He's a smart dude and I can't help but appreciate his work. But his defense of racialism is getting harder and harder for me to ignore.
??
I don't think the Times was entirely fair in their coverage. But as a long time SSC/ACX reader I've often felt a subtext of racialist beliefs lurking in the corner. He never comes right out and says it, but e.g. praising Charles Murray is more than a dog whistle.
To be clear - I'm distinguishing racialism (which believes there are large, measurable, genetic differences in traits like intelligence and aggression between races) and racism (which carries an extra connotation of emotional hatred). I think of racialism as racism masquerading as objective science.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-cod...
[2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
[Edit:] Yes, yes it was the smear that doxed him and misrepresented his writings in an egregious manner. I had forgotten about that incident, but F the NYT and anyone repeating Cade Metz' lies.
In early 2020, I learned the New York Times wanted to write an article about me. They had discovered my real name and wanted to reveal it to the world.
But yes - in my set of definitions, race is genetic/hardware, and culture is environmental/software.
Obviously the two correlate pretty heavily - i.e. racial groups tend to form subcultures.
Quantum mechanics is also "beyond the human mind's ability to conceptualize" but we're still able to make progress. And discussions of race are vastly more important, at least when measuring in terms of human suffering.
I don't know you personally, but "most" people I encounter seem to draw no distinction between their model of reality and reality itself.
Consider:
> praising Charles Murray is more than a dog whistle.
What is the meaning of "is" (to be) in this context, in a literal/architectural sense? Does your "is" align with other people's? And where this a discrepancy, how skeptical of your take on it are you?
Possibly related:
But it seems really unfair to infer that someone believes X because he praised someone who believes X, especially without further context.