Nick Bostrom is a philosopher at Oxford who works on topics like existential risk and human enhancement. I haven’t read much of his work, but people I respect rate it very highly. Anatoly Karlin (whom I had on the podcast recently) considers him “the greatest living philosopher”.
Your statement is no less unenlightened than his is for many many reasons;
1. The equivalence between smarts and IQ tests is tenuous at best. To think that a bunch of circular and triangular patterns scored on a normal distribution are reflective of the real world is anywhere from a swindle to bad bad science.
2. Having a low IQ is not a genetic statement, to a large extent it's also a statement about level of economic development. Racist minds have taken it to be IQ dictates economic progress, without offering any evidence why the relationship is not circular rather than causal. Better education also drives IQ obviously. Anyone who grew up in a village somewhere and came to be a scientist while their fellow men are plowing the fields are well aware of that.
3. It is incredibly short-sighted to gauge a long term thing such as genetic make up on the very short termist question of which ethnicity is running the world. There are many many second, third and n-th order effects that drive ethnic dominance at different times in history. Egyptians were building mega structures (some tallest in the world for 4000 years) and coming up with cancer treatments when Europeans were running around wearing animal skin and fighting each other with sticks and stones. The same can be said about the Nubians and the Ethiopians. At other times, it could've been said about the Chinese, the Persians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Levantines. You name it. Just try to have a memory that goes beyond a few decades into the past.
There is a duality of face to every man and woman, the public face and the private face. It is one’s discretion of discernment to judge the appropriateness of such inclinations and notions whether irrational or not; in the same way that politicians often bicker at each other playfully and theatrically but round up for a round of alcohol after parliamentary debate. I suppose one can bond over grievances and disapproval of certain groups and people in the same way that people can express approval and compliments towards others. In a world a sense of expression of hatred and contempt, I wonder if such is indeed a better one; one where all are perpetually ordained to serve for the common good and value everyone irrespective of their deficits and capabilities, such as to some approximation, a nation like Japan.
I share Bostroms views. The more repugnant the emotional response is and the more counterintuitive it is, the more excitement and thrill I derive out of being able to say it. I suppose it’s a part of an innate inclination derived from the interaction of testosterone and various other hormones in the body which ameliorate the enjoyment of expressing contempt for others because they lack a quality that’s extrinsically valued by the majority of the society. The same way that teenagers or blue collar workers gossip about out groups. I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong harbouring such judgements even if they are ugly, unless you wish to repress the full spectrum of human emotions and those which constitute an autonomous negative response. It’s understandable because if someone in front of me says they hate me because I lack muscle strength or some other quality which they think I perceive as having prescribed societal value then I would also feel offended. Regardless though, many of us in the more cognitively oriented minded community add qualifiers and technical tone downs to make others less judgemental about our stances and emotional attitudes towards others because we are afraid of retaliation which is comprehensible. However privately it’s likely that many individuals express such disdain too, more so by experiential outcomes following a lack of intelligence like a preferred opportunistic exploitative strategy of looting, etc which demonstrates a lack of cognitive and affective empathy which humans have contempt for because it is antisocial behaviour. Regardless of this rationalization, I personally enjoy thinking the most hateful and repugnant/selfish statements that are logically founded on sound premises. Emotions are enjoyable to experience; those in the power category like envy, pride, anger, disdain, resentment, assertiveness are likely to be more expressed by rationals as many cognitive psychologists and philosophers have pointed out from a choleric nature of will to power, control and understand/manipulate the environment.
He says "blacks are more stupid than whites". The phrasing implies that he also sees whites as stupid--a self-deprecation to make the comment more palatable.
And that's supposed to be the "offensive version". LOL.
Your statement is no less unenlightened than his is for many many reasons;
1. The equivalence between smarts and IQ tests is tenuous at best. To think that a bunch of circular and triangular patterns scored on a normal distribution are reflective of the real world is anywhere from a swindle to bad bad science.
2. Having a low IQ is not a genetic statement, to a large extent it's also a statement about level of economic development. Racist minds have taken it to be IQ dictates economic progress, without offering any evidence why the relationship is not circular rather than causal. Better education also drives IQ obviously. Anyone who grew up in a village somewhere and came to be a scientist while their fellow men are plowing the fields are well aware of that.
3. It is incredibly short-sighted to gauge a long term thing such as genetic make up on the very short termist question of which ethnicity is running the world. There are many many second, third and n-th order effects that drive ethnic dominance at different times in history. Egyptians were building mega structures (some tallest in the world for 4000 years) and coming up with cancer treatments when Europeans were running around wearing animal skin and fighting each other with sticks and stones. The same can be said about the Nubians and the Ethiopians. At other times, it could've been said about the Chinese, the Persians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Levantines. You name it. Just try to have a memory that goes beyond a few decades into the past.
There is a duality of face to every man and woman, the public face and the private face. It is one’s discretion of discernment to judge the appropriateness of such inclinations and notions whether irrational or not; in the same way that politicians often bicker at each other playfully and theatrically but round up for a round of alcohol after parliamentary debate. I suppose one can bond over grievances and disapproval of certain groups and people in the same way that people can express approval and compliments towards others. In a world a sense of expression of hatred and contempt, I wonder if such is indeed a better one; one where all are perpetually ordained to serve for the common good and value everyone irrespective of their deficits and capabilities, such as to some approximation, a nation like Japan.
I share Bostroms views. The more repugnant the emotional response is and the more counterintuitive it is, the more excitement and thrill I derive out of being able to say it. I suppose it’s a part of an innate inclination derived from the interaction of testosterone and various other hormones in the body which ameliorate the enjoyment of expressing contempt for others because they lack a quality that’s extrinsically valued by the majority of the society. The same way that teenagers or blue collar workers gossip about out groups. I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong harbouring such judgements even if they are ugly, unless you wish to repress the full spectrum of human emotions and those which constitute an autonomous negative response. It’s understandable because if someone in front of me says they hate me because I lack muscle strength or some other quality which they think I perceive as having prescribed societal value then I would also feel offended. Regardless though, many of us in the more cognitively oriented minded community add qualifiers and technical tone downs to make others less judgemental about our stances and emotional attitudes towards others because we are afraid of retaliation which is comprehensible. However privately it’s likely that many individuals express such disdain too, more so by experiential outcomes following a lack of intelligence like a preferred opportunistic exploitative strategy of looting, etc which demonstrates a lack of cognitive and affective empathy which humans have contempt for because it is antisocial behaviour. Regardless of this rationalization, I personally enjoy thinking the most hateful and repugnant/selfish statements that are logically founded on sound premises. Emotions are enjoyable to experience; those in the power category like envy, pride, anger, disdain, resentment, assertiveness are likely to be more expressed by rationals as many cognitive psychologists and philosophers have pointed out from a choleric nature of will to power, control and understand/manipulate the environment.
He says "blacks are more stupid than whites". The phrasing implies that he also sees whites as stupid--a self-deprecation to make the comment more palatable.
And that's supposed to be the "offensive version". LOL.