https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23533175 <- my complaint, a few years ago. Regarding Lex Fridman episode, featuring him. Wondering what the people like about them both? The interviever doing not much at all, the interviewhee talking shit, most eloquently. Yawn.
The comment: “Dear Joscha Bach. Unfortunately your post elides the core issue. The controversy is not simply about nuance, or about the public misunderstanding a private scientific discussion.
Your scientific framing here is still fundamentally misleading. Twin and family studies estimate within-population heritability under strong assumptions; they cannot support the population-level claims you made in your 2016 emails about Black children ‘never catching up’, developmental ‘genetic switches’, or group-level cognitive trajectories. Even the ACX piece you cite is explicit that twin estimates are likely inflated, that molecular methods produce far lower numbers, and that the missing-heritability problem remains unresolved. Crucially, behavioural geneticists across the field stress that within-group heritability cannot be used to infer genetic explanations for differences between socially defined groups.
…
The two studies you cite also don’t do what you suggest they do. The Malina (1988) paper you link is a review of motor development and motor performance, not cognition; it finds that Black infants in the US literature appear advanced in early motor milestones and that Black school-age children often outperform white peers on speed and jumping tasks, and it explicitly notes that environmental factors are most often cited as the explanation, calling for a biocultural (not genetic-determinist) approach. The Fryer & Levitt article documents that a Black–white test score gap emerges and widens through third grade and that their observed variables cannot fully explain this divergence – but it does not attribute the residual gap to genetics, nor does it say anything about ‘genetic switches’, neuroplasticity timelines or an inherent trade-off between early motor development and later cognitive attainment. The “inverse relationship” you infer is your own speculation, not something these studies actually establish.
More importantly, your emails with Epstein, whom you engaged with long after his 2008 conviction for child sex offences, did not stop at speculative neurodevelopment. They included explicit proposals about genetically altering whole populations, described mass executions of the elderly as rational, and framed fascism as ‘the most efficient and rationally stringent’ system of governance. These are eliminationist and hierarchical ideas in plain language, not misunderstood behavioural genetics. Your comment here is utterly unapologetic. You take no responsibility whatsoever for your own conduct, namely, your willingness to engage a sociopathic child rapist in pseudoscientific discussions which support fascist conclusions. I think it's fascinating that you position yourself wholly as a victim of an out of control public discourse, but appear to be utterly incapable of recognising that, perhaps, you actually did something wrong and ought to acknowledge your error.
…
For transparency: I’m the journalist at Byline Times who contacted you for right of reply in reporting this material. You chose not to respond. I would urge you to do so as we will be publishing shortly. I’m commenting here not out of hostility, but because your post presents a scientific justification that doesn’t align with the actual evidence or with what you wrote, and it’s important that readers have an accurate account of both. Your post is in fact particularly revealing in that it demonstrates that you have doubled down on misinterpreting and, indeed, misrepresenting the wider scientific literature on these issues.”
> They included explicit proposals about genetically altering whole populations, described mass executions of the elderly as rational, and framed fascism as ‘the most efficient and rationally stringent’ system of governance.
And he dares to play victim now: what an evil son of a bitch.
At least Petter "pussy are low carb" Attia (he literally wrote that to Epstein) just publicly said he felt ashamed.
Now I take being friend with Epstein and fucking either prostitutes or underaged sexually trafficked girls (or both) is so representative of totally evil human beings that it doesn't change much whether you apologize or not for it.
I wouldn't consider him an AI-researcher.
Oh, that hot-air blower...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23533175 <- my complaint, a few years ago. Regarding Lex Fridman episode, featuring him. Wondering what the people like about them both? The interviever doing not much at all, the interviewhee talking shit, most eloquently. Yawn.
https://lexfridman.com/joscha-bach-3-transcript/
See also https://joscha.substack.com/p/on-the-jeffrey-epstein-affair and especially the comments there by Nafeez Ahmed.
See Bach’s letter to Epstein
Linked in this reddit thread - its pretty damming
https://www.reddit.com/r/JoschaBach/s/ifnjwt3eaH
The comment: “Dear Joscha Bach. Unfortunately your post elides the core issue. The controversy is not simply about nuance, or about the public misunderstanding a private scientific discussion.
Your scientific framing here is still fundamentally misleading. Twin and family studies estimate within-population heritability under strong assumptions; they cannot support the population-level claims you made in your 2016 emails about Black children ‘never catching up’, developmental ‘genetic switches’, or group-level cognitive trajectories. Even the ACX piece you cite is explicit that twin estimates are likely inflated, that molecular methods produce far lower numbers, and that the missing-heritability problem remains unresolved. Crucially, behavioural geneticists across the field stress that within-group heritability cannot be used to infer genetic explanations for differences between socially defined groups.
…
The two studies you cite also don’t do what you suggest they do. The Malina (1988) paper you link is a review of motor development and motor performance, not cognition; it finds that Black infants in the US literature appear advanced in early motor milestones and that Black school-age children often outperform white peers on speed and jumping tasks, and it explicitly notes that environmental factors are most often cited as the explanation, calling for a biocultural (not genetic-determinist) approach. The Fryer & Levitt article documents that a Black–white test score gap emerges and widens through third grade and that their observed variables cannot fully explain this divergence – but it does not attribute the residual gap to genetics, nor does it say anything about ‘genetic switches’, neuroplasticity timelines or an inherent trade-off between early motor development and later cognitive attainment. The “inverse relationship” you infer is your own speculation, not something these studies actually establish.
More importantly, your emails with Epstein, whom you engaged with long after his 2008 conviction for child sex offences, did not stop at speculative neurodevelopment. They included explicit proposals about genetically altering whole populations, described mass executions of the elderly as rational, and framed fascism as ‘the most efficient and rationally stringent’ system of governance. These are eliminationist and hierarchical ideas in plain language, not misunderstood behavioural genetics. Your comment here is utterly unapologetic. You take no responsibility whatsoever for your own conduct, namely, your willingness to engage a sociopathic child rapist in pseudoscientific discussions which support fascist conclusions. I think it's fascinating that you position yourself wholly as a victim of an out of control public discourse, but appear to be utterly incapable of recognising that, perhaps, you actually did something wrong and ought to acknowledge your error.
…
For transparency: I’m the journalist at Byline Times who contacted you for right of reply in reporting this material. You chose not to respond. I would urge you to do so as we will be publishing shortly. I’m commenting here not out of hostility, but because your post presents a scientific justification that doesn’t align with the actual evidence or with what you wrote, and it’s important that readers have an accurate account of both. Your post is in fact particularly revealing in that it demonstrates that you have doubled down on misinterpreting and, indeed, misrepresenting the wider scientific literature on these issues.”
> They included explicit proposals about genetically altering whole populations, described mass executions of the elderly as rational, and framed fascism as ‘the most efficient and rationally stringent’ system of governance.
And he dares to play victim now: what an evil son of a bitch.
At least Petter "pussy are low carb" Attia (he literally wrote that to Epstein) just publicly said he felt ashamed.
Now I take being friend with Epstein and fucking either prostitutes or underaged sexually trafficked girls (or both) is so representative of totally evil human beings that it doesn't change much whether you apologize or not for it.