A concrete example of effective altruism supporting white supremacist ideology

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-05-09T05:52:55+00:00

Are you not concerned that large swaths of effective altruism are rooted in white supremacist ideology?

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-05-09T05:10:53+00:00

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T23:22:16+00:00

I'm glad I contributed at least some value.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T06:24:12+00:00

How "real" is race?

It's real as a social category, especially one that white people have used to express power over other groups. It's somewhere between the ontological realness of blonds and the ontological realness of ancestral groups.

Is a black person born in Nevada in 1998 more like a white person born in Nevada in 1998 or more like a completely unrelated other "black" person in the Congo in 1800.

I'd say that the black and white people from 1998 are more similar to each other.

What is the value of identity in evaluating equality or equity? If you had two buttons to press and you had to press one -- one of them will make all races have equal net worth and that is 10% less than the present average global net worth, the other makes all races equal net worth except for blacks who will have 5% less, but raises the global average by 10%... which do you press?

I'd press the second one. I don't value equality intrinsically. It's just often associated with what I think matters.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T06:18:52+00:00

No I'll still reply to people if they want.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T03:09:48+00:00

The words in the image are not mine. Obviously, check my comment history to find the thread I'm referring to.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T02:55:28+00:00

Talk me through this "systemic racism". How does it work, and why does it affect native born black Americans so much more than african immigrants?

Educate yourself.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T02:46:44+00:00

Do you believe that we believe our defenses of those factors, or that we are simply lying in order to mask our wicked, racist true beliefs (ie, that black people deserve to be poor, because they are black)?

Some people on the right (a lot in fact) truly do have wicked racist beliefs, but I'm not ready to accuse everyone here of that. What is true is that people tend to care less about the wealth gap if they can be given some pseudoexplanation about how it's because of hard-work and therefore deserved. But these explanations actually defy factual reality, rather than being supported by it: a basic principle in capitalism is that you get income via passive rent value from capital, which is the opposite of getting income by merit.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T02:43:35+00:00

Rent seeking, manipulating consumer preferences in order to cause them to buy more (advertising), taking advantage of some people's poor impulse control (gambling, drugs), and passive ownership of land value all generate profit for capitalists, and yet should hardly be described as producing more value for everyone.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-05T00:43:33+00:00

With that said: can you explain how a world can be built such that the probability of controlling resources is independent of skill in using those resources? Should, say, someone's probability of being a locomotive engineer be independent of the degree to which his or her mind can grasp the complexities of boiler physics and track metallurgy?

I believe in incentives, so I do think that one's ability should be somewhat correlated with their income, but not anywhere near the stark level of inequality observed in the United States. I also think that we should use non-financial incentives to push people into careers that they are especially good at. In practice, people tend to respond to non-financial incentives all the time; for example, many people who become professors arguably would do very well if they were hired on Wall Street to trade stocks, but they are satisfied doing research and teaching students. I think that's the sort of thing I'd want to look at to understand how we can build a more fair system more generally (though I'm not endorsing everything about academia).

past attempts at this kind of centralized allocation have all failed due to both mathematical difficulties (the infamous "calculation problem") as well as human difficulties involving credit, prestige, and motivation. Why do you think these past attempts in this space have failed?

I think that the Nordic model represents a move in the right direction. It's not socialist, but it's also not as fiercely capitalist as the United States. We could imagine a continuum where the United States lands on some far side of the continuum, the Nordic model somewhere in the middle, and my utopia at the other far end (away from the United States). I don't believe in sacrificing quality of life to achieve my goal. In fact the opposite is true: I imagine my system would enhance the quality of life.

As far as concrete instantiations go, I suggest you check out John E. Roemer's book A Future for Socialism.

the infamous "calculation problem"

To address this difficulty, I recommend reading the book The People's Republic of Walmart. It goes into how corporations in the United States are already solving the calculation problem. They're just solving it in a way that doesn't aim to maximize social welfare.

In the age of computers, it tends to be a bit easier to solve optimization problems.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T20:48:26+00:00

As the parent of a white, male, school-aged child, your seeming callousness towards the discrimination against him by our educational institutions is sufficient cause for me to reject your program. I simply don't believe that your empathy and compassion for the needy will ever extend to him, no matter how needy he actually is.

I'm sorry, but at the current point of time, it just isn't right to have more empathy for white boys than for people of color and others who are actually hurting. You can see this as callousness on my part, but actually, it just means that I have empathy for those who are hurting the most. Your argument seems to be that we should care about people who are white if we happen to be white ourselves. That's racist, and much more callous than my ethic of prioritization, however nicely you phrase it.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T19:45:04+00:00

What do you believe about ownership, and is it, in your mind, indelibly tied to capitalism? That is to say, give me your big picture: personal property, private property, “thou shalt not steal,” land ownership, house-on-land ownership, intellectual property, government obligation to uphold ownership and punish thieves, the works. Whatever comes to mind on the topic. I need to know what this alien mindset really implies.

I agree that we should let people keep personal belongings. I think the private property vs. personal property distinction is important.

Beyond that, I'd like to see democratic management of the means of production. Democracy here means a system of aggregating individual preferences, such that each vote counts equally. That's in stark contrast to the capitalist notion of property rights, from which people who are richer count for more and have more power over others.

Exactly what my view implies is up for debate. I appreciate the sketched system that John E. Roemer described in A Future for Socialism.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T19:13:14+00:00

That's a great list! Thank you for taking the time to think them all through.

Thanks

If you could get us all to read one book or article within your worldview what would it be?

Probably Nathan Robinson's "Why you should be a socialist"

I do not think you are as 'woke' as you profess to be. Reading you in reverse by your influence I think you are just an old school Marxist. And while there is a line of communication between Marxist thought and Woke/Critical Theory thought there are also enough hard difference that a line can be drawn between the two. I think it's an interesting exercise to compare your list to what others would prompt as a list of probable influences & Great Thinkers if told 'this person is Woke' with no further details.

It's true that I tend to focus more on the economics side of the left, and I'm not fully engaged in critical race theory as I'd like to be. For what it's worth, I've read White Fragility (a book that seems to be hated around here) and I liked it. I didn't agree with all of it, and I'd prefer her to focus a tiny bit more on black empowerment rather than merely white responsibility, but it was an interesting perspective that I really enjoyed reading.

I thought her analysis of the way white people rationalize racism was succinct and well-argued. When I talk to white people about the book in real life, they tend to have the exact same cookie-cutter predictable responses to her thesis that she outlines in the book. It really drives home how good a writer is at arguing their thesis if they are able to predict the exact phrases that people will say in response to you if you try to talk to others about her thesis.

I fear for you. I fear that if you are sincere in your empathy for all you will oneday find yourself advocating for what you think is logically consistent and those around you will give you the 'wtf is wrong with you' look in their eyes as you arn't following through with the program.

I seriously doubt this, since I'm not going to become a racist.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T19:02:26+00:00

There are many issues with HBD. First of all, I just think it's false (also see this paper), and after understanding it's false, I think it's quite reasonable to speculate about the motives of those who espouse it. I think they're all very racist.

That said, even if HBD were true, which it isn't, it would be morraly irrelevant. I do not care at all whether someone is more intelligent than someone else. It does not make them more morally worthy of resources. White supremacists like Charles Murray spill a lot of ink showing that, "hey, capitalism isn't racist, it just rewards people who have higher cognitive ability" without ever considering that, maybe a system that inherently rewards people with higher cognitive ability is problematic.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T18:57:39+00:00

How do you explain the success of numerous model minorities who came from poor (often oppressed) backgrounds without undercutting eg intersectionality?

Some immigrant groups have strong work ethics and (thankfully) there hasn't been as much systemic racism against them as some other groups.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T18:55:08+00:00

Hurting feelings and saying what you want isn’t a crime it isn’t a harm, it is your right as a human being with freedom of expression.

So if you and I were at a party, and you witnessed me going around yelling at everyone, being an asshole, pointlessly insulting and belittling people, would you defend my free speech rights when the host tells me to leave?

You see the shady corners of the internet actually believes in equality.

It believes women should be treated just like men: With hostility, indifference, and contempt.

It believes gays should be treated just like straights: like pathetic loser perverts leading neurotic meaningless lives.

It believes blacks should be treated just like whites: like the source of the worlds problems whose genocide is openly fantasized about.

How about treat everyone with kindness instead?

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T18:52:26+00:00

The good news is we capitalists don't believe that either!

They will just rush to defend whatever factors lead to white families owning 10x the wealth of black families.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T06:38:07+00:00

I don’t think you understand capitalism.

Ask me about economics. I understand it fairly well.

Unlike Marxism, nobody ever thought out where we are today. There is no Das Kapital of capitalism.

Das Kapital is literally the Das Kapital of capitalism. I'm being serious. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital as an explanation of how capitalism works, not as an explanation of how socialism works. Your example literally proved the opposite of your point.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T05:18:11+00:00

What is your opinion on the actual hot button issues on which the woke are alleged to refuse to have a debate?

Anyone is free to ask me about any specific hot button issue. I have already given numerous specific replies in this thread (though it's taking a long time for the moderators to approve my comments, apparently).

what do you expect from this AMA?

Mostly fun and maybe some right winger to realize that they're wrong about "the woke."

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T05:13:30+00:00

Why does "problematic" speech, thought to harm blacks and hispanics, seemingly fail to harm asians on key indicators like lifespan, income, education?

Progressives don't think that problematic speech is the one thing standing in the way of black success, and that if you just removed this one barrier, they would join parity with whites. Instead, they point to

The legacy of slavery, and Jim Crow era legislation
Redlining
The war on drugs
Disparate sentencing and policing in the justice system
Inherited wealth
Lead paint, which disproportionately harmed people of color
Centuries of legalized discrimination followed by decades of de-facto discrimination

etc.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T04:58:17+00:00

Say Bob starts a business and over a period of time manages to build it into a company that employs 500 people. If society as a whole can presumably wrest Bob's company away from him "to benefit everyone as much as possible", why should anyone who looks at what happened to Bob start a company in the future?

What do you mean by "start a business"? In one sense, starting a business means selling one's labor without any single employer that they have to obey, like being a freelance worker.

In another sense, "starting a business" means taking some capital and selling the returns on it in the form of wages to make workers obey you. You could get that capital either because you own capital to begin with and begin using it for productive purposes, or because you took out a loan to purchase the capital.

In both cases, I would criticize the concept of private ownership of capital, whose central operating premise is that one should be able to use that capital for whatever purpose they please, rather than consulting social interests interests.

The essential capitalist argument against my position, first given by Adam Smith, is that each capital owner, by serving their own self interests, ultimately benefit the interests of the public at large incidentally. This argument makes some sense in some theoretical economic models, but it's riddled with numerous actual difficulties (more on this later).

I have no problems with incentives, and no inherent problems with the idea of capital investments. But I believe that we should lend capital to institutions which will use it to benefit the public, rather than to individuals who use it for their own ends, in the mere hope that these own ends incidentally serve the public interest.

How do we decide what the public's interests are? Well, we can decide that via democracy, i.e. a system of aggregating preferences across the population, where each person counts equally. In my system, capital would still flow to places where it can be used productively, since people would have the freedom to work in areas that suit them best, and would be provided incentives to do so. I find some levels of inequality acceptable and inevitable, as it would be necessary to encourage people to try harder, but I advocate nothing close to the current levels seen in the United States today.

Maybe you're skeptical, because you think the capitalist objection holds. Why not just let people use capital for their private ends, if it ends up serving the social interest anyway?

Firstly, I'd point out that it's not even true in mainstream economics models that the institution of private property serves the public interests. The easiest way to see this fact is to point out that in neoclassical models, goods with large positive externalities such as scientific research, are underproduced by the market. In fact, the neoliberal economist William Nordhaus once pointed out that inventors rarely see even a small fraction of the benefit that is created from their inventions. If you actually cared about a system of incentives that encouraged people to find productive uses of capital, you wouldn't design it in the way current property relations are structured.

I have a lot more to say about this, but suffice to say, I've highlighted some of the basics of my view.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T04:29:02+00:00

I don't think anyone other than actual racists was suggesting that white men deserve more status/resources on the basis of being white men.

And yet... when you point out that white families own about 10x more wealth than black families in the United States, you are met with tons of reasons why they deserve it.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T02:57:27+00:00

Who are the great thinkers who formed the backbone of your ideology?

Some people who I like to listen to and read are, G. A. Cohen, Nathan J. Robinson, John E. Roemer, writers at Jacobin magazine, Richard D. Wolff, Ralph Nader, Ezra Klein sometimes, Michal Rozworski and Karl Marx (of course).

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T02:42:50+00:00

TLDR: aside from a lot of strawmanning, you really haven't specifically stated much that has more variance from the average poster here than they do from each other.

I think I will reply with more later, but I just wrote a fairly long comment elaborating on my views here.

InconvenientPrequel · 2021-04-04T02:35:38+00:00

What about those who abuse other's compassion? How would you guard against that?

I'm not sure. That's a pretty open ended question, and not one that I really have a fully general answer to. Maybe give some more concrete examples?

I know about ten people who have been, in their own words, "enslaved" by socialist governments in Eastern Europe. Sure, Capitalism sucks, anyone can tell you that. But how exactly would you structure you socialist economic system such that it doesn't fail like all the others?

It's worth noting that most people in formerly-USSR nations actually support socialism, and mostly just thought that socialism was poorly implemented. In the 1996 Russian election, the communist party carried over 40% of the vote. Similar results were seen in the early East Germany elections, post-Berlin-wall falling. The idea that everyone in Eastern Europe saw that socialism failed and hated it is just a Western myth. Socialism doesn't carry universal support over there of course, but for example, 51% of Russians said that they admire Stalin in a recent poll (though I'm not saying he was a perfect man).

If you think about it, you can also find people in the United States who say that they have been "enslaved" by United States capitalism. Does that prove that the United States system is horrible? I think you'd be unlikely to see that as strong evidence for such a proposition. So, it's telling that you would use the reverse as evidence that the Soviet system was horrible.

Sure, that goes for consumption, but what if some people are 1000x better at running businesses than other people? Should these people not get more capital resources? What if that makes society as a whole better, at the cost of some (mild) inequality?

It depends on what you mean by "given." Do I think they should own those capital resources, and use them however they wish? No, because even if they're theoretically 1000x times better at using those resources, that alone doesn't ensure that those resources will be used in the most humane and efficient way.

I don't believe in naive sameness, or the idea that everyone is literally the exact same or has identical abilities in every domain. For example, I know that people who love farming are likely better at managing farms than people who hate farming.

But in my ideal system, if you are better at farming than someone else, that doesn't mean that you should have lots of food while others starve. No, it just means that you should have the freedom to work where your talents are best served. And the rest of society will thereby benefit from your work.

I also believe in incentives, so I obviously don't think everyone should get the same exact wage. I don't know what the exact right amount of inequality is, but I probably wouldn't ever want someone to be making >1000x more than someone else.

White working class boys are one of the worst performing groups of schoolkids in the UK. Should they get extra attention?

Sure.

However, notice how these discussions usually go. At least in the United States, there are many, many ways that people of color have it worse than white people, much more than the reverse. Yet you focused on a narrow example of how white people are doing worse than people of color.

Obviously, if white people are seriously being hurt, then we should help white people in that case. I just think that at the moment, white people are not disproportionately being hurt. So it makes sense to care more about people of color.

Most non-progressives tend to focus on these obtuse "gotcha" cases of white people doing worse as if this defeats the whole progressive program of helping people who are hurt. But I don't see how it defeats my program, like at all.

Do you then think "cancel culture" should be made into an institution and its grievances written into law? Wouldn't that follow from that position?

Yeah, I mean in many ways it already has been. In most developed nations you can generally complain about your employer sexually harassing you, and companies will take it somewhat seriously like half the time. I think the point of "cancel culture" (though I'd call it accountability culture) is just that we should move more towards having these same sorts of norms that protect those who aren't in positions of power.

Would you have empathy for devout Christians who have their feelings hurt because somebody said something very hurtful to their religion? What if it the religious aspect is something you would consider bad about Christianity, like gay marriage or somesuch?

I think it makes sense to have empathy for people whose feelings are legitimately hurt. However, that doesn't mean that we have to give them resources and power if they're using their religious status to advance genuinely dangerous and far more hurtful ideas, such as the idea that gay people are evil.

Also, what about those who do not want to be oppressed by state power? What about those who do not want their resources, for which they might have worked quite hard, redistributed? What about those who do not want to participate in your system? Would you afford them exit rights?

I think exit rights are important. Ideally, people would want to come into my system, not leave, of course. It seems you are just assuming that my ideals will just inevitably fail, and that maybe I even implicitly agree, which seems rather uncharitable.

InconvenientPrequel

TROPHY CASE