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H. H. Humbert's avatar

Overall fun essay but I'm not really sure what the overall point is (I think I know the hidden motive but that's beside the point), that is it seems anyone intelligent or reasonable enough to understand the arguments presented in this post would already both believe that Bostrom is not hateful towards blacks and that Bostrom is right about differences in intelligence. And anyone unintelligent and unreasonable enough to not understand the arguments in this post would already believe Bostrom to be a hateful and deny differences in intelligence, and of course would not be capable of being motivated to change their views based off this post.

I should say perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the entire ordeal is Nick Bostrom's response "Are there any genetic contributors to differences between groups in cognitive abilities? It is

not my area of expertise, and I don’t have any particular interest in the question. I would leave to

others, who have more relevant knowledge, to debate whether or not in addition to environmental

factors, epigenetic or genetic factors play any role." Which is almost as ridiculous as suspending judgement on the question of whether their are differences in height between men and women because you don't have a PhD in Biology, one need only open their eyes to perceive reality, this is especially egregious given the fact that Bostrom is obviously familiar with the literature and assuming he is intelligent enough (and he is) to see how intelligence is important for his other beliefs, he obviously has a strong interest in this question.

Furthermore the response or lack thereof from prominent people who clearly agree with the unfiltered Bostrom tells you what kind of people they are, and how easily they are willing to sacrifice the obvious to the irrationality of the mob. Don't get me wrong this is perfectly understandable given how powerful the mob is, but its hilarious nonetheless. I wonder in 5 or 10 years time what the same people will be saying as the Overton window moves further left.

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anonymous's avatar

>For example, the standard deviation of the set {1, 2, 8, 9, 3} is 3.65 and the average of the set {6, 8, 2, 4, 9} is 2.86.

I presume "average" should read "standard deviation" here.

(Also, the values given are the _sample_ standard deviations, with Bessel's correction applied, which isn't appropriate for the accompanying explanation.)

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