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Notes -
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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