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What would you consider to be sufficient factual evidence to shift your views on HBD in various directions?
In order for the question to make sense, it is probably helpful to think of one's position on HBD along two axes, as in the Political Compass test, and one discrete parameter that would make less sense on an axis. You're also welcome to point out omitted positions.
x-axis, ranging from 0 to 10, where moving right indicates agreement with the statement: Human populations have significantly different average levels of intelligence, and this becomes far more pronounced in the right tails of the distributions.
y-axis, same range as the x-axis, but measured as 10 * perceived percentage of genetic contribution to the difference above. If you attribute some of the difference to the interaction of genetic and environmental influences, give that half the weight for simplicity.
Parameter z: How does intelligence correlate with the moral worth of a person? This can take on one of a few values:
(-1) Negatively
(0) Not at all
(1) Positively
(i) The moral worth of a person is dependent on their actions or beliefs, and intelligence only provides bounds on their culpability or merit.
I mean I think near zero on the z-axis? While my x and y answers are probably non-zero, and I do think maybe a rough 60% genetic contribution to individual heritability of g, for lack of a better term (I don't know how exactly to mathematically adapt this to populations in a fair way) but I appreciate z being its own axis. In essence, I don't think it's of any worth to spend a ton of work to evaluate x at all. Like, let's say there are in fact large but not enormous population differences. What am I supposed to do with this information? Am I supposed to be aware that I treat some populations differently than others, and do nothing about that? That's just stereotyping, which I think is morally wrong. Even if say 2/10 of Green candidates for a job are suitable vs 8/10 Blue people, individual respect and concepts of fairness matter more. I'm not gonna toss all 10 Green candidates to save time. Even if the job is important.
It's just stereotyping with extra steps, and is frequently the case. In practice many racists I see are using correlated but generally only semi-accurate indicators to judge group affiliation, and then do little follow-up. Like name, dress, skin tone, things like that. Sure, maybe they make sense on average, but on an individual level? Forget about it. I lived in Miami for a while, and I can tell you first-hand that a lot of people are far more than their upbringing, but more to the point, there's a huge difference in someone from Argentina vs Brazil vs other part of Brazil vs Peru vs Colombia vs Puerto Rico vs Mexico vs Cuba and somehow I'm supposed to believe that either they are all the same, or that other groups happen to be special and uniquely stupid, or something like that? Or that the only thing that matters is the exact percentage of some vague notion of "whiteness"?
And then even going along that note, genetic groups do NOT correlate 1-to-1 with skin color, for example, not as neatly as many would have you think. It brings to mind the craziness of one-drop policies in the antebellum South. What if someone is half-Blue half-Green? Their skin doesn't always average out or something. Africa is a big continent and not all of them are Black and not all Blacks are from Africa and again for the love of God genetics literally doesn't have a notion of race as these neat, immutable boxes, and history doesn't either. (Ancient) Egypt is a great example of how modern looks at racial groups and skin tone are often anachronistic. Maybe the whole white vs Black as a dichotomy or single slider is a straw man, but that tends to be the actual end result of a lot of this discussion.
In fact, someone just last week said on this very forum and I quote word for word:
Which I don't even know where to begin. I love reading and talking about history, and this just reeks of presentism. Look it up. On top of implying some one-dimensional scale of whiteness. Like, if you're going to use it that way, at least say WASP or something. And he didn't stop there, oh no. Of course, a discrimination step comes next. We didn't mention Hispanics or Asians, but that's another often awkward conversation rarely brought up because there isn't a clean and clear answer.
Anyways the end goal of this whole (disorganized, sorry) rant is basically, the whole HBD discussion is orthogonal, almost completely, to morally permissible practical applications. I apologize if I dragged both orthogonal arguments into the same thread. The whole idea of human rights and human dignity fundamentally involves the idea that a person's worth and treatment should, within reason, not depend on instant snap judgements. Were the American Founding Fathers hypocrites for writing words about equality and God-given innate rights when they didn't want poor people to vote, or enslaved people, or non-landowners, or certain foreigners, or women? Yes, at least a little bit. But that didn't make their words and ideas wrong.
Edit: edited intro to address OP's axes more directly.
The current explanation for disparate results is disparate treatment even if we can’t find it on the premise that races are equal outside of how races are treated. But if you prove no races are different, then you’d be foolish to accept disparate results as prima facie evidence of racism.
Stereotyping makes sense when the cost of being wrong is high and the ability to obtain information is low (either there is a high cost or timing won’t permit it). For people who want to reduce stereotyping, the goal should be to make information easier to obtain. But frequently we do the opposite. For example, we don’t allow companies to provide IQ tests.
Point 1 is a good point. Personally my philosophy is that we should be looking for disparate treatment more independently of results, though I understand and suppose I agree that a more thorough and complete understanding of underlying facts and mechanisms could be helpful to figuring things out, at least in theory. Fundamentally I don't like dismissing arguments simply because many make them in bad faith, you can use a true thing to make a bad faith argument. Still, it certainly seems to be true that a good chunk (certainly not all) of the HBD stuff seems to just be Eugenics 2: Electric Boogaloo rather than "let's just follow the science". Not that this is unique to one particular political group, of course. So I guess overall, I think looking at disparate treatment alone and independently is often sufficient, so it doesn't necessarily follow that we need to do a deep dive into HBD theory stuff. I'm open to being wrong. Do you have some examples where it wouldn't be?
I mean there are parts of point 2 that are I think fairly self-evident, and you summarize it well, but I think you overlook that sometimes we actually have a vested interest in fairness even if outcomes are objectively worse. I think these cases are actually few and far-between, rather than super common -- I'm not naive enough to say that diversity is always a strength. I think it often has hidden benefits. I think that sometimes a desire for societal fairness and respect is greater than the need for some super-optimized result, if the cost is introducing a disproportionate amount of stereotyping.
Of course you do make a good point that the equation isn't always immutable. As I myself said in a longer comment just barely, gathering other, better information is really the best case. We don't allow companies to provide IQ tests, but some other forms of testing are allowed. I do think some of the restrictions need to be loosened on what's allowed for recruiters. Jobs are important enough that I think a lot of people in power aren't giving them the policy care and attention they need.
A couple of responses:
Now this is obviously slightly tongue in cheek but I am making an earnest point. I do think there are other things we can and should do (eg blacks didn’t always have super high single family rates). But a belief in tabooing HBD will have a kind of “false” Noticing effect. If we could just taboo the whole discussion on disparate impact on different populations maybe it would be more optimal but who knows.
Following along in your thought experiment, I don't see why that's so bad. My perception is that as a matter of actual fact we are not currently in a position where we have successfully equalized "outgoing" kind of measures of equality, the "disparate treatment" in and of itself. I guess my general train of thought is, there's every incentive to vigorously explore and work on explanations other than HBD and if we do pretty well on outgoing, treatment measures and at that point there's still some unexplained gap, sure let's go there, fine. Until then, we have tools that work just as well that are less controversial and can theoretically do the same thing, so let's pursue those. So sure, at some point maybe we do get in a situation where we are faced with only gaps-based bashing our head against a wall, or the HBD stuff. That's fine! I have faith if that were to happen we would in fact seriously consider HBD stuff, certainly more so than now. I simply don't think we've reached the point of "we've done enough" to merit having the discussion yet. I realize reasonable people might disagree.
That's why I'm actually quite curious downthread to if the other user answers my honest question about when they think we already reached a tipping point where we've "done enough" for racial equality and it's time to throw in the towel, so to speak.
I elaborated also downthread about the dark street thought experiment, but more specifically, the "potential cost" I was referring to was actually "how does the group young blacks feel if someone crosses the road to avoid them". I don't think they would be that broken up about it, and I don't think it would make them feel particularly victimized (and even if they did the material impact on their life is approximately zero). So in that sense, it's a stupid example because both the overall societal cost and the impact on the discrimination recipient are low and also the potential cost to the discriminator is very high. This is, by all accounts, an abnormal rendering of a typical discrimination moral dilemma.
I guess that’s where I disagree. We’ve done a lot to try to remedy disparate treatment. In fact we have de facto discrimination in favor of blacks.
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