Ngo has been playing footsie with race science since as long as I have been skimming LW.

The irony is that in any "normal" space (i.e. not Stormfront) he would have been booted out toot sweet for being a racist. On LW, he's tolerated, even celebrated, but apparently not enough for his liking. It's not enough that he can spew race science unopposed by any meaningful reaction, everyone else has to take his position.

Edit

the piece he authored 6 months ago and references here is a doozy too

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FuGfR3jL3sw6r8kB4/richard-ngo-s-shortform?commentId=9g5QK3Km25fMBHgcK

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The overwhelming majority of successful civilizations throughout history have been nation-states, at least to some degree, which should be addressed in some capacity by any argument claiming that it's a suboptimal way to organize a society.

uh... the Roman Empire was a nation-state? Holy Roman Empire? (ok not as good an example) Ottoman Empire? Basically all of India pre-Brits?

A huge part of the French Revolution was the codification of France as "The Nation" of French people, not as the weird personifciation of the king. But somehow I suspect that bringing up the French Republic won't be hugely popular in this crowd.

ah, yes, we must defend "race science", the heretical political belief that gets millions from techbros that are empowered politically right now due to the rise in fascism. So brave, it's almost like we're on the internet 15 years ago talking about Ron Paul /s

Clearly one of the lesser intellectual crimes in this nazi manifesto, but the way rationalists use "ontology" to mean basically "core set of beliefs" irks me so much!! Though on the upside it leads to awe-inspiring metaphysical horror turns of phrase such as "update one's ontology".

but right now it doesn't feel like LW is a place where I can collaboratively make intellectual progress on this very important topic.

Maybe that’s because people don’t feel comfortable when you say you should teach an AI race/iq pseudoscience????

Sneerclub was right.

are usually intellectually honest enough to be able to acknowledge that various heretical political beliefs might be true.

Ow you have more heretical political beliefs? Such as? Come on dont be shy. (Place your bets, will it be sexism, pedophilia or antisemitism).

Also odd how they instantly give the game away, are they talking about higher Ashkenazi IQ or the higher Asian IQ scores? Nope. Instantly goes to IQ with a hard r.

A lot of unexplored assumptions as well, race being real, iq tests being real, iq tests showing intelligence, iq being genetic, and all that being scientific, etc. Same issues as the Basilisk.

From the replies:

But every man under the age of 30 that I've ever met at Lighthaven, that I've had the opportunity to speak with privately, has completely and totally integrated IQ differences into their ontology.

The entirety of Lighthaven needs locker insertion