Comment by TracingWoodgrains - I'm not particularly happy to see people within this community immediately present and accept the framing that Manifest was controversial because people reacted harshly to an article explicitly aimed at smearing a community I belong to with reckless disregard for truth and bizarrely sinister framing of mundane decisions, written by people who proceeded simply by reading a guest list without even bothering to attend the event they were writing about. In that regard, Manifest is only controversial in the same sense Scott Alexander was controversial when the New York Times wrote about him.
To name something is often to make it so; to lead with the framing that Manifest was controversial is to encourage other people to see it that way, yielding to the frame of people who treat EA itself as controversial. That has an impact on everyone who attends, organizes, and puts effort into it. I recognize that your own experience was mixed and have no problem with you sharing that and exploring it, but I think it's worth being cautious about frame-setting in the title in that way, particularly given its potential impact on early-career organizers or guests.
I was excited and honored to be invited to Manifest. It's the first conference that went out of its way to invite me as a special guest, more-or-less the first place I spoke openly under my own name, and a place that gave me the opportunity to meet and speak with people I have read and admired for years. It was an extraordinarily valuable experience for me, one where I seized the opportunity to give a light-hearted presentation on a niche topic, chat with and learn from many of my role models, and generally enjoy meeting people in person who I have only had the chance to interact with online.
I am extremely confident that an article aimed not at attacking the conference but at presenting an even-handed, cohesive picture of the experience as a whole would read very differently to the Guardian article and would include many mo
…And if it weren’t for that one joke by Hannibal, Bill Cosby would be very uncontroversial.
TracingWoodgrains seems to have developed, in the process of leaving mormonism, an obsession with seeking out contrarianism. But more importantly, he openly admits to being racist/HBD “align[s] broadly with informed experts that the distribution of genetic traits associated with intelligence is non-zero” and “questions of genetics and IQ, including when it comes to group differences, are worth taking seriously”. As such, he only considers it “racism” if it’s “racial crassness and antagonism”.
the distribution of genetic traits associated with intelligence is non-zero
This doesn’t even make sense. What the fuck is a zero distribution? A probability distribution cannot be “zero” in any sensible meaning of the word. Did you mean uniform?
I think you’re being too generous. What they wanted to say is “There are genetic traits associated with intelligence.” However, not inserting probability distributions in every fucking sentence is a class 2 misdemeanor in Rat circles, hence what was written.
Woow, TIL. I thought he was halfway decent from the way he flatly called sailer a racist (low bar I know), but his consistent fraternization with Hannania seemed strange to me.
TracingWoodgrains seems to have developed, in the process of leaving mormonism, an obsession with seeking out contrarianism. But more importantly, he
openly admits to being racist/HBD“align[s] broadly with informed experts that the distribution of genetic traits associated with intelligence is non-zero” and “questions of genetics and IQ, including when it comes to group differences, are worth taking seriously”. As such, he only considers it “racism” if it’s “racial crassness and antagonism”.In which TW names who he thinks is treating the topic with the seriousness it demands without sinking to crassness: our good good friend Cremieux.
Now I’m not the smartest cookie in the bakery but I know a dog-whistle when I see it!
no type of racist is more rabid than the genteel racist
This doesn’t even make sense. What the fuck is a zero distribution? A probability distribution cannot be “zero” in any sensible meaning of the word. Did you mean uniform?
Also obv citation needed you sack of spuds.
I think he is trying to say something like “non-zero skew”, but really, he just means “I subscribe to race science, but only for the articles”.
I think you’re being too generous. What they wanted to say is “There are genetic traits associated with intelligence.” However, not inserting probability distributions in every fucking sentence is a class 2 misdemeanor in Rat circles, hence what was written.
Which is obviously true, since the genetic traits of BEING A HUMAN quite strongly correlate with intelligence.
There’s no way to say the quiet part without saying it out loud here!
zero distribution is what they got, the day sense and awareness were handed out
Is “informed experts” really an accurate description to use over “other racists?”
Woow, TIL. I thought he was halfway decent from the way he flatly called sailer a racist (low bar I know), but his consistent fraternization with Hannania seemed strange to me.