2024-09-29 17:41 UTC
@adityakhanna@mathstodon.xyz @timnitGebru@dair-community.social Because IQ is and always has been a eugenicist mainstay, from before Minsky was born. Immigrants were feared and called feeble-minded in an attempt to keep them from sullying our wonderful American blood (I'm being sarcastic). A bunch of weird people who thought we should selectively breed human beings the way we breed horses or roses pushed these ideas into every corner of life that they could.
Obsession with an impossible notion of intelligence abstracted away from physical embodied life is a hallmark of eugenicist thinking. The most charitable way to read Minsky's words is that he was ignorant of all this despite living right through it. Even though I find that very difficult to believe it's already worthy of a facepalm.
Replies (2)
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@adityakhanna@mathstodon.xyz 2024-09-29 17:48
@abucci @timnitGebru oh I see. Thanks for explanation, didn't know that. Will keep that in mind reading it
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@anschmidtlebuhn@scholar.social 2024-09-29 23:10
@abucci @adityakhanna @timnitGebru Where in that original post is quantifiable IQ even mentioned? You just read that in there yourself. It is possible to hypothesise minds that are to human ones like human ones are to those of, say, house cats, without being racist and without thinking in terms of IQ tests specifically. The question here is if that is possible, and without trade-offs and diminishing returns, and on a computer substrate, not if a racist believes something completely unrelated.