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In a certain sense, I don't think we can be 100 percent sure until we have computers that can simulate the physics of our biological processes to a high degree of accuracy, because until that point all we will be able to do is genome-wide association studies and find genetic correlations with life outcomes but not explanations for why those correlations exist or whether they are causal. (Though I grant that we could in principle get a physical explanation earlier than that, the same way we figured out that the genetic disorder Phenylketonuria leads to low IQ if one eats a high protein diet due to their body not producing phenylalanine hydroxylase, and thus discovering that with a strict diet people with PKU can have normal IQ's. Genetics is weird sometimes, and interacts with the environment in odd ways.)
I'm perfectly open to the idea that black people might genetically be predisposed to low IQ and personality traits that lead to higher criminality, but I think this is far from proven. It would actually be great news if it was all genetic, because that means we could probably do voluntary eugenics or gene therapies with the right framing and marketing, and be rid of the problem without much issue. If it's cultural, that's much harder to deal with.
I think we're highly biased by our novelty-focused culture, but I would wager that America is producing excellent cultural and entertainment products at least as consistently as Ancient Greece or Rome did.
How often did the ancient world produce a Virgil or a Homer? How often did they coast for a few centuries on the insights of a Galen or an Aristotle?
If you want to enjoy human artistic excellence in the United States, you can find it in virtually every large American city. You like opera? We've got opera. Ballet? Classical music? You could disengage from American pop culture, and probably fly to a different city every week and enjoy great Western art and performances that are probably at least as good as the average of what you could have experienced 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 2000 years ago. Maybe we can't compare to the Gaussian tail artists of those eras, the virtuosos like Beethoven or Chopin, but you probably wouldn't have to look hard to find artists and performers in the top 20% of all of human history all over the United States today, which I think is nothing to sneeze at.
And if you're not rich, there's always the wealth of recordings we have, which give even the common man access to the great performances of the past. For a mere pittance, you could buy the Harvard Classics and immerse yourself in the greatest thoughts of Western thinkers of the last 2500 years.
Maybe it is true that many Americans choose to engage with the new and the now, and ignore the mountain of gold they're born into. But I'm grateful that I've had access to the public domain books on Project Gutenburg since I was in middle school, and got to enjoy works from 1001 Arabian Nights to Plato's Republic for free. I think it is possible, even with brain rot and the nightmare of the algorithm that more people today are engaging with the thought stream of Western civilization than ever before. And let's be honest, most of the servants of Ancient Greece and Rome probably weren't deeply immersing themselves in the art and literature of the era (even if there are notable exceptions like Epictetus and Cleanthes.)
The evidence is so overwhelming that a scientific study is not even necessary. It's like observing that men are genetically predisposed to being taller than women.
This strikes me as an isolated demand for rigor. Would you apply the same standards to the claim that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer?
No, because the consequences of getting it wrong are very different.
If a society believes that smoking causes cancer, and they are wrong, some people don't get to enjoy setting fire to foul-smelling leaves and covering their walls and furniture with discusting gunk.
If a society believes that Black people are less intelligent and more criminal, and they are wrong, millions of innocent people go through their lives with a boot stamping on their faces.
Only if you subscribe to modern liberalism. Its perfectly fine to accept race differences without being compelled to subjugate people under classical liberalism. Lincoln, an abolitionist, fiercely believed in black inferiority. He had some creative solutions, such as deportation of many back to Africa, which probably would have worked decently for mainland America.
But there need not be drastic measures. American blacks could merely be treated equally, with the same expectations as everyone else, and it would dramatically improve things here. Of course, the backlash would be immense, as blacks treat equal treatment as oppression.
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So I have made an argument similar to this (but notably, not the same) and gotten heat for it, so allow me to say that I agree with those who are pointing out that truth should not depend on the social consequences. If something is true, even if that truth is hard, uncomfortable, and leads to unfortunate implications, that doesn't make it not true and you cannot demand people pretend that it is.
What you can demand is that we be very sure of it, and that we exercise extreme caution when deciding what to do about it. Which would be the steelman of what what you seem to be saying. What I was accused of was defending the "Noble Lie" (i.e., "We all collectively understand this is true but we must pretend we don't know it"). Which is not something I defend.
Where I differ from you is that you seem pretty set on "It would be so bad if this was true, that we must demand absolute 100% certainty, on the level of knowing that gravity exists, before we acknowledge it."
I don't agree that recognizing that there are racial differences in IQ and behavior would inevitably lead to racial oppression. I do agree that would be a risk. What I think it would lead to is some really hard choices and a lot of people unable to accept public policy that stops trying to "correct" a situation that is essentially not correctable. I don't know that we as a society could come to some sort of stable equilibrium where everyone is treated with dignity (and as an individual, not a demographic median!).
Nonetheless, I think we do still kind of need to know and face the truth.
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The problem is that if society believes the opposite of that, and they are wrong, then also millions of innocent people go through their lives with a boot stamping on their faces. There's no safe "false positives are clearly better/worse than false negatives" situation here that makes it easy to just err on one side. This is one of those legitimate Hard Problems that we need to actually do real scientific research to get right.
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Are you able to be a little more specific about how public policy would necessarily look if society believed that "[b]lack people are less intelligent and more criminal"?
To put it another way, what exactly do you mean by "millions of innocent people go through their lives with a boot stamping on their faces"? What exactly would happen to these people which is equivalent to having a boot [stomping] on their faces"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
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Ok, so in your view, societal recognition that blacks are less intelligent and more criminal would necessarily lead to the reinstatement of racial segregation in the South.
Do I understand you correctly?
No. It would not necessarily lead to such; however, defenders of Jim Crow often cited the alleged mental deficits and supposed inherent criminal tendencies of the Black population; thus, it is not as far from possibility as I would prefer.
Ok, I think I understand your position now. I disagree for a couple of reasons.
First, in my view, societal recognition of truth should not depend on the likelihood of harm resulting from that recognition. Either something is true or it isn't and the standard for truth seeking is logically irrelevant to the consequences of such truth.
Moreover, if there is a principle in place that the possibility of harm is ground to reject something which would otherwise be accepted as true, it opens the door to the worst kind of abuses.
Second, even if there were such a principle in place, truths should not be rejected on the mere possibility of harm. Rather, for much the same reason, a compelling case needs to be made of a strong likelihood of harm.
Here, there are plenty of laws and Supreme Court decisions in place guaranteeing equality. Thus, it is pretty unlikely that recognition of the truth about blacks would change this.
Indeed, it is worth drawing a distinction between (1) lower black intelligence and higher criminality; and (2) the genetic cause of the same. There is no serious dispute that on average, blacks have lower IQs than non blacks and are more likely to commit crime. And yet this hasn't resulted in reenactment of Jim Crow laws. Given that, it's difficult to see how recognition of a genetic component in this discrepancy would bring about a return of Jim Crow laws.
It is also worth distinguishing between (1) the level of proof necessary for societal acceptance of some truth; and (2) the level of proof necessary for laws to be enacted on the basis of the same.
We already have laws and policies in place which were enacted on the assumption that black underperformance is the result of past discrimination. I'm perfectly fine with a principle which says that until there is super-duper proof that this assumption is correct, then such laws and policies are unacceptable.
In other words, if -- for purposes of policymaking -- we are going to have a super high standard before concluding that black underperformance is a result of genetics, in whole or in part -- it follows logically we should have a super high standard before concluding that black underperformance is a result of past discrimination.
If the resulting logic is "we just don't know why blacks score lower on intelligence tests and commit more crime, and until that is known definitively, we won't have Jim Crow laws; we wont' have affirmative action; all races will be treated equally; etc." that's fine with me. To put it another way, if the conclusion that black underperformance is in part the result of genetics is possibly harmful to blacks, then we should also consider that the reverse conclusion is harmful to non-blacks.
I will acknowledge that, due to the norms against racial discrimination established during and after the Civil Rights Movement, the danger is less now than it would have been in earlier decades; however, these norms are eroding at an alarming rate.
Explicit discrimination existed, and left Black people poorer than they otherwise would have been.
Jim Crow was far more harmful to Black people than any of the attempts to remedy it have been to others.
I can see the argument for a higher standard of evidence for blaming particular people or institutions for discrimination.
I have considered many potential explanations for the continuing poor outcomes among Black people, both orthodox and heretical; all of them seem to, ultimately, trace back to discrimination against them, although that discrimination is not always done by human beings.
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Do you really expect that conclusive proof of the inferiority of blacks RE: IQ and crime would lead to the reinstation of such or similar laws, as if society hadn't changed at all since then?
Society has changed, but it hasn't changed enough, and seems to be backsliding in some ways.
If there were a universally-(modulo-lizardman-constant)-acknowledged taboo against judging an individual by the actions of his/her/their demographic group, I would be a lot less worried. (cf. my discussion with @FtttG regarding discrimination on the basis of natal genitals and the sequelae thereof)
I'm really sick of you trying to make me (and other gender-critical people) sound ridiculous and/or perverted by characterising my opinion as "discrimination on the basis of genitals" or similar. "Sex" is not reducible to genitals. Male bodies are not just female bodies which incidentally happen to have penises bolted on. Even trans-identified males who have undergone bottom surgery retain male patterns of violent crime.
"FtttG thinks sex-segregation is reasonable in certain contexts" is a perfectly acceptable gloss of my opinion on this matter which I wouldn't object to. "FtttG thinks he's entitled to know about the genitals of complete strangers, but refuses to tell us why!!" is both a flat lie (I have been more than willing to articulate my reasoning) and a transparent effort to imply that anyone who isn't maximally trans-affirming is a sexual deviant. It's cheap, obnoxious and contemptible behaviour. Knock it off.
And how do you think a trans-woman might feel, when people characterise her identity in such a manner?
The pro-trans side was not the first to use that particular tactic.
No, they also have testicles rather than ovaries; all other biological differences are downstream of the hormones produced by these organs, hence 'sequelae'. (definition)
I have re-read the linked posts and have not found anywhere where I have claimed that you refuse to tell us why you think you're entitled to know about the genitals of complete strangers; I am rejecting your claim that your reasons justify the intrusion on people's privacy.
If you walk into your manager's office and you're like "I want to see all my cow-orkers' complete medical charts, which will help me make Bayesian inferences on which ones are most likely to go postal, so I can shun them.", how amenable do you think your manager will be to your request?
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So that's what society is doing to the downies!
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Or would you apply the same rigor to the other question? That is, neither position is proven but which has more evidence. Why are privileging the blank slate hypothesis when it has for less evidence.
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If the only thing that could convince you is literal sci-fi technology, why are you doing the "it worked for the Irish" bit, then? That argument certainly doesn't meet the standard that you put upon people who disagree with you, so it should be rejected on similar grounds.
The bad news would have been that we've spent an inordinate amount of time and resources victim-blaming, and excluding people out of public life, for not enthusiastically hopping on the current race-equality bandwagon. This is why I asked who will be held accountable for it, it's not something we can gloss over with "teehee, I guess it doesn't matter now".
By that metric, there's nothing special about New York. I'm not buying a ticket to watch any of the stuff they make there, there's more than enough local artists I can enjoy. Even in the US a trip to the city scarcely seems worth the bother, and the city's impact on the rest of the culture is dwindling.
The metric of IQ was invented in 1905. Around the 1970's we measured Irish IQ, and it seemed low. In the late 1980's Ireland became a banking hub and in the decades that followed we measured their IQ's and they weren't low. Those are the facts as I roughly understand them, without causal links added.
I do agree that the banking hub explanation is only one possible explanation for the observed changes in IQ. It's not as certain as the conservation of momentum, to be sure. It is just a balance of probabilities.
We have seen Irish IQ go up to around the White European average. We have also seen black IQ go up, but it does not match White IQ (today it averages around 85 in the US.) I don't think we have definitive evidence that this is as high as it will ever go. I guess my question would be, would it surprise you if in 100 years, people with similar genetics to today's African Americans ended up having average IQ's that were equivalent to a 90 or a 95 today and no medical interventions were responsible for the measured rise in IQ? Would it surprise you if in 100 years the black murder rate fell 10%-20%? What about if the rise in IQ was larger, or the fall in the murder rate even greater? What do you consider unrealistic for us to observe in the future?
Sure. I was just defending American culture as a whole there. You were the one who said it was on life support.
‘ it’s ok you’re dead now, in the future these people will be 30% less likely to murder, still bout 40% more likely than everyone else ‘ is worse than anything I can imagine.
I was asking to get a sense of how people were thinking about the genetic proclivities of African Americans for IQ and criminality. Like, I'm willing to entertain that the difference is genetic, but just as I think that differences in genetics probably explain differences in sporting ability (say, height in basketball to name just one factor), and yet I also believe that a clone of Lebron James who was half-starved his whole life and kept in a dark cave with no human contact would not be a good basketball player, I also think it is reasonable to speculate that there might be environmental factors exacerbating whatever genetic differences are there.
For example, a quick search shows that the following vitamin deficiencies are common in African Americans: vitamin D (likely due to their darker skin), iron, vitamin B12, magnesium, and vitamin B2. Now, I don't have a causal story for how any of those interact with IQ or criminality, but if we imagine the US making an intervention similar to iodine in salt or vitamins A and D in milk, would it be totally crazy if that led to some positive outcomes for criminality?
I also think the focus on relative rates is a little silly. It would be one thing if every black person was a genetic monstrosity with a 50/50 chance of turning on you and killing you dead in the streets every time you encountered them, but because America has a relatively low murder rate (high for a rich developed country, but still lower than most of the developing world), the practical effect of a statement like "black people are around eight times more likely to commit murder than the rest of the US population on a per-capita basis" is that in a year like 2023 around 6,405 black Americans committed murder out of a population of 48.3 million black people (and most of their victims were other black people, so it's not like they're mostly making it everyone else's problem.)
That is, even if black criminality is 100% genetic, it cashes out to a level where we should still treat the remaining 99.99+% of blacks with a strong presumption that they are not murderers, if we want to be well-calibrated to the statistics. It would almost be hysterical to do otherwise. Certainly it is statistically illiterate to make a big deal out of such a tiny number of bad apples, even if it is relatively higher than other groups.
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