r/SneerClub archives
newest
bestest
longest
Banning eugenetics is as prejudiced as banning Islam (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/13jbo96/banning_eugenetics_is_as_prejudiced_as_banning/)
posted on May 16, 2023 05:33 PM by u/NaiveDeontologist
66

https://archive.is/1Rqe5

​

You can’t assess idea how many benefits it does or doesn’t have, because your principle commits you to putting your fingers in your ears and saying “la la la I can’t hear you” whenever someone discusses the issue. ConsiderGarrett Jones’ hypothesis that most international differences - eg between developed and underdeveloped countries - are due to IQ. And consider that IQ is mostly genetic and could be improved with eugenics. Bringing all underdeveloped countries up to First World living standards would be the most valuable thing humanity has ever done. Or consider Greg Cochran’s hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews have a 15-point genetic IQ advantage - there aren’t a lot of Jews starving or in prison. If you could lift everyone up fifteen points, you could come close to ending poverty even within developed countries. Obviously these hypotheses are controversial, but they’re controversial not because there’s a lot of evidence against them but because everything about genetics and society is controversial because of your policy of cutting off all lines of speculation that might lead to eugenics. I maintain that if we discussed these ideas openly, we might find that they held the key to ending global poverty, crime, and disease. Meanwhile, what has Islam given us? Pretty buildings, calligraphy, and hummus.

u/dgerard 43 points at 1684258827.000000

please do use the indirect link https://archive.is/1Rqe5

also, goddamn Scott I’m sure this is getting into reruns

permalink
u/zazzersmel 24 points at 1684259494.000000
yeah but what if saying the same crap over and over again were actually a sign of creativity? obviously, this hypothesis is controversial.
permalink
u/Epistaxis 41 points at 1684263213.000000

Meanwhile, what has Islam given us?

Rationalism means never having to look up the answers to your rhetorical questions

permalink
u/cashto 10 points at 1684289097.000000
Big "what have the Romans ever done for us?" energy.
permalink
u/Really_McNamington 1 points at 1684307084.000000
I'm guessing he was hinting at [Harry Lime's big cuckoo clock speech in The Third Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydkTy6GmFA). Or just coincidence.
permalink
u/Nahbjuwet363 36 points at 1684259819.000000

Uh sure, that’s all Islam has given “us.” As long as “we” are committed to knowing nothing whatsoever.

permalink
u/Dessythemessy 31 points at 1684261119.000000

First of all, christ on a bike.

Second, Islam has historically provided much for science and mathematics.

Islam has its problems, I could write an entire post on those problems, but they tend to pale in comparison to an ideological ranking of the worthiness of human beings. It has internal contradictions, much like any religion (which begs the question; why Islam in particular?) but the fundamental difference is one are a set of belief systems that stand in place of understanding the natural world while the other is a belief system tacked onto a paradigm in biology that holds little merit today.

I’ll give the guy credit, there are people who talk about Eugenics as something that is at its root just about selecting for genes. Whether you can separate that root from its historical implementation is another story. Like Richard Dawkins saying it works in cows, so in principle it should work in humans - the difference Dawkins misses is like most things he misses, nuanced. This nuance lies in the fact that what we would determine as being ‘fitter’ has no grounding in any actual objectivity (in human beings).

permalink
u/fn-ix 8 points at 1684269453.000000
> This nuance lies in the fact that what we would determine as being 'fitter' has no grounding in any actual objectivity I get what you’re trying to say here, but this argument seems too weak on its own to me. I’d be curious how you view the preferences of prospective parents in places like Denmark who, upon discovering their fetus carries some rare & debilitating genetic disease (after being provided screening free-of-charge by the state), opt for abortion. We could of course extend the argument to any debilitating disease – being in constant pain is as close to objectively “bad” as it gets. And from this here slippery slope the boulder can get rolling... Don’t get me wrong – I find any flavor of eugenics fundamentally abhorrent. But it’s tiny edge cases like this that make constructing a watertight barrier between what counts as capital-e Eugenics that we shouldn’t do and what are simply voluntary acts of compassion devilishly tricky. If the incidence of Down syndrome [is progressively reduced in the gene pool](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/) through successive generations as a result of individual decisions, is it just parents making private choices, or what some have termed “liberal” eugenics?
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 18 points at 1684273277.000000
\> Denmark who, upon discovering their fetus carries some rare & debilitating genetic disease (after being provided screening free-of-charge by the state), opt for abortion The real slippery slope here is trying to come up with a case where abortion is not a perfectly legitimate decision. I notice that many of the “what if baby has debilitating disability, do you think people who exist with said disability don’t deserve to exist“ arguments commonly ignore one the primary reason for abortion to exist, to prevent parents having children they can not adequately care for, for the wellbeing of both the child and the parents. ​ One must acknowledge that children with disabilities, often, require different standards of care than children without. Some disabilities require larger financial outlays than others, some require specialist care that is not available everywhere, special schooling, differing levels of emotional availability and empathy, perhaps even training. Many people simply arent financially or emotionally able to deliver this kind of care and it can destroy families. The moment you open the door to the argument as to whether parents should or should not be able to decide to abort so as not to give birth to a disabled child, you open the door to questioning whether abortion is ever justified, which, as far as I’m concerned, is not an argument we should still be having in this day and age. ​ Also, if the screening is to be offered, it must be offered for free and to everyone.
permalink
u/AlienneLeigh 5 points at 1684284184.000000
So the thing is, eugenics is a word for *coercive* (for whatever values of 'coercive') policies to "improve" the gene pool. Individual people deciding to have individual abortions for whatever reasons is not "eugenics" (although it may be all sorts of other things).
permalink
u/Arilou_skiff 3 points at 1684314156.000000
No, that's not really the case. Eugenics is the intentional manipulation of the gene pool in order to "improve" it, the level of coercion really doesen't enter into it. That said, there is technically a distinction between eugenics (trying to improve the gene pool) and other types of intentional manipulation that has some other goal (eg. reducing suffering for individuals) there is some overlap, but the goals are not the same. Aborting a child with a nasty heridatery disease because you don't feel you can provide adequate support isn't neccessarily an eugenic decision, even if eugenicists would agree with it. It's about goals. I do note that historically eugenics became kind of a fad and the word became attached to all sorts of health fads and miracle supplements and such even those that didn't have anything to do with genetics even by the standards of the day.
permalink
u/AlienneLeigh 2 points at 1684630757.000000
Well, yeah, i'm definitely aware of the history and the way it got used faddishly. I think, however, that defining "eugenics" as "any intentional manipulation of the gene pool" is watering the term down into uselessness.
permalink
u/Arilou_skiff 1 points at 1684631773.000000
That's not quite how I defined it though, it's "any intentional manipulation of the gene pool iwth the aim of "improving" it."
permalink
u/UntangledQubit 1 points at 1684294293.000000
Eugenics is a general term for intentional manipulation of the gene pool. The same term has been used both by proponents and critics of non-coercive forms of such manipulation, in particular the [new/liberal eugenics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_eugenics) movement.
permalink
u/goyafrau 13 points at 1684271180.000000
While pretty much everything is heritable, Down syndrome isn’t. It’s a chromosomal abnormality and the main risk factor by far is maternal age; there is a minor generic contribution but it’s nowhere close to older mothers in magnitude. (Never mind that the affected people do not reproduce themselves.) So no, you can’t “progressively reduce it in the gene pool”. A society can decide to selectively abort them, but the next generation will have pretty much the same incidence, or higher, if average age of mothers at conception goes up.
permalink
u/EnckesMethod 7 points at 1684272918.000000
I don't see this mentioned much in discussions about selective abortion and Down's syndrome; I think a lot of people basically ignore the strict definition of eugenics and use it as a sort of synonym for severe or eliminationist ableism.
permalink
u/Vampyromoteuthidae 3 points at 1684283292.000000
He used a bad example, but there are better ones. Fatal familial insomnia would be one. An extreme situation where arguably we should encourage people with the condition to not reproduce.
permalink
u/Really_McNamington 3 points at 1684306815.000000
Huntington's. Definitely would not wish that on a person and easy to weed out too.
permalink
u/Vampyromoteuthidae 1 points at 1684476100.000000
Fatal familial insomnia is also interesting because it is, from my understanding, a prion disease which is purely genetically inherited, not a random mutation. In other words, one of your parents had to have at least a recessive version of the gene. It's like the ideal disease for eugenicists 🤔
permalink
u/N0_B1g_De4l 5 points at 1684272960.000000
> no, you can’t “progressively reduce it in the gene pool”. A society can decide to selectively abort them, but the next generation will have pretty much the same incidence, or higher, if average age of mothers at conception goes up. That seems sort of like a quibble, doesn't it? It seems to me that, with sufficiently advanced medical technology, it should be possible to provide some treatment for older mothers that reduces the risk of Down Syndrome in pregnancy. That's not reducing it's incidence "in the gene pool", but it seems like a result that is close enough that most people would not bother differentiating. And, while (AFAIK) hypothetical, I don't think such a treatment is pure science fiction -- we have treatments that reduce the risk of maternal transmission of HIV, and I don't think they amount to "just abort the fetuses that get it".
permalink
u/goyafrau 3 points at 1684316826.000000
Down syndrome isn’t like AIDS - it’s not a communicable disease. The problem is that older mothers have lower quality eggs, in particular with a much higher likelihood of chromosomal abnormalities, most of which result in a nonviable fetus. (I honestly don’t know the details either.) Which, sure, is something in principle susceptible to medical intervention - is in fact already addressed via IVF. But while that reduces the population incidence of Down syndrome (compared to a counterfactual world where older women conceive naturally, or where doctors don’t screen the embryos for IVF), it doesn’t reduce the likelihood of future natural conceptions resulting in the chromosomal defect. You could imagine scifi medical technology to genetically engineers our species to no longer age, and perhaps generally improve how we make eggs (younger women can also give birth to babies with chromosomal defects). But that is very scifi. I’m not sure if I’m contradicting what you’re trying to say. I’m just addressing the biological basics here.
permalink
u/lobotomy42 27 points at 1684265323.000000

This segment from Scooter in the comments is pretty telling:

If we switched things around so that anyone who used the term “environmentalist” got accused of wanting to sterilize people, within a few decades the only people who wholeheartedly identified with environmentalism would be the ones who did want to sterilize people. But the fact that the label “environmentalist” would contain only bad people wouldn’t mean that we hadn’t erred in using it that way, or that we weren’t making a mistake by enforcing such a use of it.

Yes, Scooter, if the meanings of words were different, then what we’d be saying would be different. If good were bad and bad were good, we’d all have to be bad. Wow, amazing, I had never considered that.

This is the closest he can come to a coherent “argument” without just coming out and saying his obvious real position, which is that he thinks ranking people by race and then murdering them is not just fine, but actually his preferred policy end goal.

permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 10 points at 1684276594.000000
he doesn’t want to murder them, that would be messy. Instead he just wants to genetically engineer them out of existence.
permalink
u/Soyweiser 24 points at 1684267885.000000

interesting. I thought you were going to say a much worse thing, along the lines of “identify people you consider genetically inferior, then offer them money to undergo voluntary sterilization”.

Note for the people not in the know, Scott has suggested this as a solution to people being on welfare in his livejournal days.

permalink
u/biomatter 48 points at 1684259343.000000

damn. i hate when im reading through old stuff on reddit and in the middle of a sparkling, scintillating discussion i find someone has written over all her old comments with nonsense, fragmenting the discussion permanently. what hilarious, moving, romantic, haunting things could she have said? just to wash it all away, in this digital era of permanency? wow. that takes courage. i bet she was really cute, too

permalink
u/flannyo 47 points at 1684262129.000000

what has Islam given us?

algebra. considering their robot god runs on linear algebra I would’ve thought they’d be more respectful. also basically everything greek because the Muslims were the only ones who thought to preserve their writings. also, stunning advancements and contributions to world literature. also, modern medicine. also, city planning. also, astronomy. also, chemistry. also, comparative religion. also, pharmacology. also, the polymath (their Ideal Guy) is largely an islamic invention.

basically everything really the islamic golden age was called the golden age for a reason. hell at this point you could tell me Ibn Sina invented the stoplight and I’d go “yeah sounds right”

permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 19 points at 1684274153.000000
Hell, he couldn’t even come up with three sarcastic examples that didn’t speak in some way to the contributions of Islam to modern society. So you’re saying they mastered architecture and the written word to such a degree that they turned them into art forms the creation of which required also the mastery of various other scientific and aesthetic disciplines including but not limited to, mathematics, engineering, linguistics, painting, poetry, sculpture, prose, etc, etc. ​ This is why you will never be a good writer Scoot, you’re not very good at considering what you’re writing. ​ Edit: also hummus is delicious.
permalink
u/Euphoric-Dance-2309 5 points at 1684274796.000000
Was it Islam or individuals who happened to live in a stable society under an authoritarian ruler that just so happened to be Islamic? Are we making similar arguments that Christianity provided any advancements in technology? How about Buddhism?
permalink
u/flannyo 20 points at 1684275272.000000
sure, basically any wealthy, stable society will produce advancements in arts, technology, and science. that's not unique to islam. but the object of the sneer seems to believe that living within an islamic society ~~(or being muslim)~~ precludes one from contributing to the world
permalink
u/Euphoric-Dance-2309 3 points at 1684278338.000000
Yeah, a complete dumbass from start to finish.
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 11 points at 1684275409.000000
I’m just highlighting the fact that even though Scott was trying to be flippant by minimising the scientific and artistic advancements of the era, that his flippant answer actually suggests the exact opposite of what he is claiming. But you’re correct, the whole train of thought is ludicrous on a larger scale than I was referring to, but that only further supports my point that Scott has no idea what he is writing.
permalink
u/Euphoric-Dance-2309 3 points at 1684278304.000000
For sure, I was just channeling my cynicism towards all religions, lol.
permalink
u/JohnPaulJonesSoda 19 points at 1684272588.000000

Meanwhile, what has Islam given us? Pretty buildings, calligraphy, and hummus.

I like this Sid Meier’s Civilization thing where we get to narrow down thousands of years of history and a huge number of different cultures across multiple countries, empires, etc into a handful of things, and then assign those things as being creations of the majority religion in some of those areas for some of that time. So I have to ask: was surströmming caused by Christianity? Are Pokemon a gift of Shintoism? What religion gets credit for, say, Avengers: Endgame?

permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 2 points at 1684277063.000000
I dont agree with Scotts point, but it is rather hard to argue that a place of worship, originally created for that end, isn’t in fact a result of the religion the adherents of which built it. Now whether one wants to split hairs over the genesis of said religion, that’s up to the individual, because as I said, its rather a silly point to begin with.
permalink
u/JohnPaulJonesSoda 5 points at 1684323261.000000
Eh, I will argue that, at least a little bit - for one, places of worship often get built and used for multiple reasons (thinking of churches in small towns that also become the town hall, meeting center, theater, etc). For another, when we're talking about architecture (which is, I assume, what Scott is referring to when he talks about "pretty buildings", that's often based as much or more on the local culture and architecture vs the religion - the Hagia Sophia, for instance, doesn't look very much like the Old North Church, and I don't think you can credit that only to the theological differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Episcopal Church.
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 2 points at 1684336254.000000
Good points, my point was much more reductive, if a Mosque was built, for instance, it was because adherents of Islam, of one denomination or another, wanted a place for worship, whether it is then used for something else doesn’t change the reason it was originally constructed, therefore the religious needs or desires of some group led to the building of the Mosque. I’m not trying to claim that the techniques that go into creating these buildings are a result of any one specific religion, or that one specific religion or culture can lay claim to a particular style of building or art of any kind, more that, in select instances, one might be able to make the case that, if Islam had never existed in a region, that there would be no Mosque in that region, and so in that respect one could point to a specific Mosque and say “this pretty building would not exist were it not for Islam”. It’s not really a very strong argument, and not a refutation of the above idea, I was mostly being pedantic, really.
permalink
u/megatr 16 points at 1684266072.000000

he is a white suprematist, and his call in life is to convince as many nerds as possible that neoreaction is good

permalink
u/altered_state 2 points at 1684299262.000000
Kinda new to Scott and this sub, so real quick q. I'm Asian -- would I end up on Scott's yay or nay list?
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 2 points at 1684372533.000000
First they came for the socialists..
permalink
u/megatr 2 points at 1684473298.000000
yeah he thinks asian people are cool. you can read about how he likes studies where white and asian people have higher IQs. you can read about how he thinks white people and asian people dont get enough slots at prestigious universities when you rank everyone on IQ. its not surprising to learn that lots of asian people love scott alexander. you gotta imagine though he might sing a different tune the exact second a stopasianhate protest caused him to be late for work one day
permalink
u/sub_vs_dub 1 points at 1684331501.000000
Why do you ask?
permalink
u/Citrakayah 14 points at 1684269609.000000

Or consider Greg Cochran’s hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews have a 15-point genetic IQ advantage - there aren’t a lot of Jews starving or in prison. If you could lift everyone up fifteen points, you could come close to ending poverty even within developed countries.

Excuse me while I stare blankly into the abyss.

permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 17 points at 1684273660.000000
If only those god damn poors could smarten up. I’ve literally never heard of an intelligent poor person, much less a drug addict or homeless person. The system would have to be broken for that to happen, and as we all know, Moloch is not capitalism. ​ I have noticed a declining engagement with Siskind’s blog for a while now, which is good.
permalink
u/Citrakayah 12 points at 1684273912.000000
That's not even it. There used to be a whole lot of starving Ashkenazi Jews in prisons!
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 10 points at 1684275045.000000
Yes, but that was before. The system works now, so now if we look at the prison statistics in any country, say, the USA, for example, and we notice that one group is disproportionately represented, we can surmise that that group is genetically predisposed to lower intelligence. ​ Oh would you look at that, there is one group that is over represented in the (US) prison system. The syllogism is complete and we can conclude that black people are genetically predisposed to lower intelligence. ​ Do you see what I did there, I did my own research and, using Scott’s logic, I came to the correct conclusion. Isn’t racism fun? ​ that’s a big /s here, in case it wasn’t clear
permalink
u/DigitalEskarina 30 points at 1684261177.000000

consider Greg Cochran’s hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews have a 15-point genetic IQ advantage - there aren’t a lot of Jews starving or in prison.

Yeah but has that historically been true? For example, during the period between 1933 and 1945?

permalink
u/Soyweiser 9 points at 1684265608.000000
I'd also guess that the whole 'not starving' thing has a little bit to do with it. That and our over policing of the poor, and our under policing of the rich.
permalink
u/goyafrau 3 points at 1684272141.000000
What the fuck is that supposed to mean.
permalink
u/Soyweiser 5 points at 1684273988.000000
I meant re the og quote, not the 1933 era. My bad that it wasnt clear
permalink
u/goyafrau 1 points at 1684303157.000000
Jews aren’t in prison because of over policing the poor and under policing the rich?
permalink
u/Soyweiser 5 points at 1684313570.000000
No black people and poor people are more in prison due to those effects. I mean, lets not pretend the USA doesn't have a weirdly high amount of their population in prison, and often for imho insane reasons (the whole 3 strikes thing, and minor drug offenses). (And this is ignoring the whole amount of alleged colorblind laws which as an accidental side effect had the effect of primarily targeting black people (or poor people) like various laws around owning land and crack cocaine, the alleged CIA involvement in getting drugs into lower income areas etc etc).
permalink
u/goyafrau 1 points at 1684318894.000000
What does that have to do with Jews
permalink
u/DELETED 3 points at 1684319550.000000
[deleted]
permalink
u/goyafrau 1 points at 1684319681.000000
I don’t get your explanation. You said something weird about Jews, I ask for clarification, you write a bunch about … not Jews.
permalink
u/Soyweiser 6 points at 1684319991.000000
The initial remark was about how jews are less in prison, I'm saying that the racial makeup of the prison population is not a neutral thing. You cannot ignore that context. (A similar often ignored context in discussions like these, which racists love to bring up, is the asian american population, which also does better, but they then ignore that the people who immigrate from asia to america are people of means, which they then compare to poor people who have traditionally suffered for generations under a racist regime) [See also this](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/13jbo96/banning_eugenetics_is_as_prejudiced_as_banning/jkf9222/)
permalink
u/N0_B1g_De4l 7 points at 1684273279.000000
Also, does he even provide any stats to back up the initial claim? Jews are a small minority demographically to begin with, it's not really unusual if there aren't a lot of them in prison.
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 11 points at 1684274605.000000
Well you see, if one can assert that Jewish people are less likely to end up in prison because they are inherently more intelligent, one can then allow the reader to do their own research and infer that any group that shows disproportionate representation in the (US) prison system, must be inherently less intelligent. Do you see?
permalink
u/Xopher001 2 points at 1684307677.000000
I'm seeing a lot of hypotheses here and not a lot of theories
permalink
u/AbsolutelyExcellent -2 points at 1684276302.000000
kek
permalink
u/brokenAmmonite 12 points at 1684303884.000000

me systematically exploiting the third world for resources for 500 years: you know, if your IQ were higher, you would be more developed

permalink
u/lobotomy42 8 points at 1684263866.000000

Oh I just love the comparison between Hitler and Osama bin Laden as if those are remotely comparable.

Scott’s really going mask-off.

permalink
u/AlienneLeigh 8 points at 1684284021.000000

Wow, this piece is a fucking nightmare. I can’t even sneer at it, i’m too appalled.

permalink
u/saucerwizard 6 points at 1684268872.000000

Has scooter ever invoked the gay germ? Given his Cochran fandom and everything.

permalink
u/JasonPandiras 5 points at 1684323255.000000
Wasn't there like a week's worth of posts there about bisexuals being more susceptible to long covid recently?
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 3 points at 1684336562.000000
Yup, and he quietly walked it back later on in a typically weasel like fashion. I guess he did walk it back, but with a fraction of the force he spent asserting it.
permalink
u/saucerwizard 1 points at 1684354457.000000
Yes, and it seemed to me that was the real point of it all.
permalink
u/bahickma 5 points at 1684300202.000000

Fuck that guy, hummus rules.

permalink
u/Xopher001 2 points at 1684307930.000000
Wait, was that supposed to be an example of how Islam \*hasn't\* contributed much to society?
permalink
u/Studstill 4 points at 1684269132.000000

Oh, I forgot about this GRU classic! “How can America be free, look how they treat non-white citizens!”

Moral relativism is part and parcel of Rationalism, I guess.

permalink
u/ZoozeZor 2 points at 1684278973.000000

probably more prejudiced actually

permalink
u/BrentMaen 1 points at 1684275278.000000

Now that’s what I call “radical centrism” XD

permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -3 points at 1684281543.000000

He wrote a dialogue between two characters, and this is what one of them said. If you’re going to cherry-pick quotes to make someone look bad, quote the writers themselves. This is like using Voldemort quotes to discredit J.K. Rowling.

permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 18 points at 1684284780.000000
His dialogue is meant to be, and is interpreted by his commenters, as him ’steelmanning’ various positions. What he is really doing is guiding the audience through his own flawed logic, pretending that it is representative of both sides of the argument in their strongest form, so that they can reach the conclusion he wants them to. This form of rhetoric is especially duplicitous as it allows him to control both sides of the narrative while allowing his followers to feel like they are seeing a balanced discussion. He should be sneered at for this. ​ Edit: in the interest of fairness u/Actual--Percentage replied to this comment before I had edited to add the below analysis ​ in fact the next part of the discourse, where he counters the above quote, makes this explicit. Lets see if you can follow. In the above, he makes the point that Ashkenazi Jews are 15 points above other ethnicities on average due to their genetics, he says that this is backed by evidence, he has provided a reference to this. He then pulls out a totally unverified factoid, that there aren‘t many Askenazi Jews in prison or subject to poverty. In the rest of the debate he doesn’t refute this part of even mention it again, its a given apparently. But did you see what he did here, he has asserted, with evidence, that Ashkenazi jews are genetically smarter, he has then asserted, without evidence, that this fact means that they are less likely to end up poor or in prison. The implication here is that intelligence is the reason there are fewer Ashkenazi jews in prison. If we do our own research we can find out which race is disproportionately represented in the (US) prison population. Protip, its black people. Following his own logic we can conclude: black people are overrepresented in the prison population because they are genetically lower in IQ than other groups. Does that seem correct to you? Do you see the sleight of hand, he has established a chain of logic which draws a conclusion, he has disguised it within the framework of his ‘steelman’ debate and he has given it the veneer of credibility by putting it amongst sourced assertions, bundling it into a debate in which, presumably, weak arguments and fallacious logic will be exposed and refuted, but he has not refuted this, and he hasn’t even provided evidence for the claim about Jews in prison. IN FACT, a cursory google reveals that Jewish people (since there appear to be no stats for Ashkenazi Jews as a proportion of prison population, why would there be?) represent 1.7% of the US population, they also represent 1.7% of the US prison population. Hardly underrepresented, in fact they are not under represented at all, nor over represented. Which makes one wonder with what basis he made the claim. So yeah, this is as bad as it seems, he is either being incredibly careless, or he is being a duplicitous racist, given some of his other stances, I’m firmly in the ‘duplicitous racist’ camp.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -1 points at 1684285993.000000
I think that this post is trying to make him out as prejudiced/ignorant of Islamic contributions in a way that is not representative of his actual attitudes towards Islam, not sneering at him for what you described. Reading through the article, the anti-eugenics position doesn't seem to be a straw-man. Do you think it is?
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 8 points at 1684288772.000000
I think its irrelevant, as my comment should have made clear. I think he is using this debate to smuggle even more alarming views. I dont think it is the point of the article, but I do believe it is intentional, he has done this before enough times to convince me of that. One of his favourite manoeuvres is to create false equivalences that minimise incredibly harmful ideas by comparing them to less harmful ones as though they are equal. If he isn't being deliberate about it, he is much dumber than I give him credit for, and I don’t give him much credit. Think about it like this, he has spent thousands of words crafting this debate between his two ’steelmen’ only to come to the conclusion that the whole subject is hard and he isnt sure what he thinks about it. This is another Siskind classic, he rarely, if ever, comes down in favour or against whatever ‘difficult’ question he is pontificating about. In the end he throws up his hands and sits on the fence. The key to figuring him out is to look for the unsubstantiated assertion, the ones he cant reference because they are either made up, or false, and find out what they are implying, as I have done in my above comment. One must ask oneself, if his conclusion is usually ‘I dont know what to think of this 20,000 word essay I just wrote‘ why did he write 20,000 words about it? I’ll end with a quote from goodreads, one of many that express the same sentiment concerning a novel Siskind wrote. (I don’t endorse the novel, Siskind (even discounting his views) is my least favourite kind of writer, but I believe it supports the point I am making, that Siskind is not being accidentally careless.) >The book crazy premise and interconnectedness is amazing. The main plot get's you incredibly invested and it converges perfectly in the end. Everything is foreshadowing, everything has a deeper meaning that gets revealed in such a clever way nearer to the end.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 1 points at 1684289702.000000
In my above comments, I wasn't trying to argue that what Scott did in this article was ok, just that this post inaccurately represented his views to make him look bad. Are you arguing that this is justified because he indirectly promotes harmful ideas? If you would like, I can argue against the points you've made in this comment, I'd hate all that text to be for nothing (this is not sarcastic).
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 5 points at 1684292968.000000
I’ve long since come to my conclusions about Siskind. If you don't agree, that’s up to you. I agree that the actual excerpt in the post does not necessarily point towards him having opinions about Islam one way or the other, when considered in context.I’m not arguing that it is justified, I am stating my case in response to your original comment “quote the writers themselves” that Siskind harbours his views using duplicity, he hides them in these little faux debates, to name one technique, so that he can’t be quoted. I see you elsewhere asking for examples if his duplicity, this is a decent, albeit long, writeup demonstrating some of the techniques he uses. I cant say that everything here conforms to my opinion, but it is worth reading if you want to see for yourself why Siskind should not be taken seriously. [https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method](https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method)
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 3 points at 1684293776.000000
Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense. If you feel like it's worth your time, what you think is(are) the worst aspect(s) of Scott Siskind / his writing? Do you think he is more prejudiced that he lets on, and tries to pass these prejudices on through a rationalist lense? Do you think that he actually believes what he writes, but has come to false and harmful conclusions, only hinting at these conclusions in his writing? Is it best summarized by the following excerpt from the passage you posted? Instead he engages in a litany of small bullshits—shoddy arguments that at their best compound into banality, but at their worst compound into something deeply destructive, all made over such length that smoking guns are hard to find, which is of course the point. Some combination? Other factors? I'll try to check out anything you mention.
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 7 points at 1684297116.000000
I think the linked passage you provided is a succinct summary of his writing, as I see it. As I have mentioned, my personal opinion is that he is deliberately trying to steer his audience in a direction that supports certain ideas that he is afraid to state explicitly because they are socially unacceptable. There is plenty of evidence to support this and its not a conclusion I have come to entirely by myself. [https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/old\_scott\_siskind\_emails\_which\_link\_him\_to\_the/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=ios\_app&utm\_name=ioscss&utm\_content=2&utm\_term=1](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/old_scott_siskind_emails_which_link_him_to_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) the comments of this thread contain links to transcripts where he admits himself that he is using his blog to steer people. It also outlines some of his intellectual influences. You’ll have to look into reactionaries and neo-reactionaries yourself if you want to know the sort of views they entertain. It also highlights a few of his ludicrous and demonstrably false beliefs. Its a short step from here to assume that he is doing more than he lets on in these emails. Considering they were leaked, and the tone in which they are written, one assumes that they were sent to someone he wouldn’t trust with any really damaging views he may have. Once you know he is deliberately leading his readers in one way, it seems logical to assume that, when he makes very obvious blunders like the one I have outlined above, and they point in a particular direction not altogether removed from his other, explicit, beliefs, that he is at least maybe doing it on purpose. ​ edit: I didn’t even get around to mentioning how banal his actual prose is. I would say that his prose is the worst thing about him, but that would be irresponsible, given his reach and his ideas, but lets just say that his prose, at its most florid is like a destitute mans Douglas Adams, and I don’t care much for Douglas Adams
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 4 points at 1684296020.000000
Here's something I wrote up a while ago about Scott's mistakes; https://marxbro1917.substack.com/p/scott-alexander-is-very-wrong-about
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 2 points at 1684296430.000000
Thanks, I'll read this + the eruditorumpress article in full soon.
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 2 points at 1684468771.000000
Any thoughts yet?
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 1 points at 1684647091.000000
Your essay is honest, and you clearly know more about Marx and Marxism than I do. I think overall it's a good essay, but by the end I think you and Scott still believe the same thing about Marx. But you only conflict over different definitions of the word "essence". Unless I'm wrong, and I very well could be, you both interpret Marx as thinking, "social human nature exists, but it is but a development of the surrounding social environment". You said that this essay was about "Scott's mistakes". but it seems to be about one very niche and potentially excusable mistake (as he was getting Marx's views second hand). Not to be critical, but your comment seems more like a promotion of your Substack rather than direction to essay primarily meant to expose Scott's flaws. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I was just expecting something different. ​ As for the eruditorumpress article, I don't have anything nice to say about that. I've only rigorously read half of it, but the article seems to more accurately describe itself than anything Scott's written. A few things that stood out to me as particularly bad was when the author stated that Scott was racist and anybody trying to defend him was racist (1), and mainly just trying way too hard to label Scott as a fascist-racist-eugenics-supporting Nazi. For what it's worth, I find the author extremely unlikable and the argumentation poor, which is why I didn't thoroughly read the whole thing. From "humble bragging" about their PHD to angry outbursts at commenters, the author seems a bit narcissistic. I wouldn't usually criticize the author, but I couldn't any arguments that didn't collapse under their own weight. The author seems very psychologically troubled, saying that they broke down crying during this essay, meaning that they're either abnormally unstable, or made this up for sympathy points. ​ I have a hard time seeing why anybody would think this is reasonable criticism. If you fall in this camp, maybe tell me which points you think are strongest? ​ 1. "The claim that he’s troublingly invested in racist bullshit is straightforward and, frankly, uninteresting; anyone trying to dispute it has a disingenuous agenda most likely involving racist bullshit." 2. Another sentence I thought demonstrated the absurdity of this essay, but I didn't know where to put it. "This sounds extreme. That’s because it is. Scott Siskind provided intellectual legitimacy to a movement that led directly to a fucking fascist coup."
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 2 points at 1684648156.000000
> "social human nature exists, but it is but a development of the surrounding social environment". Scott never says anything like that in his essay. Scott says the following; >As far as I can tell, Marx literally, so strongly as to be unstrawmannable, believed there was **no such thing as human nature** and everything was completely malleable. I have shown this to be untrue. Do you disagree? >but your comment seems more like a promotion of your Substack rather than direction to essay primarily meant to expose Scott's flaws. My essay shows that Scott has very poor reading comprehension and does not properly cite his work. That seems like two pretty big flaws. **edit:** I don't want you to think I'm overstating my case here. Marx's thoughts on human nature are, in one sense, very niche. But how is it that Scott Alexander could make so many mistakes on such a niche topic that would probably take him an hour or two at most to do some research and reading about? Why is Scott saying Marx is "unstrawmannable"? Why does Scott go on to say "I understand this is still a matter of some debate in the Marxist community" but then never cite these other Marxists or disclose what their arguments are? Why does Scott quote Singer saying "Marx does not challenge the classical economists within the presuppositions of their science" when that's clearly contradicted by Singer himself just 33 pages later? These are not rhetorical questions, by the way, if you have any answers to my questions here I'd like to know. I'm writing about this topic not because I think it's especially galling that Scott got this one particular niche topic wrong. I'm writing about it because I think it's an illustrative case study in just how poor Scott's writing and reading comprehension skills are.
permalink
u/Elegant_Positive8190 4 points at 1684295332.000000
I should apologise for edit sniping you like that, I was constructing the rest of the reply but had hit send to save it while i checked the article again. Thats my mistake and I‘ll edit my original comment to reflect that.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 2 points at 1684295779.000000
No problem, thanks for the quality replies
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 11 points at 1684284126.000000
He has openly supported eugenics before, e.g.; https://www.eruditorumpress.com/media/uploads/eud1-egveagch-6.png He uses "characters" to express his opinions because he knows his ideas are unpopular, poorly supported, and he wants to worm his way out of being quoted on it.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -4 points at 1684285576.000000
I think that this post is trying to make him out as prejudiced/ignorant of Islamic contributions in a way that is not representative of his actual attitudes towards Islam. As for the image, posting a 10 year old quote of something Scott actually said (that I think he would still probably endorse if it wouldn't bring him backlash) is much better than what OP did. Does he regularly use characters to express controversial views without clarifying his actual views? Looking at his self-labeled [most controversial posts](https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/things-i-will-regret-writing/) (link to SSC Things I will Regret Writing), I don't see him doing this at all.
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 9 points at 1684287690.000000
**Bob**: So this guy's response to being proven wrong on one specific event was to basically answer "yes, but how many times does that happen?" **Alice**: So he was moving the goalposts from a discussion of one event to a discussion of many different events? **Bob**: Yes, he linked to something completely irrelevant to the discussion and said "I don't see him doing this at all", as if showing Scott not using a particular bad argumentative technique in a couple of pieces was evidence that those bad argumentative techniques were never used. This is despite the evidence being right in front of him in the original article in question. **Alice**: Some people are just stans for bloggers and don't really think about what they're saying. **Bob**: I think he might have a real problem with reading comprehension or even a mild learning disability. **Alice**: Haha, I don't think you can make diagnoses like that over the internet.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -1 points at 1684288298.000000
Lol, nice. Did you use ChatGPT? Anyways, do you have any examples to support your claim that he does this consistently? When you said "uses" I though you meant he did this consistently, but I don't see any evidence of this besides the one example you generalized from.
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 6 points at 1684288470.000000
>support your claim that he does this consistently? Where is this claim of mine?
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -1 points at 1684289179.000000
I thought it was implied when you stated "uses", did you mean to imply that Scott hid behind characters at any other time besides this post, or is this just a misunderstanding?
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 4 points at 1684290289.000000
How does the word "uses" imply the word "consistently"?
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -1 points at 1684290618.000000
I meant consistently as in regularly, not frequently. I apologize if my word choice was clumsy. Did you mean to imply that Scott hid behind characters at any other time besides this post, or is this just a misunderstanding?
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 4 points at 1684290671.000000
How does the word "uses" imply the word "regularly"?
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 2 points at 1684291450.000000
I interpreted your use of uses as I did the following sentences: She uses her IPhone instead of her Android to text people. He uses sunscreen to protect his skin. In this format, "X uses Y to Z", I assume that when X seeks to accomplish Z, Y is used most of the time. Scott, being a blogger, expresses his opinions regularly. So when you state "He uses "characters" to express his opinions", I took your comment to mean that he uses characters as vehicles for his opinions regularly. Again, I am sorry if my use of language was clumsy. Did you mean to imply that Scott hid behind characters at any other time besides this post, or is this just a misunderstanding?
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 2 points at 1684291812.000000
I think words like "clumsy" and "misunderstanding" might be too mild to describe how badly you're embarrassing yourself right now.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 1 points at 1684292069.000000
Again, I am sorry if my use of language was clumsy. Did you mean to imply that Scott hid behind characters at any other time besides this post, or is this just a misunderstanding?
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 2 points at 1684292217.000000
It's weird that you think the word "uses" implies the word "regularly", yet you cannot understand the actual implication of my writing here.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 0 points at 1684292669.000000
So, to be clear, you did not mean to imply that Scott used characters as a vehicle for his opinions at any other time? I'm sorry for time delay in responses, I'm having technical difficulties.
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 2 points at 1684293169.000000
There's no real need for me "to be clear" since you're so good at understanding what is and isn't implied.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 0 points at 1684294416.000000
I didn't mean to give the impression that I thought I was better at seeing the meaning in your post than you were, I was just elaborating on my thought process and why I reached the conclusion I did. For the times that I did ask "So, to be clear, you did not mean to imply that Scott used characters as a vehicle for his opinions at any other time?" I didn't mean to state that you actually did imply that, only that I was and am genuinely confused to as if that was your intention. Is there any point in continuing to ask it?
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 3 points at 1684294871.000000
I'm not sure why you would be confused about my intention when my words are written very clearly.
permalink
u/sub_vs_dub 8 points at 1684331757.000000
You are being misleading. In the article, Boer talks about Islam negatively in this way and puts forward certain ideologies, and Adraste argues against those ideologies. After the dialogue, Scott immediately says he thinks Adraste is more likely to be wrong. The rest of the essay is about supporting Boer's points and suggesting they're more likely to be true than Adraste. So the correct analogy would be if JK Rowling wrote an essay (instead of a story) that was Voldemort quotes and Dumbledore quotes, followed by saying "I regret to say that Dumbledore is incorrect when he says Voldemort is wrong." ​ Also, good to see that not only do rationalists learn everything they need to know from Harry Potter fanfiction, the best false analogies they can come up with also use Harry Potter.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage 0 points at 1684362125.000000
The point I was making in my comment was that somebody looking at this post would likely assume that Scott said for himself, and endorses, the text that was posted, which he didn't. The title and post makes him out to be prejudiced against Islam or ignorant of Islamic contributions, which anybody reading the article with context would know is misleading. The only time Scott presents his own opinion as his own is on the following occasions. The first is when he examines forced sterilization in India, which the U.S. supported, arguing that a large part of people's aversion to eugenics is simply with the name. This text is not explicitly for eugenics or against Islam in any way. The only other time (besides the footnotes, in which he states the he thinks Galton had a good 19th century view on eugenics) is when he states "Character views are not author views, but I will admit to agreeing with Beroe’s final paragraph above", which is quoted at the bottom of this comment. At no point does Scott say that Boer is more likely to be right, like you said. And even if he did, this does not warrant taking him out of context like this. I used J.K. Rowling because she is well known, and I guessed that this subreddit feels similarly towards her and Scott, for similar reasons. ​ The quote: You also make a compelling point. I cannot deny that past atrocities cast deontological shadows, making us wary of doing anything in their vicinity. Indeed, it seems like this is the origin of deontology, and all moral systems beyond a naive act utilitarianism - that sometimes our attempts to do good will end in evil, and so we shut off large categories of apparently-good things because they resemble those that have historically ending in evil more often than we expected. If I have any argument at all here, beyond a simple “well, my intuitions about whether to do this say no in this particular case”, it’s that we should rarely let an atrocity cast shadows over speech, belief, or opinion, because once we ban those things, we lose the capacity for self-correction. I may deny your right to save the whales, but I will defend to the death your right to argue that the whales should be saved without facing the least bit of social sanction for your views.
permalink
u/sub_vs_dub 2 points at 1684496927.000000
Scott has a dialogue between these two characters, and then does immediately say he thinks Adraste is more likely to be wrong. This suggests he thinks Boer is more likely to be right. Given that you are ignoring this natural interpretation of what was written, it does not seem like you are arguing in good faith (or just have a strong bias in favor of Scott which makes it difficult for you to see the natural implications of what he has written), and so I will not respond to further comments in this thread.
permalink
u/Actual--Percentage -2 points at 1684642653.000000
\>Be u/sub_vs_dub \>Make irrelevant point while fabricating evidence \>Get debunked \>Refuse to elaborate further Ok, buddy. For anybody who thinks this sub should have a shred of intellectual honesty, please read the actual article before coming to conclusions.
permalink
u/MarxBroshevik 3 points at 1684731329.000000
So you don't like when people "fabricate" evidence. Yet you ignore Scott Alexander's mistakes and fabrications regarding Marx. Can you explain this discrepancy to me?
permalink
u/dgerard 1 points at 1684706914.000000
whatever you think you're doing here, we urge you in green to reconsider
permalink
u/Abandondero 1 points at 1684722431.000000

I think the Islamophobia is supposed to side-track us from the racism. (Judging from some of the threads in the comments here, maybe that worked.)

permalink