent philosophers that I've been interested in such as Chomsky, Zizek, or Dennet…

My feeling is that Chomsky, Zizek and Dennett aren't free of being guided by something other than logic for some of their arguments as well. For example, Dennett's arguments against the hard problem of consciousness come across as dogmatic materialism.

Could you expand on that, and perhaps provide an example? I've heard similar claims, and people using the phrase "consciousness explained away". Certainly Dennett is an unashamed materialist. The word "dogmatic" however suggests he holds that position as a matter of faith, which I think is a misrepresentation.
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