Comment by moultano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by moultano | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>>- Thiel believes that the 19th amendment destroyed democracy, because women vote in favor for anti-libertarian welfare measures. When faced with the choice between saving democracy and capitalism, Thiel chooses capitalism. Trump shares this antidemocratic sentiment.

This needs a citation, because whenever I've seen people say this, they cite this this essay https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

And frankly, if you think he opposes women's suffrage, you didn't read it. He clarifies further in an addition:

But the most intense response has been aimed not at cyberspace, seasteading, or libertarian politics, but at a commonplace statistical observation about voting patterns that is often called the gender gap.

It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us.

>>-Thiel is the (primary?) backer of Curtis Yarvin, the alt-right (read: white supremacist) thoughtleader about "human biodiversity" (read: why some races are biologically inferior).

Moldbug is explicitly not a white supremicist. You can read his explanation here: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...

He disagrees with you about factual matters of human population genetics, but not about the moral issue about how people with different genetics should be treated.

Moldbug believes that white people are the intellectual superiors of black people. That's supremacy. It's on his blog and in the medium post you linked. He isn't fooling anybody with his explanation of how that belief isn't racist or supremacist.

He also believes that Asians and Jews are on average the intellectual superiors of "white" people, so it's not clear to me how that's "white" supremacy. He's very clear that he separates the scientific question from the moral one. The belief that intelligence is largely genetic is fairly mainstream and supported by a large body of evidence. If he is committed to treating all groups of people with equal respect, that satisfies me.

>>He isn't fooling anybody with ...

What prevents you from taking him at his word about what he believes? Why would you distrust his own explanation of his own opinions? I don't think we're doing civilization any favors by speculating about people's "true" beliefs in order to ostracize them.

Moldbug has said many absurd antidemocratic things, but you don't need to misrepresent them to convey that.

If you want to debate someone seriously, do it like this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-fa...

>He also believes that Asians and Jews are on average the intellectual superiors of "white" people, so it's not clear to me how that's "white" supremacy.

but it is the literal definition of racism...

Is it also the definition of racism to acknowledge that some races may have higher incidences of certain diseases, like sickle-cell anemia or cystic fibrosis? There are differences between the races. One of those differences is skin color. That doesn't mean it's the only difference.

The fact is that when you plot the results of IQ tests, the accepted measurement of intellectual capacity, along with race on a chart, a strong correlation is present. I don't think we should ostracize people who've performed this experiment and noted the results. It's not "racist" to perform this experiment, and it's not racist to acknowledge the widely-repeated results.

People usually say that the correlations demonstrate that the IQ test itself is racist. Maybe that's true. But just plotting race and IQ on the same graph and noting the outcome is not.

you could, ya know, look up the definition of racism. that would answer your question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com