They are definitely not European.

I’m in general agreement with this post… I agree that EAs labeling themselves as EAs does not make the things they do actually altruistically effective. I don’t buy that because most EAs are liberal, a liberal worldview is the one that’s most conducive to being altruistically effective. And I am worried about an internal ideological battle in EA between SJ people and non-SJ people. (For what it’s worth, I identify as EA but I’m not politically liberal and I’m skeptical of a lot of the solutions EAs push.)

I think the solution is what you are doing right now: engage in a constructive and friendly way. Writing this post is a good start. I think it would be cool to see some of the HBD bloggers put together a site that is basically the opposite of http://openborders.info/ and lays out the best case you can construct against open borders. Or even just a blog post. Then make a post to the EA forum or Facebook group with it and do these things:

* Act remorseful for Akin’s behavior and agree that he should have been banned. Emphasize that membership in the group should be based on the standard of discussion participants maintain, not the ideology they hold. The idea being that if someone like you disagrees with them while maintaining a high standard of discussion you should not be kicked out. Especially for unpopular with the mainstream positions like HBD, it’s critical for HBD proponents to control their message and suppress loutish behavior in order to let academic thinkers predominate, so I actually think the HBD people are having a favor done to us when our worst advocates are censored.

* Talk about the necessity of being inclusive to people with different political views, conservatives in particular. Although I identify as EA, it is stressful for me as a moderate conservative who doesn’t see obvious flaws in the writings of people like HBD Chick and Jayman to hear people talk about open borders and not be able to say anything because I know I will immediately be written off as a bigot racist etc… so I just keep my mouth shut. But it is causing me to identify with EA less and less. If EA is going to be a “big tent” movement it is going to need to find a way to deal with this sort of ideological diversity… kicking out people just because they don’t automatically reject EA is not ideologically inclusive, and ideological inclusivity is harder & more important than traditional sorts of inclusivity (tell them this… but it’s also true IMO).

* If you want, acknowledge that you’re a white man and point out that dismissing things that people say on the basis of their race and gender is fundamentally an ad hominem argument. Say you’re perfectly willing to acknowledge that it’s possible you are biased on the issue, but the way to persuade you of that is by showing you convincing true arguments against your position not by pointing it out. Say that in order to be effectively altruistic in the world, it’s critical that our beliefs not be shaped so they are optimized for social desirability or conforming with our friends. Etc. etc. You can also point out that as a Russian (?) you are from Eastern Europe so according to the writings of HBD Chick etc. you are relatively less clannish and thus have “inferior” genes insofar as a concept of inferiority would be implied by HBD Chick’s writings. (BTW it’s interesting to note that HBD Chick thinks the English are the most outbred, and people of English descent, including a huge number of people who are quite literally from England, seem strongly overrepresented in the EA movement… it might be interesting to point this out, if only to flatter those English people. As an English person in England, I confess to reading HBD Chick a bit more than is healthy because it flatters me.)

* You can talk about how the fact that the EA movement feels that it needs to preserve its image in order to look good to the press etc. means that EA will de facto go along with the mainstream press goes along with. But there’s no particular reason to believe that the mainstream press is optimizing for creating the conditions needed by an EA movement that is actually altruistically effective. So there needs to be some way of resolving the conundrum of EAs who are trying to be effective in whatever way is most sensible being slaves to the popular opinion, while popular opinion is not being optimized for sensibility (it’s being optimized for the headlines people will click on while browsing the internet, or what the powers that be want us to believe, or what have you… but it’s not being optimized for EA). Basically, to what point are so-called “EAs” willing to throw high-quality discussion about what actual EA actions are under the bus in order to optimize appearances for the media? Because at a certain point taken to an extreme you are just like any other group optimizing their appearances for the media, trying to boost your own status at the expense of other groups etc. (This points to a broader problem with the whole “big tent” concept. There’s inevitably going to be some subsection of your tent that people can point and laugh at. But in PR you are only as strong as your weakest link.)

Something I think conservatives often miss is there are 2 kinds of liberals: liberals who lead the witch hunts and compete in self-righteous “liberal purity” posturing (https://themerelyreal.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/liberal-purity/), and liberals who are just nice people who kinda go along with the witch hunts because they don’t want to be seen as racist/sexist/etc, or object internally without saying anything (my guess is these are the silent majority). EAs in my experience are overwhelmingly of the 2nd type.

So yeah, I think if you engage constructively and charitably that could be pretty valuable. The key thing to ward off the pessimistic scenario of EA being a clusterfuck is establishing a culture of friendly charitable etc. discourse between people from different sections of the “big tent”. Thus far EA has been shockingly good at this in my estimation, having observed firsthand.

Sorry I am “defecting” by not doing this myself but I value my reputation too much. You’ve already sacrificed yours by posting under your real name so thanks for that 🙂 Anyway keep it up!

Author states: “SWAT teams, it seems, have a disturbing record of disproportionately applying their specialized skill set within communities of color.”

This conclusion is not justified from the data presented, as it draws a conclusion about absolute numbers from proportions alone (white=38% v. non-white=68%, of separate totals).

Please also always point to your sources of raw data. Thank you.

A Korean reunification will be unlikely and hard. But if they successfully reunify, things that happen in the video game Homefront will be extremely unlikely. But the Koreans will not view the U.S as enemies but rather allies because they reunified the Koreas and created a lasting peace. Korea will possibly have a new capital but they will possibly have a crappy economy. The reunified Korea will be democratic but there will be former KPA troops fighting to the death just to divide the Koreas again. But this is very unlikely.