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Notes -
I'm kind of curious about your response here, so I'm hoping you'd be willing to make it more concrete. Can you pick out the top one to three posts from Scott that you think are contradicted by his current position on HBD?
I'm not sure if I follow on the connection between HBD and Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory. Surely, the following can both be true: 1) IQ differences between groups are real and explained in part by genetic differences, and this affects the kinds of societal institutions that can be successful, and 2) it is better to treat policy disputes as debates where facts and evidence could theoretically make everyone converge to the correct prescriptions for society (mistake theory), rather than treating them as a war (conflict theory.)
Heck, going back through Scott's original Conflict vs. Mistake article, I find:
Most of that, except maybe the part about voters seems completely compatible with HBD. Even taking the voters into account, through a combination of voluntary eugenics, and public education you could theoretically raise the societal IQ and show that mistake theory is a possible path to a successful society.
This line from "Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell":
...caused me to update negatively on Scott when I learned of the Christopher Brennan emails (which were sent before it) - not because I disapproved of his private position, but because this implied that line was a pure Denial of Peter.
Not that pure. There’s three levels of deniability to soften the lie of ‘I disagree with’: ‘sort of’ , ‘in a way’(redundant), ‘creeps me out’ (focusing on his feelings to avoid admitting his thoughts).
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That conflict vs. mistake article is pretty wild to go through.
Not, "mistake theorists believe that black people are dumber, but hide their power levels because doing otherwise would mean sticking their necks out."
...an almost exact summation of why the technocracy supported anti-HBD views. And the only way to get Scott to reveal his true thoughts was to change who was powerful. No amount of debate and convincing would have worked - he was already privately convinced, after all.
I reject the idea that there is a hard binary - you can believe that mistake theory is right for some circumstances for some people and conflict theory in others. When I talk to my dad about how stupid DEI is, he is receptive. When I argue with my brother about HBD... well it's just a bad idea. Thanksgiving dinners are a lot more pleasant if I just accept conflict theory on that one and recognize the only way to change anyone's mind is to simply win a presidential election first.
Why is it a wild read? You seem to be saying Scott is part conflict theorist, but I don't think you've argued it well.
A mistake theorist does not lie down on a train track to kill himself. He will move out of the way of an oncoming train. A mistake theorist will not try to have a discussion with a train. Likewise, a mistake theorist knows that conflict theorists exist. He will probably not try to have a discussion with them.
Know the difference
For Scott to "be a Conflict theorist on some things" you would need to demonstrate that he believes his opponents to be the enemy, in the #2 sense. I think you've only demonstrated that he does not lie down on train tracks.
He himself is someone who could only be modelled by conflict theory - his public actions and stated opinion were not motivated because he was mistaken about HBD; he misrepresented his own beliefs because the dominant intellectual paradigm prevented the technocracy (ie Scott) from publicly advancing the most accurate viewpoints or influencing policy in a logical direction. He could only be 'convinced' by a display of political power by the opposition. This is exactly the situation presented by the conflict theorist in the quote I pulled.
Oh, this doesn't make Scott a Conflict Theorist (Know the difference between #1 and #2). This just means the Conflict Theorist's description of reality is correct - Power is power.
Agreed. I was trying to say that the post was wild because in retrospect because many of the conflict theorist's beliefs seem justified in retrospect, and that Scott's own revealed behavior is a repudiation of his (and, admittedly, my own) naive inclination towards mistake theory as a descriptive model.
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Scott changed his public opinion on HBD due to the shifting winds of the passions of the (at least online- i.e. his audience) public, largely thanks to Elon Musk acquiring Twitter- unbanning all the icky right-wingers who did the uncredited yeoman's work for many decades challenging a blatant lie deeply rooted in our collective consciousness. Scott participated in the censorship of that group of people, although you could argue he low-key sabotaged the consensus with whatever support he gave of TheMotte.
But Scott's public opinion hasn't changed because of increasing IQ of technocrats motivated to improve policy; it changed because of a turning point in a memetic political conflict. You can't change the hearts and minds of the technocrats with evidence and well-reasoned arguments in the most important cases, you have to do it with political victory.
If this political shift hadn't happened, the high-IQ technocrats, including himself, would have happily continued defending the blatant lie of HBD denial and the catastrophic downstream political effects. But I do think his turnabout on HBD is basically explained by Musk's acquisition of Twitter. What people call a "vibe shift" is literally a politically-motivated billionaire changing content TOS and moderation on a political platform, not technocrats being convinced by rational argumentation and new evidence.
The intelligence-worship falls apart, because even the most intelligent are slaves to political conflict. You can't ignore it or pretend you are above participation or taking sides and only care about IQ, evidence, and reason.
I think you're kind of assuming too much.
I think it is perfectly consistent for Scott to chose to sacrifice any gains in the HBD space, for all of the other gains he could get everywhere else in the Overton window. That kind of pragmatism isn't a repudiation of mistake theory, it is an example of living it out.
If a position is truly poison for those who profess it in the public sphere, then it makes sense to me that a good mistake theorist will plod along in the background, working on fixing the policy issues they can openly and safely speak about without risk of reputational damage.
The reputational damage is caused by opponents engaging in conflict theory, but nothing says you have to stoop to their level.
The consequence of Scott's ethos is that, even though his job is ostensibly to be a rational, independent thinker in the public space, he's ultimately a Johnny-come-lately to one of the most important questions of the day. And his hesitancy was due to political headwinds- not evidence and arguments. I don't doubt the personal practicality of abstaining from the debate- and banishing dissent of the consensus from his own community, I question his value for "moving the Overton window" on things like the Melatonin Question but abstaining on HBD until political winds shifted in favor of the viewpoint he has now taken.
I definitely think he was a factor in me being convinced of HBD. Posing as a within-the-overton-window thinker while talking about views that might direct one to find what's actually true more plausible worked in my case, and surely there were a bunch of others for whom that was true as well.
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Scott could have been debanked and stripped of any professional license. Imagine not being able to get a bank account or credit card.
No, Scott was not at serious risk of being debanked; in the speech context, that was reserved for those who made a serious run at pre-Musk Twitter, and Scott was too niche for that. And all he had to do to vastly reduce the risk of being stripped of his professional license... was not to practice in the place most utterly under the control of the people who would do that. Scott never should have moved back to the Bay Area.
If you have celebrity status in one place on earth, you live there.
There are other cities with active rationalist communities. He could have gone to New York or Portland, and that would have been slightly less insane. Even better, he could have moved to Austin or Miami and been totally safe.
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How would Scott self-immolating have helped anything? It's not like he was sitting on some special knowledge that no one else in the universe had or that people couldn't read about in other blogs if they were inclined to. If he had explicitly pushed against the Overton Window on it, the Overton Window would have thrown him into the outer darkness. You push against the things you can shift, not sleeping tigers that are blocking the path.
Sometimes the Kolmogorov Option is the right one.
I don't think posting this exact blogpost 7 years ago would have been self-immolation. It would have been interesting and brave, neither of which it is now. Scott never claimed to be any Galileo, but what's clear is that to be a Galileo you need to have a bone to pick politically in order to be induced to face the headwinds of actually challenging Authority. It's not just about rational arguments and evidence.
What bones did Scott have to pick with authority back in 2017 outside of stuff like "unfuck the FDA somehow"?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/12/does-race-exist-does-culture/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/
Or in general
https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/things-i-will-regret-writing/
https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/things-i-will-regret-writing/page/2/
Some of these were likely more controversial in their original than their current form.
I swear someone made a big archive dump of the originals once. That kind of thing is so hard to find on the Internet...
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He picked quite a few bones with the entire social justice memeplex, which was clearly backed by authority.
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He doesn't, hence the capitulation to the consensus until the winds shifted. But Scott would mark it as a virtue that he has no bones to pick, or a vice that HBD-believing right-wing poaster is motivated politically. But it is clear that political radicalism is required to challenge strongly-held beliefs like this. The right-wingers speaking truth to power actually advanced knowledge in the face of adversity, Scott played neutral Switzerland until it was convenient to take the other side.
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I disagree somewhat. The politically motivated billionaire made the vibe shift possible by changing the TOS on his platform, but in my opinion the vibe shift didn't happen until Trump won. My impression is that until his victory was secured, progressives still thought Musk could be dealt with in the short to medium term.
Oh sure, but that only drives the point home. In essence, Scott has changed his public opinion on HBD because Trump won. We are very far from "high-IQ technocrats policy-maxing social utility." Nope- it's political conflict.
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