The implications of widespread genetic enhancement, especially for intelligence, are profound. While many may object that such a worldview on the causes of national differences and the importance of IQ is distasteful or that nefarious actors share my worldview, we cannot hide from the truth. While the relative importance of genes and IQ is often regarded as a dismal finding, certain scientific and technological advances would permit us to drastically improve humanity. We should be happy to learn this.
Ives Parr, “The effective altruist case for using genetic enhancement to end poverty“
Content warning: This post explicitly discusses racism and sexism, including the work of prominent advocates of race science. There is also discussion of the potential policy implications of these views, many of which are rather extreme. There is a strong prevalence of dehumanizing language, views, and other content that many readers may find offensive. I have not made any effort to censor this content; indeed, I have sought it out.
1. Introduction
This is Part 8 in a series on Human Biodiversity. Human biodiversity (HBD) is the latest iteration of modern race science. This series discusses the impact of HBD on effective altruism and adjacent communities, as well as the harms done by debating and propounding race science.
Part 1 introduced the series, explaining what HBD is and why propounding HBD is wrong. Part 2 discussed events at Manifest. Part 3 discussed Richard Hanania.
Part 4 discussed work by Scott Alexander. Part 5 discussed the community surrounding Alexander’s blog, and Part 6 followed the migration of an important part of that community to its new home at The Motte. Part 7 discussed LessWrong.
Today’s post begins my two-part coverage of HBD and related ideas on the EA Forum. We’ll look at some forum users’ opinions (Section 2), previous coverage of HBD and the EA Forum on this blog (Section 3), a series of posts making an effective altruist case for using genetic enhancement to end poverty (Section 4), and a defense of the idea that you’re probably a eugenicist (Section 5).
2. Opinions that users would be reluctant to express
LessWrong, Astral Codex Ten, and The Motte have directly polled users about HBD. By contrast, the EA Forum does not directly ask users to specify their opinions about HBD. As a result, the available data is substantially more indirect.
One survey that may be of interest is a 2019 survey which asked EA Forum readers, “What opinions do you hold that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of effective altruists?” Many responses were helpful and interesting, but a few were more concerning.
At least two responses directly expressed sympathy for core contentions of HBD, although similar timestamps and language suggest they may be by the same respondent:
Racial IQ differences are real and important
and
Racial differences in IQ are real, important, and (probably) mostly genetic. (IQ is in no sense a determinant of moral worth.) Thankfully this usually isn’t relevant in EA discussions, but I can imagine it becoming so if EAs started arguing for development focused aid as opposed to health and cash transfers.
Several others directly addressed the problem of race science and its influence on effective altruism:
Effective Altruism seems to have attracted a significant minority of people with racist/sexist beliefs who like feeling intellectually superior by criticising diversity/equality interventions (whether within EA or more broadly) as not being effective as bednets/AI risk/whatever.
and
I’m more skeptical of IQ testing than most EAs, and think that the psychometrics community as a whole has done serious damage to the world which they refuse to address.
Still others endorsed political opinions often associated with HBD, for example:
If a person of color from a developing country started an initiative to offer free genetic engineering to people in developing countries, on the condition that in addition to parent preferences, the child also received genes known to be associated with reason and altruism, that could be an incredibly high impact long-termist project.
We will discuss this issue further in considering forum posts entitled “The effective altruist case for using genetic enhancement to end poverty” (today) and “Genetic enhancement as a cause area” (later).
3. Previous coverage
Some events on the EA Forum have already been discussed on this blog. I don’t want to duplicate those discussions. However, it may be worth recalling some of the most important incidents to mind.
3.1. Why EA will be anti-woke or die
Part 3 of this series (as well as Part 4 of my series on Belonging) discussed Richard Hanania’s essay “Why EA will be anti-woke or die,” which was cross-posted on the EA Forum. This essay envisioned a movement that was:
Able to live up to its highest ideals by taking seriously important threats to human well-being that the movement currently ignores for purely political reasons. What does it mean that birthrates are decreasing at the same time there is a negative relationship between IQ and fertility across much of the developed world? And, speaking from a strictly utilitarian perspective, why exactly do we let a tiny minority of violent criminals make large swaths of what are potentially some of our most economically productive urban areas uninhabitable instead of simply getting rid of them … ?
We saw in Part 3 that reactions to this essay on the EA Forum were mixed. We also saw that a number of effective altruists commented approvingly on the post at Hanania’s blog.
3.2. Bostrom email
Parts 1-3 of my series on Belonging discussed Bostrom’s email and apology. We saw there that the Center for Effective Altruism reacted with a strongly-worded statement condemning Bostrom (currently -7 Karma after 239 votes, as of March 21, 2025). We also saw a number of other encouraging reactions.
However, we also saw some discouraging reactions. As of today, the top response to the Center for Effective Altruism’s apology on the EA Forum is a sharply worded rebuke by the CEO of Lightcone Infrastructure, Oliver Habryka:
I feel really quite bad about this post. Despite it being only a single paragraph it succeeds at confidently making a wrong claim, pretending to speak on behalf of both an organization and community that it is not accurately representing, communicating ambiguously (probably intentionally in order to avoid being able to be pinned on any specific position), and for some reason omitting crucial context.
and as of March 21, 2025, the majority of reactions (37 against 45) continue to disagree with the simple statement that HBD is pseudoscience.
3.3. Manifest
Part 2 of this series covered events at Manifest 2023 and Manifest 2024. Discussion of Manifest on the EA Forum centered to a fair extent around two threads.
The first thread, “Why so many `racists’ at Manifest,” written by a co-founder of Manifold, sits at +189 karma after 171 votes as of March 22, 2025. This post defends the speakers invited to Manifest and downplays the severity of their views. The same author has since claimed to know almost nothing about HBD:
I know approximately nothing about HBD fwiw; like I’m not even super sure what the term refers to (my guess without checking: the controversial idea that certain populations/races have higher IQs?)
Readers can make up their own minds about what is going on here.
The second thread, “My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024,” written by an attendee, sits at +53 karma after 188 votes as of the same date. This post expresses disagreement with many elements of The Guardian‘s article alleging racism at Manifest and elsewhere, but expresses concern about the prevalence of racist speakers and views at Manifest and calls for a greater separation between the effective altruist and rationalist communities.
The discussion on both posts is quite varied, with highly upvoted comments expressing concern about events at Manifest as well as highly upvoted comments pushing back.
4. The effective altruist case for using genetic enhancement to end poverty
4.1. Post
One of the most concerning ways that HBD can slip into effective altruism is when advocates attempt to make claimed associations between race and IQ relevant to effective altruist cause areas. We saw this above in Richard Hanania’s urging that the effective altruism movement consider:
What does it mean that birthrates are decreasing at the same time there is a negative relationship between IQ and fertility across much of the developed world?
A very similar move took place in October 2023, when an anonymous user posted “The effective altruist case for using genetic enhancement to end poverty.” As of March 20, 2025, the post sits at -1 karma after 89 votes. The post had moderately positive karma for many months, finally dropping to its present value after it was called out.
After introducing the importance of poverty reduction (a noble cause), the post moves to a discussion of institutions and intelligence. Leading with a citation to Arthur Jensen (as archived by Emil Kierkegaard), the post defends the use of IQ to measure intelligence. It then draws on Hernnstein and Murray’s book The bell curve (discussed in Part 7) of this series to claim:
The case for the importance of IQ for numerous real-world outcomes was made in the controversial book The Bell Curve (1994) by psychologist Richard Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray. They cogently argued that cognitive ability was playing a more important role than socioeconomic status in influencing various socioeconomic outcomes such as being in poverty, finishing high school, finishing college, being unemployed, having an illegitimate first birth, having a low-weight baby, committing a crime, and other significant outcomes (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, pp. 127-268).
So far, the post has argued that differences in IQ should be taken seriously, but has not discussed differences of IQ between nations. This topic is taken up in the next section of the post, entitled “The importance of national IQ.”
That section leads off by citing the infamous national IQ estimates by Richard Lynn:
In 2002, psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen published their seminal book in the field of national intelligence entitled IQ and the Wealth of Nations … Lynn and Vanhanen collected IQ scores from various studies and made corrections, such as adjusting for the Flynn Effect, to produce their national estimates. They normed their data to the United Kingdom average, which they set to 100. Their national IQ (NIQ) estimates faced considerable scrutiny. Many criticisms against Lynn and Vanhanen’s NIQ scores are less applicable now because many of the most heavily criticized samples are no longer used in recent estimates (Warne, 2023). Richard Lynn and another researcher, David Becker, performed a recalculation of the numbers with cited sources for their book The Intelligence of Nations (2019). Unfortunately, Richard Lynn passed away during the writing of this article, but David Becker maintains the website View on IQ, which contains the most up-to-date estimates and various discussions of the data.
The rest of this section is dedicated to arguing that Lynn’s estimates are reasonably accurate. (Similar sentiments have recently been expressed by Scott Alexander, among others).
The next section of the post, “On the failure of environmental interventions,” argues that variation in intelligence is likely to be largely genetic rather than environmental. The next section, “Genetic enhancement,” then defends what are sometimes called liberal eugenics approaches:
The era of “new eugenics” characterized by the use of reprogenetic technology will be morally incomparable to the atrocities of the past because this form will not only be harmless but actually be consensual and improve human welfare. An irony of the “eugenics” objection to some forms of reprogenetic technology is that the new eugenics facilitates better-informed consensual reproductive decisions, while those who want to ban such technology are advocating coercion in reproduction. It could even be argued that parents have a moral duty to engage in “eugenics” if it means they expect that child to live the best life (see Savulescu, 2001). Not only are old forms of eugenics unethical, but they are also inefficient compared to the immense potential of genetic enhancement technology.
Liberal eugenics spans a wide range of practices, many of which may be relatively less offensive than outright selection for intelligence under the view that race is genetically tied to intelligence. However, the author is explicitly interested in selection for intelligence, linking this concern to work by Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom at the Future of Humanity Institute as well as to work by Stephen Hsu, one of the controversial Manifest attendees discussed in Part 2 of this series.
Estimates of potential returns from selection for intelligence are contingent on a number of variables. Karavani et al. (2019) used polygenic scores for cognitive ability at the time of writing to estimate the potential returns from intelligence and found an approximately 2.5-point return from selection on IQ among ten embryos. While the authors claim that selection has “limited utility,” it is very important to note, as Steve Hsu does, that screening can be used to prevent an extreme downside like intellectual disability. Many couples will be interested in selection and may inadvertently select for higher IQ due to the beneficial pleiotropic relationship between health, mental well-being, and cognitive ability.
Currently, returns for selection on IQ are higher and will continue to grow as the polygenic scores (PGS) for intelligence improve. An important early contribution to the conversation around embryo screening for intelligence was the 2014 article “Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game-changer?” by Future of Humanity Institute’s Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom. Shulman and Bostrom (2014) estimated the maximum expected gain from selection among ten embryos at 11.5 IQ points. A later 2016 estimate by polymath researcher Gwern Branwen estimated an expected gain of 9 IQ points in his comprehensive article “Embryo Selection for Intelligence.” The expected gain from embryo selection, defined as the difference between the maximal and average polygenic scores among n embryos, is proportional to the standard deviation of phenotypic variation times the root of the proportion of variance explained by polygenic scores times the root of the logarithm of the number of embryos (Karavani et al., 2019).
The next section, “Inequality and adoption by elites,” addresses the concern that elites might benefit more by having greater access to genetic engineering. This, the author argues, is a good thing. They cite Arthur Jensen to explain why:
The quality of a society’s culture is highly determined by the very small fraction of its population that is most exceptionally endowed. The growth of civilization, the development of written language and of mathematics, the great religious and philosophic insights, scientific discoveries, practical inventions, industrial developments, advancements in legal and political systems, and the world’s masterpieces of literature, architecture, music and painting, it seems safe to say, are attributable to a rare small proportion of the human population throughout history who undoubtedly possessed, in addition to other important qualities of talent, energy, and imagination, a high level of the essential mental ability measured by tests of intelligence.
The final section concludes by considering what effective altruists might do to promote genetic enhancement. The post concludes:
The implications of widespread genetic enhancement, especially for intelligence, are profound. While many may object that such a worldview on the causes of national differences and the importance of IQ is distasteful or that nefarious actors share my worldview, we cannot hide from the truth. While the relative importance of genes and IQ is often regarded as a dismal finding, certain scientific and technological advances would permit us to drastically improve humanity. We should be happy to learn this. If genetic enhancement could be an important means for improving human welfare, Effective Altruists should want to know. In order to do the most good, it is crucial to have a correct understanding of the true causes of good outcomes. We must face reality for a better tomorrow.
4.2. Original discussion
Some of the responses to this post on the EA Forum are quite good. The top comment systematically explains what is wrong with the sources cited in the original post. Here is what it has to say about the post’s first source:
I can view an astonishing amount of publications for free through my university, but they haven’t opted to include this one, weird… So should I pay money to see this “Mankind Quarterly” publication?
When I googled it I found that Mankind Quarterly includes among its founders Henry Garrett an American psychologist who testified in favor of segregated schools during Brown versus Board of Education, Corrado Gini who was president of the Italian genetics and eugenics Society in fascist Italy and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer who was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of anthropology human heredity and eugenics in Nazi Germany. He was a member of the Nazi Party and the mentor of Josef Mengele, the physician at the Auschwitz concentration camp infamous for performing human experimentation on the prisoners during World War 2. Mengele provided … Verschuer with human remains from Auschwitz to use in his research into eugenics.
It’s funded by the Pioneer Fund which according to wikipedia:
The Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 “to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences”. The organization has been classified as a hate group and has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature. One of its first projects was to fund the distribution in US churches and schools of
Erbkrank, a Nazi propaganda film about eugenics.Something tells me it wouldn’t be very EA to give money to these people.
The next comment takes a similar line:
Not an expert in the area, but the data on National IQ seems shoddy at best, fraudulent at worst. Due to the number of potential confounds, I don’t put much stock in cross-country regression analyses, especially when run on such poor data.
This comment is, however, subject to considerably more “disagree” votes than “agree” votes as well as a widely upvoted and agreed-upon reply defending the data.
After that, things get murky. The third comment has it that:
I agree with your general case, and I’m interested in the role that genetics can play in improving educational and socio-economic outcomes across the world … However, I’m unconvinced that an EA should want to invest in any of the suggested donation interventions at the minute – they seem to be examples where existing research and market incentives would probably be sufficient … In terms of whether we should promote/ talk about it more, I think EA has limited “controversy points” that should be used sparingly for high-impact cause areas or interventions. I don’t feel that improving NIQ through genetic interventions scores well on the “EV vs. controversy” trade-off.
And from there, a variety of comments follow.
4.3. Follow-up post
In March 2024, five months after the original post, the author tried again. In a since-deleted follow-up post, “How to better advocate for genetic enhancement to the EA community?,” the author asked where they had gone wrong in their original post.
This follow-up post discussed a number of criticisms raised against the original post, including concerns about citing Mankind Quarterly, Richard Lynn and other dubious sources, and favoring genetic over environmental or cultural explanations. The post discussed the responses that the author had originally raised to these concerns, which the author judged to be reasonable. The author then asked how they could have better advocated for their views.
This post did not receive much engagement at the time. One well-received comment suggested that the author should target a different audience and avoid making racist remarks, among other strategies.
Another top-level comment, far closer to my heart, received significantly negative karma:
It’s really shocking and sickening to see Nazi stuff on the EA Forum. I don’t use the term “Nazi” hyperbolically. The author cites Nazi sources and parrots their arguments.
I hope moderators will ban this user and delete his posts. There is nothing redeeming or defensible about this.
The discussion did not advance far beyond here until it was called out elsewhere.
4.4. Callout
In April 2024, six months after the original post, an anonymous reader called it out in a post entitled “An instance of white supremacist and Nazi ideology creeping onto the EA Forum.” As of March 20, 2025, this callout sits at -17 karma.
This post called out both previous posts for citing Mankind Quarterly, reminding readers of some salient details about this publication:
- It was founded in 1960 by a group of men who “all had relationships with the neo-Nazi and neo-fascist extreme rightwing in the US and Europe”, according to historian Francesco Cassata. This included the Italian fascist and eugenicist Corrado Gini.
- One of the founding members of Mankind Quarterly’s advisory board was the German geneticist and member of the Nazi Party Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who was a vocal supporter of Adolf Hitler, particularly for Hitler’s views on “race hygiene”, and who may have played some role in crimes against humanity at Auschwitz.
- From 1978 to 2015, Mankind Quarterly was run by Roger Pearson, who the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a “purveyor of extreme racist and anti-Semitic ideas” and “a fierce defender of ‘Aryan’ racial superiority“. According to the SPLC, Pearson “has maintained ties to numerous Nazi and neo-Nazi groups and individuals”, including German eugenicist and member of the Nazi Party Hans F. K. Günther.
It also calls out citations of Richard Lynn, reminding readers that Lynn has also said the following:
What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the ‘phasing out’ of such peoples … Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.
and:
I think the only solution lies in the breakup of the United States. Blacks and Hispanics are concentrated in the Southwest, the Southeast and the East, but the Northwest and the far Northeast, Maine, Vermont and upstate New York have a large predominance of whites. I believe these predominantly white states should declare independence and secede from the Union. They would then enforce strict border controls and provide minimum welfare, which would be limited to citizens. If this were done, white civilisation would survive within this handful of states.
It criticizes another cited author, Emil Kierkegaard, for pressing the ideology of effective altruism to a number of lamentable purposes including the defense of colonialism, noting that Kierkegaard has argued:
An EA-utilitarianist case can easily be made for Western colonialism. With Westerners, the common people will experience better health (multiple examples above), economic growth (trade), justice (impartial courts), better governance, less war, less savagery (cannibalism, slavery). What’s not to like? Surely, freedom can be given some value, but that valuation is not infinite, so we have to ask ourselves whether Africans, Samoans etc. were not better off as colonies.
After some remarks about the post’s author, the callout then concludes:
EA Forum users should be aware of these posts’ connections to white supremacist, Nazi, and fascist ideology and movements. Going forward, I urge vigilance against these kinds of posts making their way onto the forum, in case they should re-appear in the future under a different name or in a different guise.
These are, I must say, sensible remarks and one would expect them to have been well-received.
The top comment does indeed receive the post well, reminding readers that there are “severe downsides of having these race and eugenics discussions like the ones linked on the EA forum.” This is, however, followed by well-received replies including a reply by the author arguing that:
This person is creating a discussion of race and eugenics and trying to make me look very bad by highlighting extremely offensive but unrelated content. Quotations from cited authors or people who run a journal are quite irrelevant to my argument which is aligned with EA values.
And comments by others such as the following:
I agree in terms of random discussions of race, but this one was related to a theory of impact, so it does seem relevant for this forum. I don’t think we need to fear this discussion, the arguments can be judged on their own merit.
and:
Happy to consider your points on the merits if you have an example of an objectionable post with positive upvotes. That said: part of me feels that Effective Altruism shouldn’t be afraid of controversial discussion, whilst another part of me wants to shift it to Less Wrong. I suppose I’d have to have a concrete example in front of me to figure out how to balance these views.
After a second and third top-level comment tracking voting patterns, there follows a qualified defense of some of the original post’s more controversial policy proposals, another comment about voting patterns, and then a strong rebuke:
I find it difficult to believe that any suggestion that genetic technology (which does not currently exist and would doubtless be expensive to deploy) could somehow be the cost-effective way of improving intelligence in developing countries is both informed and offered in good faith. One might expect an argument about, e.g., prenatal and early-childhood nutrition if that were the case. It seems much more likely that Mr. Parr’s posts represent yet another attempt to inject a discussion about race, genetics, eugenics, and intelligence in EA circles with (and I’m being generous) only the most tenuous linkages between that confluence of topics and any plausibly cost-effective actions to take. (To lay my cards on the table, I do not want content like Mr. Parr’s posts on the Forum at all.)
Such rebukes are quite welcome, particularly in contrast to discussions on some other venues where they are more rarely seen. But on balance, many of the posts and comments discussed in this exchange show considerable sympathy for discussion of race science, and a good number of them endorse race science as well as proposed policy consequences thereof.
5. You’re probably a eugenicist
5.1. Post
Diana Fleischman is a psychologist and host of the Aporia Magazine podcast. This podcast features in-depth interviews with many of the individuals we have encountered elsewhere in this series, including Richard Hanania, Steven Hsu, Emil Kierkegaard, Razib Khan, Charles Murray, and Steven Sailer.
In February 2023, Fleischman wrote an article entitled “You’re probably a eugenicist” for her own Substack, as well as for Aporia Magazine, which she later reposted to the EA Forum. The post sits at +81 karma as of March 20, 2025. (Fleischman also co-authored, with Peter Singer and others, a more muted academic defense of eugenics discourse).
This post argues that many of us endorse some form of eugenics.
Eugenics, a literal translation of the Greek for “good birth,” aims to improve the population through interventions. Positive eugenics aims to increase “good” and “desirable” traits, whereas negative eugenics aims to reduce “bad” or “undesirable” traits. The scare quotes are meant to indicate that there are and have been divergent views on the meaning of these words in the history of eugenic interventions. The taboos attached to even the most rational and objective discussion of eugenics only aggravates the confusion, promoting a widespread ignorance of even the definition of eugenics. Eugenics is actually an expansive concept with which most people agree in principle, but disagree with some of the terrible ways it’s been implemented. We are all eugenicists—but in selective, inconsistent, and often hypocritical ways.
At a minimum, Fleischman says, many individuals and courts endorse a prohibition against incest on the grounds that it runs an unacceptable risk of causing genetically-driven problems for children of incest.
If you agree that people who are genetically related should not have children, or should see a genetic counselor, congratulations, you’re a eugenicist.
Then, Fleischman suggests, many parents with physical or mental disorders are at least as likely as siblings to pass on those disorders to their children, particularly if they are in relationships with similar partners. This is, Fleischman suggests, an unacceptable hypocrisy:
Most governments forbid sibling incest, but do not even provide education to people who are just as likely to pass on other devastating heritable conditions. We treat similar or elevated risks dissimilarly based on our instinctive feelings of disgust.
Unfortunately, Fleischman laments, eugenics has been tarred by its association with historical atrocities. However, Fleischman continues:
Those who rail against eugenics in any form engage in a technique where they conflate an easily defended position with a more difficult to defend position (AKA the Motte and Bailey strategy). The easily defended position is that we should not murder or forcibly sterilize people on the basis of their genetics or disability. This position is conflated with several more difficult-to-defend positions. These more difficult-to-defend positions include that we should not study the genetics of desirable or undesirable characteristics, that we should not label any characteristics as desirable or undesirable and that we should not consider how any policy could change the genetic propensities of future generations.
Indeed, Fleischman argues, many of the historical targets of coercive eugenic policies including Jews and LGBTQ+ individuals engage in some form of genetic screening at higher-than-average rates.
Although many balk at the mention of eugenics, Fleischman argues that we would be better served by appreciating the scientific and philosophical arguments in favor of many policies that would be labeled eugenic and putting those policies back on the policy agenda.
5.2. Response
The top comment, by Fleischman herself, suggests that many effective altruists seem to think we should phase out the word “eugenics” and replace it with another. This, Fleischman suggests, is unlikely to be helpful or effective.
The next comment urges Fleischman to use a different word, as does the third, which expresses concern about what Fleischman may be trying to do by reclaiming the word:
As I was reading through this, I worry that the attempted reclamation of the word ‘eugenics’ – as well as making “eugenicists” unpopular – might contribute to a motte and bailey in the other direction, where the motte is “surely you think it’s reasonable to prevent siblings from having kids” and the bailey is more oppressive or coercive forms of reproductive control.
Like, you start the essay with an example of “eugenics” that most people would agree was reasonable … And then later, you talk about Nazi atrocities like murder and sterilization, which I agree that few modern eugenicists advocate for. But between those, you talk about people with mental illness: how bipolar, schizophrenia and substance abuse tendencies are genetic and often passed down to kids. You point out that people with these conditions often get together with others with the same condition, making their kids extra likely to have the disorder.
This perturbs me: is this, for you, in the reasonable ‘siblings’ camp or the unreasonable ‘Nazi atrocities’ camp? … I’d be against even mild “eugenicist” interventions aimed at making mentally ill people have fewer children.
The next comment suggests that the term “eugenics” has not acquired a similar taboo in China, and suggests that one might take either of two attitudes towards this fact:
I guess you could argue either way here. You could say that in China it’s good that you’re actually allowed to talk about this sensitive topic openly and rationally, without having a ridiculous and illogical cached concept where ‘wanting to have healthier children = nazi race science’. This is generally my experience and makes way more sense to me personally. If someone has distinctly dodgy views (spoiler alert: they do), you can argue with them without anyone using ‘but that’s eugenics’ to end the argument without actually addressing the issues.
But, from a consequentialist perspective, you could also say: “China doesn’t have a “eugenics taboo” and look at the consequences” (horrible one-child policy + forced sterilisations/ abortions + non-Han ethnic cleansing are seen as okay). You could also note that ‘extreme’ eugenic attitudes are incredibly common in China – people do care about the ‘superiority of the Chinese race’, and views regularly go way beyond those a more rational westerner would see as acceptable.
The rest of the discussion is varied and mixed, and may be worth a read for those interested in further exploration.
5.3. Callout
In October 2024, this post was called out by David Mathers in a post entitled “Author of much-discussed forum piece discussing eugenics works for a magazine with far-right links.”
Mathers reminded readers of Fleischman’s role as a host of the Aporia podcast and that Fleischman’s essay was also run by Aporia Magazine. Mathers suggested that the post should be read as one in a long series of efforts to mainstream eugenics and race science by using more moderate statements as a bridge into highly controversial views:
I thought people should be warned about this, since Aporia’s tactic appears to be to pretend to be much more moderate on issues around race than they actually are. Note that I am NOT saying, this means that people have to reject anything Diana Fleischman has ever said, or even that I personally disagree with everything in her original forum article. Insofar as it argues just that liberal democracies usually permit some eugenic practices, and people are confused and hypocritical about this, I probably agree with a lot of it. And I think I am probably cautiously in favour of genetic enhancement in the long-term, though I am very unsure about this. But I do think that the walls between “a bit edgy, but well-intentioned high decoupler” and “neo-Nazi activist”** seem to get very thin when it comes to people actively involved in trying to push genetic enhancement, in a way that makes me very nervous of the whole area.
As of March 21, 2025, the post sits at -3 karma after 34 votes.
After a top-level comment clarifying the relationship between the Aporia Magazine article and the version posted on the EA Forum, there are only two other top-level comments. Both are critical, and both have negative karma.
The first reminds readers that Fleischman’s partner is also active on the EA Forum:
Note: Diana Fleischman is the wife of Geoffrey Miller, another far-right effective altruist with a (much more prolific) account on this forum.
For example, a user posting under Miller’s name (I have not confirmed that this is Miller) on Substack speaks favorably of Hanania’s essay “Why EA will be anti-woke or die”:
Richard — excellent post. I wrote a comment about it in EA Forum … There’s quite a bit of discussion of your piece over on EA Forum. Much of the discussion, by the woke-adjacent, misses your key points. But IMHO a surprisingly high number of EAs understand the existential threat from wokeness, and do take it seriously.
The last, and most heavily downvoted top-level comment, contains a trigger warning:
Trigger warning on the linkposted article: contains a quotation from someone — who I emphasize is not [Diana Fleischman] — which I would characterize as defending sexual violence against children.
This warning did not, apparently, sit well with readers.
6. Conclusion
Today’s post began a discussion of the influence of HBD and related ideas on the EA Forum.
Section 2 looked at responses to a survey of opinions that users would be afraid to publicly express, finding some expressions of HBD and others concerned about the influence of HBD on the EA Forum.
Section 3 reviewed previous coverage of two incidents on the EA Forum: the Bostrom email and Richard Hanania’s essay “Why EA will be anti-woke or die“.
Section 4 looked at “The effective altruist case for using genetic enhancement to end poverty,” as well as subsequent discussion, a follow-up post and a callout of both posts.
Section 5 looked at Diana Fleischman’s essay “You’re probably a eugenicist,” as well as the response to this essay and a subsequent callout.
There is a good deal more to be said about the influence of HBD and related ideas on the EA Forum. That will be the subject of the next post in this series.