Why? Besides enabling my enemies to call me a racist in much the same way a segregationist would call MLK a criminal, it leaves me right where I started. The initial emotional turmoil is offset by the anecdote utility: “Would you believe that I was once talked into becoming a freaking racist? Me?” This goes straight on my “hilarious misadventures” files, right next to “almost drowned in a lake”′ “fell in love with a one-night-stand, suffered horribly, now we’re BFF’s”′ and “that one time I was slipped ecstacy”.
Your holding these beliefs is not entirely in the past, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason to think the consequences of holding these beliefs are entirely in the past, making it impossible for you to have gotten over them.
I’ve gotten over my emotional distress over acquiring them, and am now dealing with them and the consequences of holding them in a more practical manner. The anguish is gone, replaced with mild annoyance.
Eugine, at the risk of stating the obvious, I don’t like that being known to have those true beliefs lowers my status and gets in the way of me doing good. I think it’s unfair, and I find it frustrating.
If you haven’t already, I’d suggest reading this Tim Wise essay. It isn’t entirely compatible with modern-rationalist epistemology, notably in that Wise seems to reject (or at least resist) the idea that science has much to say about ethics. But Wise does make a strong case for distinguishing the possibility of biological racial differences from a defense of racial inequality.
If you could erase your knowledge of racial IQ differences would you? Assume you also erase the specific urge to rediscover it later.
Why? Besides enabling my enemies to call me a racist in much the same way a segregationist would call MLK a criminal, it leaves me right where I started. The initial emotional turmoil is offset by the anecdote utility: “Would you believe that I was once talked into becoming a freaking racist? Me?” This goes straight on my “hilarious misadventures” files, right next to “almost drowned in a lake”′ “fell in love with a one-night-stand, suffered horribly, now we’re BFF’s”′ and “that one time I was slipped ecstacy”.
well except without the mental anguish you seemed to have about it.
Water under the bridge.
Am I getting downvotes for my ability to get over my anguish in accepting inconvenient truths? Cause I don’t know how else to interpret this.
Your holding these beliefs is not entirely in the past, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason to think the consequences of holding these beliefs are entirely in the past, making it impossible for you to have gotten over them.
I’ve gotten over my emotional distress over acquiring them, and am now dealing with them and the consequences of holding them in a more practical manner. The anguish is gone, replaced with mild annoyance.
So you don’t like having low status true beliefs?
Eugine, at the risk of stating the obvious, I don’t like that being known to have those true beliefs lowers my status and gets in the way of me doing good. I think it’s unfair, and I find it frustrating.
If you haven’t already, I’d suggest reading this Tim Wise essay. It isn’t entirely compatible with modern-rationalist epistemology, notably in that Wise seems to reject (or at least resist) the idea that science has much to say about ethics. But Wise does make a strong case for distinguishing the possibility of biological racial differences from a defense of racial inequality.