Thread for discussing Bostrom's email and apology

While I do sympathise with them having to handle yet another scandal which most of them had no involvement with, this comment seems to both oversimplify the differences and misrepresent what people were actually asking for post-FTX:

1. The actions of FTX and SBF were, from three or four days after the news broke, universally condemned. Many people feel Bostrom's apology was reasonable.
2. CEA had been directly involved in helping establish Alameda/FTX, and had actively worked with them and promoted them ever since. Bostrom is often cited, but nowhere near as closely involved with the organisation, at least formally.
3. What people were asking for was not for them 'to make the conventional statement', but to show evidence of honest introspection: to admit to responsibility where and if applicable (given their ongoing involvement), and give some kind of reason to believe they'd learned something useful so that nothing like it would happen again.

As far as I know, they've still offered no such public introspection.

we should not be held accountable for what we wrote 25+ years ago unless we repeat it

But repeating it is exactly what his "apology" did! None of the people angry about this is thinking "Bostrom was racist 26 years ago, and that's problematic even though he apologized and has changed". The point is that his new letter exemplifies how he is racist and supports eugenicist ideas still.

While I think it can make sense to model whole organisations as having traits like 'truth-seeking' or 'having integrity' or 'transparent', particularly when they are small and homogenous, it's always worth remembering that organisations are made up of people, and those people can vary a lot along all those traits. For example, CEA's character could change rapidly after hiring a lot, or if they lose one exceptionally conscientious person, etc.

Thanks a lot for raising this, Geoffrey. A while back I mentioned some personal feelings and possible risks related to the current Western political climate, from one non-Westerner's perspective. You've articulated my intuitions very nicely here and in that article.

From a  strategic perspective, it seems to me that if AGI takes longer to develop, the more likely it is that the expected decision-making power would be shared globally. EAs should consider that they might end up in that world and it might not be a good idea to create and enforce easily-violated, non-negotiable demands on issues that we're not prioritizing (e.g. it would be quite bad if a Western EA ended up repeatedly reprimanding a potential Chinese collaborator simply because the latter speaks bluntly from the perspective of the former). To be clear, China has some of this as well (mostly relating to its geopolitical history) and I think feeling less strongly about those issues could be beneficial.

I agree!  Greater leniency across cultural divides is good and necessary.

But I also think that:

(1) That doesn't apply to the Bostrom letter

(2) There are certain areas where we might think our cultural norms are better than many alternatives; in these situations, it would make sense to tell the person from the alternate culture about our norm and try to persuade them to abide by it (including through social pressure).   I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that there's a tradeoff between cultural inclusion and maintaining good norms, and that the optimal balance between the two will be different for different norms.

I think censorship would be a bad choice here, because the EA forum hasn't discussed these concepts previously (in any routine way, I'm sure there is a screed or two that could be dug up from a mound of downvotes) and is unlikely to in the future.

I would agree that race/IQ debates on the EA forum are unlikely to produce anything of value. But it's my experience that if you have free discussion rights and one banned topic, that causes more issues than just letting people say their piece and move on.

I'd also agree that EA isn't meant to be a social club for autists - but from a cynical perspective, the blithely curious and alien-brained are also a strategic resource and snubbing them should be avoided when possible.

If people are still sharing takes on race/IQ two weeks from now, I think that would be a measurable enough detraction from the goal of the forum to support the admins telling them to take it elsewhere. But I would be surprised if it were an issue.

Agreed.

I'm no cultural conservative, but norms are important social tools we shouldn't expect to entirely discard.  Anthropologist Joe Henrich's writing really opened my eyes to how norms pass down complex knowledge that would be inefficient for an individual to try to learn on their own.

LessWrong in-general is much less centered around personalities and individuals, and more centered around ideas. Eliezer is a bit of an outlier here, but even then, I don't think personality-drama around Eliezer could even raise to the level of prominence that personality-drama tends to have on the EA Forum.

I for one probably wouldn't have brought it up on LessWrong because it seems like a tempest in a teapot. What is there to say? Someone who is clearly not racist accidentally said something that sounds pretty racist, decades ago, and then apologized profusely. Normally this would be standard CW stuff, except for the connection to EA. The most notable thing — scary thing — is how some people on this forum seem to be saying something like "Nick is a bad person, his apology is not acceptable, and it's awful that not everyone is on board with my interpretation" ("agreed", whispers the downvote brigade in a long series of -1s against dissenters.) If I bring this up as a metadiscussion on LW, would others understand this sentiment better than me?

I suspect that the neurotypicals most able to explain it to weirdos like me are more likely to be here than there. Since you said that 

normie EAs" (IMO correctly) see glaring problems with Bostrom's statement

I assume you mean the apology, and I would be grateful if you would explain what these glaring problems are. [edit: also, upon reflection maybe it's not a nuerodiverse vs neurotypical divide, but something else such as political thinking or general rules of thought or moral system. I never wanted to vote Republican, so I'm thinking it's more like a Democrat vs Independent divide.]

I am curious, too, whether other people see the same problems or different ones. (a general phenomenon in life is that vague statements get a lot more upvotes than specific ones because people often agree with a conclusion while disagreeing on why that conclusion is true.)

Yes, I agree that there's a non-trivial divide in attitude.  I don't think the difference in discussion is surprising, at least based on a similar pattern observed with the response to FTX.   From a quick search and look at the tag, there were on the order of 10 top-level posts on the subject on LW.  There are 151 posts under the FTX collapse tag on the EA forum, and possibly more untagged.

I'll limit myself to one (multi-part) follow-up question for now —

Suppose someone in our community decides not to defer to the claimed "scientific consensus" on this issue (which I've seen claimed both ways), and looks into the matter themselves, and, for whatever reason, comes to the opposite conclusion that you do. What advice would you have for this person?

I think this is a relevant question because, based in part on comments and votes, I get the impression that a significant number of people in our community are in this position (maybe more so on the rationalist side?).

Let's assume they try to distinguish between the two senses of "racism" that you mention, and try to treat all people respectfully and fairly. They don't make a point of trumpeting their conclusion, since it's not likely to make people feel good, and is generally not very helpful since we interact with individuals rather than distributions, as you say.

Let's say they also try to examine their own biases and take into account how that might have influenced how they interpreted various claims and pieces of data. But after doing that, their honest assessment is still the same.

Beyond not broadcasting their view, and trying to treat people fairly and respectfully, would you say that they should go further, and pretend not to have reached the conclusion that they did, if it ever comes up?

Would you have any other advice for them, other than maybe something like, "Check your work again. You must have made a mistake. There's an error in your thinking somewhere."?

Is it okay if I give my personal perspective on those questions?

1. I suppose I should first state that I don't expect that skin color has any effect on IQ whatsoever, and so on. But ... I feel like the controversy in this case (among EAs) isn't about whether one believes that or not [as EAs never express that belief AFAIK], but rather it is about whether one should do things like (i) reach a firm conclusion based purely on moral reasoning (or something like that), and (ii) attack people who gather evidence on the topic, just learn and comment about the topic, or even don't learn much about the topic but commit the sin of not reaching the "right" conclusion within their state of ignorance.
2. My impression is that there is no scientific consensus on this question, so we cannot defer to it. Also, doesn't the rationalist community in general, and EA-rationalists in particular, accept the consensus on most topics such as global warming, vaccine safety, homeopathy, nuclear power, and evolution? I wonder if you are seeing the tolerance of skepticism on LW or the relative tolerance of certain ideas/claims and thinking the tolerance is problematic. But maybe I am mistaken about whether the typical aspiring rationalist agrees with various consensuses.
3. [Whether the purported consensus folks often refer to is actually existent] The only consensus I think exists is that one's genetic code can, in principle, affect intelligence, e.g. one could theoretically be a genius, an idiot, or an octopus, for genetic reasons (literally, if you have the right genes, you are an octopus, with the intelligence of an octopus, "because of your genes"). I don't know whether or not there is some further consensus that relates somehow to skin color, but I do care about the fact that even the first matter is scarily controversial. There are cases where some information is too dangerous to be widely shared, such as "how to build an AGI" or "how to build a deadly infectious virus with stuff you can order online". Likewise it would be terrible to tell children that their skin color is "linked" to lower intelligence; it's "infohazardous if true" (because it has been observed that children in general may react to negative information by becoming discouraged and end up less skilled). But adults should be mature enough to be able to talk about this like adults. Since they generally aren't that mature, what I wonder is how we should act given that there are confusing taboos and culture wars everywhere. For example, we can try adding various caveats and qualifications, but the Bostrom case demonstrates that these are often insufficient.
4. [What the information value of "more accurate [...] views on race" would even be "if true,"] I'd say the information value is low (which is why I have little interest in this topic) but that the disvalue of taboos is high. Yes, bad things are bad, but merely discussing bad things (without elaborate paranoid social protocols) isn't.
5. [How Black people and other folks underrepresented [...] might react to seeing people in these communities speaking casually about all of this, and what implications that has for things like recruitment and retention in AI safety.] That's a great question! I suspect that reactions differ tremendously between individuals. I also suspect that first impressions are key, so whatever appears at the top of this page, for instance, is important, but not nearly as important as whatever page about this topic is most widely circulated. But... am I wrong to think that the average black person would be less outraged by an apology that begins with "I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago" than some people on this very forum?

- Why the rationalist community seems to treat race/IQ as an area where one should defer to "the scientific consensus" but is quick to question the scientific community and attribute biases to it on a range of other topics like ivermectin/COVID generally,  AI safety, etc. 

With ivermectin we had a time where the best meta-analysis were pro-ivermectin but the scientific establishement was against ivermectin. Trusting those meta reviews that were published in reputable  peer reviewed is poorly understood as "not defering to the scientific consensus". Scott also wrote a deep dive on Ivermectin and the evidence in the scientific literature for it.

You might ask yourself "Why doesn't Scott Alexander write a deep dive on the literature of IQ and race?" Why don't other rationalists on LessWrong write deep dives on the literature of IQ and race and questions about which hypothesis are supported by the literature an which aren't. 

From a truth seeking perspective it would be nice to have such literature deep dives. From a practical point, writing deep dives on the literature of IQ and race and have indepth discussions about it has a high likelihood to offend people. The effort and risks that come with it are high enough that Scott is very unlikely to write such a post. 

One view I hold, though, is something like "the optimal amount of self-censorship, by which I mean not always saying things that you think are true/useful, in part because you're considering the [personal/community-level] social implications thereof, is non-zero." 

I think that there's broad agreement on this and that self-censorship is one of the core reasons why rationalists are not engaging as deeply with the literature around IQ and race as we did with Ivermectin or COVID.

On the other hand, there are situation where there are reasons to actually speak about an issue and people still express their views even if they would prefer to just avoid talking about a topic.

Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful response!

For what it's worth, I have my commitment to honesty primarily for consequentialist reasons.

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that + added some more detail on my views below.

I think that social justice norms are sometimes harmful from a consequentialist viewpoint. The social justice project largely consists of highlighting disparities between oppressor groups and oppressed groups and attributing disparities to immoral action on the part of oppressor groups.   I think that most of these beliefs are actually false and the proposed solutions are harmful in that they will not actually solve the problem because the belief is false. I think that they make social relations worse. 

More egregious is social justice advocates propensity for censorship in the name of emotional harm-avoidance, and the willingness to attack the character of people who disagree with their viewpoint as bigots of various types. And most egregious is the small minority who actively causes reputational damage, firings, and ostracism. 

I think that various harmful social views and policies persist because many social justice advocates think they're so right they don't need particularly good truth-seeking behavior.

You might be able to arrive at diversity and inclusion from utilitarian and truth seeking norms but you can’t get to equity from them.

Can I ask for a link to this 'indirect post'? I'm interested in the generalized lessons being advertised here, but couldn't find the post after looking on LW.

Some notes on the last paragraph in my above comment:

When I used the phrase "SJWs", I intended it to have either neutral valence or a valence of friendly teasing. I agree with some amount of the SJW agenda myself. However, Wikipedia says that since 2011, the term is primarily used as an insult and is associated with the alt-right, which was not an implication I had in mind. Like Bostrom's 1996 email and 2023 apology, this example is an illustration that it can be difficult to realize exactly how a given word or statement may be perceived, especially if people are reading it as if it were a dog whistle.

Part of my reason for using the term "SJW" was that I didn't want to say merely "leftist" or "progressive". I was a strong leftist and progressive in the early aughts, and back then, people with that ideology were, in my experience, generally more focused on trying to improve people's welfare via economic and other government-level policy. Progressives didn't spend as much time as they do now on shaming individual people or groups. I think the woke-ward shift of the last decade, while it raises some important issues that were less highlighted in the past, is plausibly overall less useful for improving total human welfare than the earlier economic and policy focus was. So I don't like conflating "woke" with "progressive". (That said, I think some progressive economic policy positions, such as against outsourcing American jobs to developing nations, may be net bad for short-term human welfare.)

A more neutral phrasing than "SJW" could have been just "social-justice activist".

As far as the other part of my phrasing, when I said that most social-justice activists "think it's fine to enslave and murder" non-human animals, I was in part being deliberately provocative to make a point. Bostrom is right when he says in his apology: "I do think that provocative communication styles have a place". If I had instead written that most social-justice activists "think it's acceptable for farmers to raise and slaughter livestock", the use of those conventional euphemisms would have dulled what I was trying to convey, which is that this practice is actually really awful. (BTW, I should also acknowledge that I myself pay for some amount of enslavement and murder of dairy cows, via eating cheese and ice cream. However, I think the total amount of harm this causes is much lower than the harm caused by eating meat from smaller farm animals.)

Provocation can shock people out of their normal way of seeing the world into looking at some fact in a different light. This seems to be roughly what Bostrom was saying in the first paragraph of his 1996 email. However, in the case of that email, it's unclear what socially valuable fact he was trying to shock people into seeing in a new way.

One function of comedy is to do roughly the same thing: stating some true fact in an unconventional way in order to make people see the world through a new lens. However, an important principle in comedy is the distinction between "punching up" and "punching down", and if we interpret Bostrom's 1996 statement as analogous to provocative humor, it would clearly be punching down.

It's fairly common and even celebrated in modern Western society to hear statements like "women are more productive than men" or "girls are smarter at language than boys". Many of these statements are made in fairly blunt language, similar to Bostrom's 1996 statement. I assume most people think these statements about female superiority are pretty harmless, both because they're seen more as "punching up" (given the history of men dominating women in much of the world until the late 20th century) and because the hypothesis of biological gender differences is less taboo and more scientifically established. But I do think the contrast in people's reactions between saying "boys are worse at language than girls" versus Bostrom's 1996 statement is interesting, and it shows that the degree of outrage a statement provokes is often not obvious unless you have a lot of experience with a specific culture's norms.

I do worry a bit that the casual misandry that society often seems to celebrate may be detrimental to the self-esteem of boys, though I'm also not interested in trying to police such language. It's plausible to me that some amount of humorous mocking between different groups is actually helpful, by showing people that we can laugh together, rather than priming ourselves to interpret any offensive statement as an act of aggression.

I think it is bad to deny a person access to a position because of the statistical average of their group. If a 23 year old is competent, then hold them to the same standard. 

It is odd to me that you would comment that highlighting differences in cognitive ability between groups should be taboo and suppressed and yet openly state that 23 year olds should have to face different standards in order to be entrusted in decision-making positions. I think you would find it utterly repugnant to say that blacks should have higher standards before we trust them. 

Edit: I don't think this is particularly bad and this attitude is relatively common. I just want to point out that I think this looks like an odd double-standard in my view, although many may disagree. Sorry if this comment comes across as aggressive.

Most young people today (even most nerds) know that what Bostrom said (even though it was in the context of giving an example of what you shouldn't say) would elicit strong negative reactions, given how much media attention these things receive. I assume this was less obvious to nerds in the 1990s (though it was probably fairly predictable even back then).

It is perhaps important to note that in the original email, Bostrom quite directly says that he is aware of the social norm about not saying what he said. In fact, that was one of the main points of the email: that saying something true in a blunt manner about a controversial topic is likely to be viewed as offensive. If Bostrom learned anything -- and indeed, he apologized within 24 hours -- it was that saying something like that can be inadvisable even among friends.

In general, I don't think old people generally have a stronger understanding of social norms than younger people. Old people will of course have more experience to draw from, and their mannerisms will have gone through more trial and error. In that sense, I agree: old people are often wiser. But the frontier of cultural norms are generally driven by young people, and old people are often left out of that conversation.

It is not uncommon to hear young people say they're shocked by their older relatives who are ignorant or only superficially aware of social norms that became widespread in the last ten years, e.g. stating one's pronouns while introducing oneself. To the extent that we are judging people on their understanding of current social norms, we should probably hold young adults to the strictest standards of any group.

So — this person believes IQ cannot vary significantly by population? Or that one mustn't say so?

In the Flynn effect, populations vary significantly on IQ depending on when they were born. So, assuming the Flynn effect isn't controversial, I suppose you meant "populations grouped by skin color". But, I would ask, if timing of birth is correlated with IQ, then couldn't location of birth be correlated with IQ? Or poverty, or education?

I could continue this line of reasoning, but.. somehow it doesn't feel useful. Positions people take on this can be arbitrarily extreme, e.g. some people object to any attempt to measure intelligence. If such a person sees the Bostrom "apology", they could be mad that he hasn't denounced these so-called "IQ tests" as illegitimate.

And I guess your point wasn't about logic, after all, but about feelings. So let me share my feeling: I find it extremely threatening and scary when people in/around EA — you know, EA, the concept I am building my whole life around — are vaguely treating someone who (to me) is obviously not racist as if he were a racist. It's like suddenly my neighbors joined a mob and are carrying a city councilman toward the giant tree in the town square. I'm alarmed and I say "whoa, why are you acting this way?! I think you're making a mistake!" and the mob just says "f*** you!" Maybe this is why I'm spending 3AM to 6AM on a Monday writing this.

This makes me want to either shrink away from EA, or take a stand.

Maybe a stand like this: I think if someone is so politicized that they think certain measurements should be ignored and no similar measurements should be done henceforth; or if they can't discuss correlation as distinct from causation; or if an apology is worthless/insincere because it provides too much context or has too much explanation afterward or because of a reason they aren't willing to explain; or if they like downvoting people who question their opinion without defending or explaining their own position; or if they are a conflict theorist; then I actually think maybe EA isn't for them. By all means, donate to help the poor. Donate to prevent biological weapons and so on. But in this neighborhood we like measurements and explanations and charitable interpretations. And we believe in "innocent until, on the balance of probabilities, probably guilty".

EAs decided pretty quickly that an EA-affiliated person, SBF, had acted appallingly badly and ought to be disowned. I trusted that judgement because it had a different flavor to it.  In this link you will see, in tweets two and three, a series of links to evidence that support the position Robert is taking. Evidence! Think what you want about Bostrom, but if you're going to make a case against him here, don't just say he was "mealy mouthed" and conclude that he believes bad and false things, without attempting to demonstrate it. I could and should read Rohit's article more charitably, especially since he says he's not an EA, but when the parade of downvotes rolled in, that became impossible on an emotional level.