Thanks for the reference. Hard to tell if veganism is the cause, though. For example, lots of paleo people consume "living foods," including fermented vegetables. Do they see similar benefits? I'd wager yes. Plus, the study doesn't substantiate the claim of vegans needing less sleep. It points to a better "quality of sleep," with no indication of quantity, and even then only in fibromyalgic subjects. So it appears that my initial skepticism was justified.
Do those who support Curtis appearing at the talk (wisely?) refrain from posting out of (legitimate?) fear of career repercussion?
This. It also has the perverse effect of leaving the defense of "racists" to actual racists (e.g., [1]), thereby leading to guilt by association: "See, only racists are willing to defend this guy, so he's obviously a racist!"
the views he's defending – that people of some ethnic backgrounds are subhuman and fit only for slavery
This is a lie. Moldbug has never defended such a view, and only a willful misreading of his work could possibly lead to this conclusion.
For the curious, let's have a taste of what Moldbug has actually written on the subject [1]. Its only sin would appear to be the use of the slightly archaic (but nonpejorative [2]) term "Negro":
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[T]he common meaning of racism implies the belief that ancestry is significant information in the context of common decisions about individuals.
It should be obvious that it is not. If you want to test a job applicant’s IQ, for example, give her an IQ test. Patterns of ancestry become useful only in decisions that affect large groups of humans in the aggregate. Governments, however, must often make such decisions.
Therefore, if you are an HNU [Human Neurological Uniformity] denialist and someone asks you whether you’re a racist, you can ask him if he implies the above belief, which we can call racial essentialism. (The Nazis, of course, were big essentialists.) If he says yes, tell him no. If he says no, you can tell him yes.
One also must be quite a bit more careful than Hume [quoted previously] with the words superior and inferior. This implies some quantitative ordering of overall personal worth, an idea one would expect Hume to be the last to accept. For example, consider the proposition that Jews tend to be better chess players than Negroes, whereas Negroes tend to be better dancers than Jews. Both halves of this statement may (or may not) be true, but neither can justify us in ranking the two races overall—unless our sole criterion of personal worth is either chess or dance. Which mine isn’t.
I'm reminded of this quote from Joseph Campbell: "The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight." Terry Davis seems to be treading water—stuck somewhere between revelation and oblivion.
I know it's hard to believe, but relative to their proportion in the workforce white males are slightly underrepresented in tech. Additionally, people of color are dramatically overrepresented. It's easy to march under the banner of "men in tech shouldn't act like sexist jerks"—what kind of sexist jerk could object to that?—but the more accurate slogan "we need many fewer Asian males in tech" doesn't sound quite so nice. In fact, it sounds rather nasty. And yet, it's the inevitable implication of increasing diversity.
There's a counter-point to this that is likely to be unpopular, but it's deeply rooted in human biology and isn't going to go away any time soon. Attractive young women may have difficulty getting people to take them seriously, and have to deal with things like frequent unwanted sexual advances, but they have no trouble getting laid. Attractive young women have easy, practically unlimited access to sex (if they so desire). Unsurprisingly, this comes at a cost.
Meanwhile, while it's easier for men to be taken seriously, and they much less often have to deal with sexual harassment, they often have trouble getting laid—especially with the aforementioned attractive young women. It may be true that "the vast majority of guys...are simply not aware that women...go through this stuff all the time". But it's also true that the vast majority of women are simply not aware of how hard it is for young men, especially nerdy young men, to get appealing women to have sex with them. They would be utterly flabbergasted if they learned just how many computer geeks, science grad students, etc., have never even kissed a girl, much less had sex with one.
We see that there are plusses and minuses to each respective situation, but arguably men have it worse off, because women can complain freely of the terrible things they have to put up with, and they're generally met with sympathy by the mainstream (and backed by the full force of Federal law). Meanwhile, men who complain that attractive young women won't sleep with them are shamed and belittled, and told that no one owes them sex. Which is true—but is hardly helpful to the proverbial 40-year-old virgin.
Scott Alexander covers some of the most salient points here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
See Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate for a book-length treatment.
(all male, all white) scientists
This is both ad hominem and wrong (the fourth scientist featured, Dr. Debra W. Soh, is an East Asian woman).