SneerClub

968 readers

3 users here now

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

here's a great and useful rundown of Scott Alexander Siskind's actual awful beliefs, from a centrist who found it difficult to accept until that email leaked (miniver.blogspot.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

NSFW 13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't phrenology about skull shape and its influence on mental traits in general? Otherwise it's not really a field of study, it's just one claim: larger skull = more intelligence (which is just a less precise version of more childhood nutrition = taller = larger skull = more intelligence), but phrenologists also claimed they could explain all sorts of traits like criminality and personality with things like bumps in the skull.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

To be really precise it was about measuring the size and distribution of all sorts of skull irregularities (the proverbial 'bumps') and mapping them to various traits, it's basically palm reading for the head.

Siskind is just being his usual disingenuous self, i.e. 'everyone always uses skull shape' (to indicate that my intellectual precursors were clowns) is obviously referencing phrenology, then immediately motte-and-baiieys it to a claim of correlation of cranial capacity and IQ.

Except for M&B sleight of hand to work the claim shift shouldn't happen in the same sentence, otherwise it's extremely obvious that you are claiming one thing while carrying water for the other thing (phrenology), which is probably why he ended up deleting the post.