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I'm surprised that more people here aren't talking about Scott ripping off the bandaid in his latest series of posts, which very much take an IQ-realist and pro-Lynn stance, and without really mincing words about it.
Scott has tip-toed around the topic in the past, largely playing it safe. There was some minor controversy almost half a decade in the past when his "friend" (one who had ended up marrying Scott's enbie ex Ozzy) leaked private correspondence between the two of them where Scott explicitly acknowledged that he believed in population-wide IQ differences but felt he couldn't speak up about it. Going back even further, on his now defunct but archived LiveJournal, he outlines his harrowing experience doing charity work in Haiti, where the sheer lack of common sense or perverse and self-defeating antics from the populace knocked him speechless.
I note (with some pleasure) that Scott raises some of the same points I've been on record making myself: Namely that there's a profound difference between a person who is 60 IQ in a population where that's the norm, versus someone who is 60 IQ due to disease in a population with an average of 100.
What's the wider ramification of this? Well, I've been mildly miffed for a while now that the Scott of ACX wasn't quite as radical and outspoken as his SSC days, but now that he's come out and said this, I sincerely doubt that there are any Dark and Heretical ideas he holds but is forced to deny or decline to defend. It's refreshing, that's what it is. He might not particularly delve into the ramifications of what this might mean for society at large, but he's not burying the lede, and I have to applaud that. It might we too early to celebrate the death of wokeness, but I think that the more milquetoast Scott of today being willing to say this matters a great deal indeed.
The article includes a bit of nonsense and it's rather verbose for how little it actually says. This comment will sound a little negative but I can't lower my standards enough to enjoy the article.
This line grossed me out: "If you take anti-racism seriously, this should make you breath a sigh of relief. This finding on its own doesn’t disprove a genetic component to racial IQ gaps. But it does suggest that the genetic component is less than 100%.".
It is trivially true that IQ is not 100% genetic (Otherwise, even sleep deprivation would not lower your IQ by a single point). I don't think anyone really thinks otherwise. I've been called racist for suggesting that black people were less intelligent than white people on average, even when I didn't specify how much, and even when I didn't suggest an explanation (be it nutrition or genetics). It feels like he made up his argument wanted to soften the conclusion. But I had his view when I was a teenager, and that's before I had any interest in "Intellectual" things. It is a surface-level analysis. The entire article basically just says "HBD is true, but feedback-loops like nutrition makes the differences seem bigger than they are".
He also understates the consequences of having 60 IQ, claiming that they will be confused if you talk about anything complex. He makes it sound like an example of something complex would be Calculus, but these people are perhaps 25 IQ points below those who struggle with calculus, and would likely struggle even in 6th grade.
Scott is familiar with how this discourse goes down. He's knows if he doesn't say "not 100% genetic" out loud along with other I'm Not A Racist-ism's, then that will be the first item in a laundry list for angry skeptics to angry type angry sneers. There are at least a dozen other items on the list and he doesn't cover those. Some make an appearance on the SSC thread. Whether it's worthwhile to fight the losing battle-- I don't know. If you're aiming to persuade someone it's a good idea. Can't win'em all.
I'm Not A Racist And This Isn't Racist-isms are a wasted if you don't consider them necessary. P He softens and hedges when dealing with this (or any controversial) topic. I'm actually surprised he didn't put more effort into softening words. This is not his most comprehensive post. It engages with a narrow slice in the intelligence pie. At a paltry 1300 words it might as well be his literal list of laundry.
Personally, I don't think anyone should be allowed to successfully beat the allegations. Sounds downright unnatural. I'd concede that if anyone can achieve this feat it may be Scott Alexander.
What should we expect a person with 60 IQ be capable of? What should we expect a nation with an average of 60 IQ to be capable of? Are individuals with a measured IQ of 60 in our society less cognitively capable than poorer, less educated individuals measured at 60 IQ across the ocean? Why would that be?
These are practical questions worth answering. In a way that uneducated brutes can understand. Which means it is something I've had questions about. I appreciated the follow-up post and consider this reasonable enough:
Wouldn't that make him a public performer rather than an intellectual? Around topics like these, at least. His insights are quite good as long as they don't touch upon specific things.
I don't know what you mean by "beat the allegations"? Data cannot hate people so I don't even see the need to bring things like racism into the question. The type of people who get emotional and angry (because they think facts are opinions) tend to be stupid, so communicating in a way which requres processing to understand solves the issue (so that one skimming your article without thinking would find nothing controversial). I avoided Reddit bans for years with this method. I could for instance say that having a 'victim mentality' isn't healthy, and that it doesn't even benefit the victim. Also that one should get over the past, especially if those who were involved aren't around anymore (at this point, justice is impossible anyway). This implies "Get over the slave trade already" and many other things, but I never said anything bad directly. I personally only treat specifics as samples of what I've generalized. You can safely criticize like 11 different ideologies at once merely by writing "Don't blame all your problems on one group of people".
I can't say specifically what the 60 IQ range looks like, but I'd expect such people to engage in magical thinking, to have problem with conditionals, to only be able to use simple tools (e.g. would not be able to change a microwave to defrost mode). I don't think it matters where one is from, and I think one would still learn basic social skills (but be relatively naive and easy to trick).
But the answer I just came up with seems quite vague, uninteresting and low value. I don't have anything better though. It's not so much that I have an exact model which explains intelligence perfectly, it's more that claims like "IQ is at least partly genetic" are trivially true, and claims like "High IQs are caused by wealth" are trivially false. What annoys me is when people are wrong about trivial things and avoid obvious examples available to them. If Africans had as many nobel prize winners as Europe did, then it would make sense to question IQ as a metric, but most attempts I see at discrediting IQ are incredibly forced and require some mental gymnastics.
By the way, IQ is made up of different domains like processing speed, verbal IQ, spatial IQ, and so on. If we stopped fusing these together into a single number, perhaps IQ scores would make sense. I remember seeing on a graph that I scrolled past on Google Images that an a working memory of about 3 items corresponded to 60 IQ, and this would be a very low working memory. We also know that chimps do better than humans on some memory tests, despite being much dumber than humans. For simple survival, working memory may be more important than abstract reasoning, and simple communication might not require that much verbal intelligence. So intellectually disabled people might have more severe issues like low working memory, while Malawians and 'healthy' naturally-low-IQ people are dragged down by other factors like poor abstract reasoning. I think education is much less important than most people believe. I could explain why, but my reply is already rather long.
Kinda, yeah. My read is Scott's courage is limited, though I don't consider him a coward. He remains capable of surprising his audience. He values some things before speaking Truth To Power. Mine is a purely parasocial assessment. I don't know if I have an accurate read of his character from his writing and limited appearances.
It would be unnatural if the the rodeo didn't include clowns. I wasn't being very serious. I've seen this entire dynamic play out what feels like 1000 times. It's up there next to Holocaust discussions.
In terms of persuasion, then there's utility to mealy mouthed, soft arguments. They complement the courageous explorers that proudly plant their offensive pole in the snow on top of Mt. Overton. The brave can plant the pole and the soft cowards can find ways to nicely herd people towards it. Maybe Scott is an exceptional, though not exceptionally, soft coward-- not a brave explorer. He is part writer, after all.
Many people get emotional and angry when they see stuff they don't like. Some of them are stupid, sure, many of them are not. Of those, some proportion are ideologues or people with hard values that are going to be mad and troll no matter what. There's still significant number of people worth convincing. If true, that could make shibboleths, caution, and niceties worthwhile.
Scott is someone who wants truth to help solve problems. He doesn't want truth to make the world a worse place by his own estimation. He believes in the genetic role of intelligence, but doesn't want to see pogroms. This makes him cautious and, apparently, quiet. Lots of people don't want to see pogroms, and they associate these ideas with pogrom-related events. I think a normalization and nothing happens (hopefully magic pills in 50 years) is more likely when reality eventually breaks through, but it's worth considering. If it's not worth considering then lots of people still consider it. Seems to be changing!
How do you reason the Flynn effect and what it means? For intelligence in general and IQ testing. Strictly nutritional and stuff like less lead?
Yeah, but this doesn't feel like it has anything to do with understanding how the world works. I feel like you're doing something wrong if you dive into intellectual topics because you want to meet your social needs or influence the values of those around you. If he wants to remain a writer then he has no choice but to continue doing this, but what I dislike is that he's also forced to pretend that this is not what he's doing.
If he cared for truth, he'd not limit himself to those around him. At the very least, he should think things through by himself, and then return to the overton window only when communicating what he found. But if you truly think about things for longer periods of time, especially if you're intelligent, I find that your worldview will become completely incompatible with the consensus.
Yes, and this goes for me as well, so I didn't explain it well enough. 1: Those who handle truth the best are good at seeing things from a detached and abstract/systematic perspective. And I find that those who get the most irrationally angry will only react if you make your position clear. So if you show nuance, they won't know how to react, since it seems like you're arguing for both sides (which is of course because you care about understanding the issue, and not merely nitpicking data which supports a specific ideology). Those who get the most trigged by the idea that black people are inferior to whites are those who are afraid that it might be true. High intelligence makes self-deception difficult, forcing them to think in different ways and get closer to the truth that they cannot hide from themselves. And maybe then they will say "I don't like the fact that life isn't fair" which is actually true, and a real topic worth discussing.
I don't agree entirely. I think he wants to promote his own personal values, and to compromise with others values, even if less appealing values would improve society more. (Relaxing sounds more appealing than confronting what scares you, but the latter is better for you. Morality might be the same, that which appeals to us might be costly and ultimately damaging)
1: Most people below 85 IQ are useless to the system, meaning that they can't do any work which warrants paying them a livable wage. This is not something we should deceive ourselves about.
2: Altruism can create dependent populations. Death is what happens to those who do not adapt, but I agree that it's good to help people to adapt by preventing their death in most cases. What's not good is to help in such a way that the amount of unfit people increases (because it allows people to avoid their own growth and improvement). You feed starving people, they survive and have children, and now you need more food to prevent starvation, right? This problem is inherently unsolvable, we must teach men to fish, not merely give them fish. By "saving" people from growth we push our problems into the future while making them worse. Same when we bail out failing banks and companies. We take surplus from the successful and give it to the unsuccessful, but this just lowers the appeal of success, meaning that less people strive for it, and that more people demand to get what others have.
3: By forcing small incidents not to occur, one makes sure that big incidents will occur in the future. The opposite applies as well, if you expose yourself to small problems then you prepare yourself for facing bigger problems (hence training, studying, exposure therapy, venting, etc). If you prevent a couple from having a few disagreements and talking them out, you get a sudden divorce instead. If you exercise your body, then you're less likely to get hurt next time you need to lift something heavy. All conflicts help fitness/adaptation, they're the feedback you need. Prevent adaptation/feedback/conflict naturally, and you will face disaster in the future. Suppression backfires. People who suppress their anger will sooner or later take all their anger out at once. Things like school-shootings happen because of pent up pressure. The amount of adaptation required is constant, but only by chopping it into pieces can you prevent it from being fatal. One of many consequences of this dynamic is that censorship of controversial subjects is prone to backfire.
I haven't thought much about it, honestly. When I first heard about it I thought "Makes sense, nutrition is getting better" and that still seems to make sense. Education might help too (I said it didn't matter much, but I meant for people like myself who procrastinate in school and teach themselves whatever interests them). Education likely helps performance on some IQ tests, but I don't think the effects on the G factor are very big. I suppose that the Flynn effect is different for different cognitive areas. Spatial seems to have improved the most. There's a million possible reasons for increases and decreases in average IQ, including lead, iodine, immigration, video games with spatial tasks (Tetris likely influences RPM performance), processed foods, literature getting simpler over time, and so on. I suppose these are all true to an unknown extent, which implies that the correct answer to your question looks like a confusing mess, while short precise and elegant answers are likely to be wrong.
This is false. The smartest people are often able to construct the most elaborate rationalizations and justifications.
Both are true, I think.
Smart people can argue well for almost anything, even if it's wrong. But they also have more self-awareness. For instance, you know that you're good at rationalizing things which aren't true. When you're intelligent, it's more likely that you will think of the possibility that you're deceiving yourself, even if it's also more likely that you can find a reason to think that it's a false alarm.
I think the former factor grows faster than the latter, so that intelligence is more likely to lead to disillusionment or high levels of insight, than it is to lead to having very strong beliefs. There's plenty of people with IQs in the 130s who have very strong beliefs (mostly due to the boost in confidence one may get for being above the norm), but if you go above 145 you get people like Jung and Buddha who become so self-aware that it becomes meta-self-awareness or meta-meta self-awareness.
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