SneerClub

I had thought lesswrong "merely" has a plurality of racists HBD'rs but judging from the total lack of comments calling out his racists bullshit and the majority of comments advising hiding your power level as a practical matter, I guess lesswrong is actually majority HBDers at this point.

Also, one of his followup comments (explaining why he doesn't want to just stay mask on like the other lesswrongers) is pretty stupid and gross:

Thanks, good comment. The quick low-effort version that doesn't require actually writing the posts is that without taking heritable IQ into account, I think you will be confused about:

1. Various ways in which post-apartheid South Africa is a bad place to live.
2. Why so many countries have market-dominant minorities.
3. Why Israel is so good at defending itself even against far larger countries surrounding it (and the last few centuries of Jewish history more generally).
4. Why the growth curves for East Asia and Africa looked so different over the last century.

1 and 4 show the continued willful ignorance about the harmful effect of colonialism and neocolonialism. The first part of 3 is obviously huge amount of material support from the US. I don't know what 2 is talking about, I assume he's got some stupid and racist interpretation of various historically contingent things.

From the replies:

But every man under the age of 30 that I've ever met at Lighthaven, that I've had the opportunity to speak with privately, has completely and totally integrated IQ differences into their ontology.

The entirety of Lighthaven needs locker insertion

Ngo has been playing footsie with race science since as long as I have been skimming LW.

The irony is that in any "normal" space (i.e. not Stormfront) he would have been booted out toot sweet for being a racist. On LW, he's tolerated, even celebrated, but apparently not enough for his liking. It's not enough that he can spew race science unopposed by any meaningful reaction, everyone else has to take his position.

Edit

the piece he authored 6 months ago and references here is a doozy too

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FuGfR3jL3sw6r8kB4/richard-ngo-s-shortform?commentId=9g5QK3Km25fMBHgcK

one comment visible by default

The overwhelming majority of successful civilizations throughout history have been nation-states, at least to some degree, which should be addressed in some capacity by any argument claiming that it's a suboptimal way to organize a society.

uh... the Roman Empire was a nation-state? Holy Roman Empire? (ok not as good an example) Ottoman Empire? Basically all of India pre-Brits?

A huge part of the French Revolution was the codification of France as "The Nation" of French people, not as the weird personifciation of the king. But somehow I suspect that bringing up the French Republic won't be hugely popular in this crowd.

ah, yes, we must defend "race science", the heretical political belief that gets millions from techbros that are empowered politically right now due to the rise in fascism. So brave, it's almost like we're on the internet 15 years ago talking about Ron Paul /s

Clearly one of the lesser intellectual crimes in this nazi manifesto, but the way rationalists use "ontology" to mean basically "core set of beliefs" irks me so much!! Though on the upside it leads to awe-inspiring metaphysical horror turns of phrase such as "update one's ontology".

Sneerclub was right.

are usually intellectually honest enough to be able to acknowledge that various heretical political beliefs might be true.

Ow you have more heretical political beliefs? Such as? Come on dont be shy. (Place your bets, will it be sexism, pedophilia or antisemitism).

Also odd how they instantly give the game away, are they talking about higher Ashkenazi IQ or the higher Asian IQ scores? Nope. Instantly goes to IQ with a hard r.

A lot of unexplored assumptions as well, race being real, iq tests being real, iq tests showing intelligence, iq being genetic, and all that being scientific, etc. Same issues as the Basilisk.

but right now it doesn't feel like LW is a place where I can collaboratively make intellectual progress on this very important topic.

Maybe that’s because people don’t feel comfortable when you say you should teach an AI race/iq pseudoscience????

Ngo does not seem to have been invited to speak at Hereticon 1 or 2