You probably shouldn't have said that. The case for his support for HBD-flavored racial supremacy is somewhat strong, and the case for his support for a new monarchy is not.
The case is not "strong" at all. He doesn't even state he supports HBD, only that he thinks some claims made by its proponents are likely enough to be correct or at least hard to prove not-correct. It's a rather uninteresting observation (everyone knows about some of these issues, they just disagree about the HBDers' causal analysis!) that only gets the attention it does because of how understandably contentious HBD is as a whole. The author does realize this of course, that's why he asks that the exchange not be publicized.
Just because the primary source is both readily available but presented as images on Twitter (apologies for the hosting domain, skip down to "Scott Siskind Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 6:12 PM"), the text:
The case for his support for HBD-flavored racial supremacy is somewhat strong
I don't think this is accurate at all. The case for his belief in HBD differences is strong. But I don't think you'll find evidence of him translating that to supremacy or any kind of racial ranking, especially across all dimensions. In fact, I think you'll find that he disavows any such conclusions.
He links approvingly to articles that appear to do exactly that, all the while saying that his public statements don't match his private feelings. Respectfully, I believe my own lying eyes.
> ... all the while saying that his public statements don't match his private feelings
Except that's not what he's doing, at all. There's no evidence that his links are intended to show approval either. A straightforward reading of what we've got is that he's probably been asked to discuss HBD in the previous (unseen by us) exchange and that's what he's doing, citing sources of HBDers' views.
That beggars belief. Not only does he cite them approvingly, but he takes the time to distinguish between which ones he finds particularly well-founded, and uses them as the summation for his first and primary argument, followed by "NEVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THIS, not even in confidence".
Again: the mail is right there for everybody to read.
We don't need to guess what the author's thinking. we know what his first and primary argument is since he tells us directly: he thinks HBD is worth discussing because a few of its claims are either likely to be true or hard to prove as not-true. (And his cautious framing of even this limited issue is revealing enough. One idea he's very clearly not entertaining, not even in private is "HBDers are 100% right about everything!") I'm not sure what's your evidence for rephrasing "well-founded" as an expression of approval, given this previous context. The easiest way by far of reading that exchange is that the author is simply pointing to sources, not approving of them.
It's true, he doesn't think HBD-ers are 100% right about everything: Alexander is careful to point out that's he's not as sure about HBD's predictions vis a vis the four Albion's Seed English migrations to the US, in contrast to his other links, or the "absolute nuggets of gold" that include the HBD information he gleaned from neoreactionaries.
How much attention do you want to keep drawing to this email? I'm happy to keep talking about it, but then, you know what I believe about Alexander at this point, so you can see why.
This is where you might be missing some important context about Alexander's views. Namely, he's the guy who literally wrote a point-by-point refutation of neoreaction. And he clearly says in his email messages that he cares about debunking really bad neoreactionary ideas such as the ludicrous notion that we should all be collectively asking for a new king, like the frogs in Aesop's tale.
So why not just credit the simplest explanation, that he's disappointed at not being able to do the same with a non-trivial portion of HBD claims? Do we really need to believe that this guy is secretly a huge racist who believes in fixed hierarchies of moral worth among races, when literally everything he writes publicly takes the very opposite as its starting point?
Look, I know I sound glib here, and I'm trying not to be, I promise I am, but the funniest part about this is:
(1) I agree, Alexander isn't a supporter of neoreaction-ism, and
(2) One of the few valuable bits of information he claims to have gleaned from them is NRx-flavored HBD!
You get how that's essentially saying "well, I definitely don't think we should create a global monarchy, but those people do seem to have a point about the suitability of Africans for chattel slavery", right? That's what NRx-flavored HBD is. (I mean: it's really what all HBD is, but the NRx people are explicit about it.)
But don't just take my word for it. One of the two "more" well-supported links he cites is to Steve Sailer's blog!
I am not here to call you a racial supremacist for enjoying Alexander's writing, for whatever that's worth to you. I like a lot of Christopher Hitchens writing. That doesn't make me, personally, an alcoholic.
(I edited this a bunch, but tried not to change the meaning of anything I wrote previously. Sorry if that was annoying.)
Does it not concern you at all that you have, like, zero ability to assess the merit of HBD claims, and therefore are in no position to reason so glibly and confidently about Alexander's motives? If arguments for population differences are compelling, then all this schlock about suitability to chattel slavery and what have you becomes irrelevant. You imply that Alexander believes the former due to preferring the latter, but that's only a plausible accusation if the former is assumed a priori to be ridiculous.
(It isn't; on the contrary, there is no plausible scientific hypothesis that can attribute population differences solely to environmental causes. The entire blank slate case relies on sneering of the sort you do here).
I find it strange when competent people get so fixated on flaunting their ignorance.
I'm sorry again, but I just have trouble equating Scott's supposed agreement (by way of NRx) as to the nowadays-quite-fashionable claim that "American capitalism is uniquely founded on the oppression of enslaved Africans" with moral support for any claim of racial supremacy. A claim that slavery "worked" really well is tantamount to a claim that powerful, enduring systems of social organization could be built on the oppression of slavery as a foundation, and vice versa. These statements only differ by way of their connotation as to whether they assume slavery to be morally acceptable.
Nothing I am saying has anything at all to do with the 1619 Project (of which I am not especially a fan). When NRx people talk about chattel slavery, they're really talking about chattel slavery. Like, Calvin Candie style. And again: this is the part of NRx thought that Alexander found compelling. It's right there in the email! Which is about scientific racism, and Alexander's secret support for it ("NEVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THIS"). He called it "pure gold", like Kenny Bania on Seinfeld.
> When NRx people talk about chattel slavery, they're really talking about chattel slavery. Like, Calvin Candie style.
I suspect you're quite right as to where most real-world HBD-pushers are coming from. If this is your reason for your remark ITT that "HBD is generally problematic, and does tend to demand a response", I of course agree with that. I'll even sympathize with the intuition that engaging at all with such notions is by all indications a bad idea.
But when the guy who chooses to wrestle with some of these ideas is someone who has previously taken the time to logically and comprehensively debunk absolute monarchy, of all things, I think there just might be some room for extending the benefit of doubt.
We don't disagree about Alexander's support for NRx and never did. Follow this thread towards its root and you'll see me complaining that the person who brought this email up tried to claim Alexander as an NRx-supporter. That's a stupid hill to die on; Alexander is notorious for writing a ponderous rebuttal to NRx, and, more importantly, there's a much more attractive, easily climbed, and trivially defended hill right next door, as the email demonstrates.
I don't know if we agree or disagree about Alexander and racial supremacism. I think the email lays Alexander remarkably bare on that front, to a degree you don't often see even from people who publicly affiliate with white supremacy. It's a hell of a thing.
Finally: you're right: I'm not much interested in Alexander as a subject. I certainly wouldn't have brought his racial supremacist email into a random Alexander blog post! I think the comment that did was justifiably flagged. But once that happened, and HBD-curious comments started coming out of the woodwork... well, there's value in being clear about what was actually said, and in not pretending like it's defensible.
Yeah. It's a little disappointing. I've always found his posts around cryptography especially to be very interesting, and he clearly knows at least as much about it as anyone else. So finding that he can be so close-minded and judgmental in other areas makes me sad.
Maybe they have me confused with someone else, maybe they're referring to the person who brought Alexander's flirtations with racial supremacy up on the first place ('tweren't I), or maybe they've concluded that not looking warmly on Alexander's claims of being "doxxed" by the NYT equates to believing he's a white supremacist. But, as you can see: Alexander is not a topic I find myself talking about all that much about on HN.
Regardless: the mail is right there for all of us to read, and I reach the obvious conclusions having read it. I'm not as interested in Scott Alexander's moral failings as I am in other people's feeble defenses of HBD-ism; unlike Alexander, HBD is generally problematic, and does tend to demand a response.
Finally: if you go looking through the 'dang comment archives, you'll find that we're not supposed to be litigating our posting histories or trying to dig up dirt on thread participants at all. Instead of replying to that comment warmly, you might have instead considered flagging it. I have trouble with this rule too --- there's a person on HN who fervently believes authenticated encryption is a bad thing, and I have a hard time not bringing that up in every cryptography thread they're in --- so I'm certainly not high-horsing you about it. At any rate, though: I'm right about the authenticated encryption thing, and whoever that rando is upthread, they're not right about me.
I was referring to this[0]. I said you've felt that way for a long time, not that you post about it frequently. All I'm accusing you of is having held this position strongly and for a long time. If you say the people trying to convince you otherwise aren't wasting their time, fair enough, my mistake.
That link says the opposite of what you claimed. Of course, I don't agree with it anymore; I hadn't seen the email when I wrote it. You've refuted your own argument, but that's not interesting, since it was refuted one comment previously already. You've also misrepresented your argument (which was not "you held this position for a long time"), just like you did in the thread I linked to upthread; of course, like the Alexander email, your bogus argument is right there for everybody to read.
Fair enough about the not dredging up comments thing, I shouldn't have piped up, but you're taking this as waaay more of an attack than it was. The more nicely-phrased version might've been something like "If you're only casually acquainted with this debate, and are thinking of reeling off a low-effort paragraph or two of rebuttal, it's probably not going to go anywhere because his position on this famously contentious and vitriolic topic is well-studied." It wasn't phrased that nicely, because I like and respect Scott and find these threads a little triggering, but it was a mildly rude comment from the sidelines, not an accusation of devilry or a claim to be refuted. The "weird fixation" and "bogus argument" stuff is a little over the top.
It's not the rudeness so much as the dishonesty, as I explained. If you want to defend Alexander effectively, best not to create the perception that his supporters are amoral and untethered from reality.
... in fact, if you dip into the Alexander doxxing thread, you'll find the person you're replying to made the same false allegation last year, too. That's a weird fixation to have, but everyone's got their hobbies, I guess.
