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It's not so much that HBD is the most important thing in the world, but that one side of the aisle seems adamant in suppressing or denying this info, such as the link between genes and life outcomes. Why is it so hard to accept that if physical ability is unequally distributed and can be quantified, that the same applies to cognitive ability too. There is a sort of conative dissonance in which people accept that individuals are endowed with unequal quantities of this 'thing' has the properties of intelligence, but it cannot be quantified and is of little to no consequence in life. If IQ does not exist or is not important, why does the left put so much effort into saying it does not matter. What difference would it make if blacks score lower than whites if these tests are meaningless? It's similar to how 'healthy at any size' goes out the window when you go to the doctor and are prescribed a dosage based on your weight, because not knowing this information could lead to overdoes or insufficient doses. I think some of this HDB denialism is a just virtue signaling. Revealed preferences are not the same as stated ones (rich parents in blue states spending thousands of dollar on enrichment intended to raise IQs and test scores but also denying that such a thing exists or matters)
That seems unfair in the exact same way as the mirror questions usually leveled in the other direction, that you're indeed arguing against right here.
If IQ is meaningless, that means there's a test that measures nothing important but people use it to judge your capability, in some cases even your moral worth as a person. People argue against helping the disadvantaged citing the meaningless number, arguing it implies they deserve their disadvantage. You also believe that disadvantage is actually due to racism.
If that reasoning is false, it seems very worthwhile to push against, just like "outcome differences between races are due to racism, therefore we need to fight this racism" is worthwhile to push against.
It's probably false, but honestly believing it's true makes speaking for it consequent, maybe even morally imperative. "If you really believed X you would shut up about it" is as unconvincing as always.
You're assuming 'society' is monolithic, which is strange when we're talking about intrasocietal political disagreement. That society puts resources into helping low IQ people only tells us which faction "won" in that specific policy question. That doesn't mean other people can't believe differently, and it doesn't mean these people can't be influential elsewhere.
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Much of our moral foundation is built on the idea of free will and people being responsible for their actions. That goes out of the window if we truly accept that cognitive faculties, thus thoughts, thus decisions are quantifiable and come from the gene.
I'm not buying it. Predisposition and natural ability don't sum to the whole of the grown person. To go back to the physicality example, people have very different natural capacity for speed, strength, and endurance, but that doesn't mean that people aren't able to build their capacity's and aren't responsible for how they use whatever talent they have. I'll never be an Olympic marathoner, but I can train up to run a sub-3 marathoner. Someone with a double-digit IQ is likely going to cap out intellectually well short of particle physics, but they can still ply a trade and be a decent, honest person.
Agreed. It seems pretty obvious that it's nature plus nurture. We only have direct input into the nurture side so that's where our effort is concentrated. Altering the nature side is possible but it's not a practice anyone wants systemised. Top bracket IQ score? Well done, take your pick of breeding partner from MENSA's singles beauty pageant, lol. Sorry, your high school sweetheart is assigned to the Capped Human Achievement Division. Ouch.
Edit: Also the most vigorous offspring being the result of outbreeding between dissimilar parents presents a conundrum for race-centric HBD'ers. Do they value human diversity, or human quality? My impression is they're uniformly against race mixing while using quality as the justification for that position.
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Why does it go out of the window? I don't see the path from Point A to Point B here. It doesn't matter if you were born with a gene that makes you stab babies, you still stab babies and we're going to imprison and/or execute you.
Someone born with a gene to stab babies would be institutionalized and would have some sort of defense (like insanity) available to them, so that they would be innocent of assault or murder. This is probably how our moral and legal systems work.
I mean, fine, if you want to imprison these people in institutions instead of proper prisons I don't care. So long as they're removed from the general population.
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