When we talk about politics, context matters. Someone like Yudkowsky doesn't believe stupidly racist things, like a KKK member or turn-of-century politician, or even modern anti-immigration people. Bond's targeting something much more subtle.

The point is that here you have a man who naively keeps trying to push the dialogue "beyond race" ("forget race"), in a forum where if you scroll down to the comment section, you'll see Jeff H. with 5 upvotes defending Watson's racist remarks, with Epiphany at 0 upvotes talking about the cultural reasons why IQ tests fail.

It's about the framework, and what it allows, and about what allows the people championing it to be naive or indifferent about what it allows. Someone discussing coldly and clinically the pros and cons of rape isn't a rapist, but there's something else about someone who can have discussion coldly and clinically. Some people take pride in their level-headedness about tough topics, others would take it as a signal of their lack of empathy with the victims, and the signal this sends to people who do feel passionately about it.

And so Yudkowsky will discuss race in this goofy aloof kind of way- "maybe black people are intellectually inferior, let's talk about it, does it even matter in the end?", and some people will believe that this is the right kind of coolness to produce neat solutions, and others will believe it robs the steam off of the emotional connection that would engage people in political action for change.

You have to suss this kind of thing out, and if you plain don't want to believe me that there's something enabling towards racism and sexism and other various supremacist ideologies in the LessWrong ecosystem, you don't really have to.

but your comment helped me actually understand this position for the first time, so thank you for articulating it.

There is definitely something enabling about it. A lot of modern politics wants you to NOT believe black people are stupid criminals.

Yudkowsky would almost certainly endorse "if black people are stupid criminals I want to believe black people are stupid criminals, if black people are not stupid criminals I want to believe they are not stupid criminals". (This is the litany of tarski, which he endorses, applied to a specific case.) One could certainly view this as "enabling" supremacist views under the circumstances that reality supports them.

Is a fair summary of your critique that Yudkowsky is rationally and unemotionally reasoning about problems which are normally addressed via appeals to emotion, and this subverts emotional appeals to the masses to take certain actions?

I've read your post several times, and this is the most charitable takeaway I can come up with. But this sounds insane so I feel like I must be misunderstanding something.

And so, the idea that the rigid set of discursive boundaries that LessWrongians impose upon themselves may favor a political outcome (the status quo) seems ridiculous to you, because you use "rational" as a compliment and "emotional" as an insult.

Based on my reading, a profit seeker obeying his gut and losing money is irrational. In contrast, a social justice type observing that assortative mating causes inequality and therefore attempting to reduce educated women's marriage choices is rational. But maybe you've read more than me, and can figure out what I missed?

And so, the idea that the rigid set of discursive boundaries that LessWrongians impose upon themselves may favor a political outcome (the status quo)...

This is a completely new critique of the Less Wrong crowd. The normal critique, and the specific one you cited, claim that Less Wrong is too far from the status quo and concerns itself with things like the singularity.

Adding to my confusion is that in the very post you criticize, Yudkowsky explicitly advocates fixing intelligence deficits with "sufficiently advanced technology, biotech or nanotech". How is fixing every person with an IQ < 150 using nanotechnology remotely preserving the status quo?

(Note also that Yudkowsky is explicitly advocating that if genius isn't uniformly distributed, as social justice types claim to believe, we should explicitly change the world to make it so.)

I'm criticizing an ecosystem. Yudkowsky-types noodle with weird hypotheticals, others with elitist views get validation. Fantasizing of fixing our current issues with futuristic tech, using it as a yard-stick to criticize ie: a collective black identity from forming a political block, is not explicitly pro-status quo but ends up being so in practice.

Firstly, I don't think I've seen mentioned an instance where Yudkowsky seems to be trying to prevent a collective black identity from forming a political block.

Secondly, you've suggested that the mechanism by which Yudkowsky's material end up as bullets for people who desire to perpetuate prejudice is where the prejudiced party misrepresents Yudkowsky (thereafter, Y). Therefore, your reasoning goes, Y and the LW commenters are guilty for engaging in subject matter that are ripe for appropriation.

Unless I'm mistaken, your accusation is one that is pretty unjust in itself. You are accusing Y with a moral crime for Y&LW's association with (racially) prejudiced groups that have misrepresented Y as prejudiced. This is despite that Y has neither affirmed this association nor mentioned anything prejudiced, his crime being entertaining "weird hypotheticals". Rather, if such a thing has occurred, isn't Y a victim of the prejudiced groups himself?

That's sort of the entire point of "Politics is the Mind-Killer" statement, a point which Bond also missed - LW community wants to focus on effective ways to deal with actual problems, as opposed to doing politics. They're not criticizing "a collective black identity", speaking against them "forming a political block". They're not talking about it. It's besides the point of that article and mostly besides the point of the entire community, which tends to focus on how to make things better for everyone.

Frankly, I find it funny to see accusations of racism aimed at people who are known to seriously, and not just as a figure of speech, consider humanity as one great family who are in it together. But then again, everyone of us who is not outraged is secretly a racist and supports the enemy.

Also consider the core statement of the Mind-Killer article:

"Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there's a Blue or Green position on an issue."

It's perfectly OK to avoid that kind of political discussions. I'd say it's weird to actually partake in them.

FWIW, you strike me as a good person, as do many LWers. I wish I could communicate to you the nuance of my issues with statements like "humanity as one great family", but I'm a newbie at the study of ideology myself, so I wouldn't do a good job.

À la prochaine!