On the surface, such mental gymnastics, with rapid jumps between abstraction layers and revealed intelligence, seems to require explicit reasoning. I always wonder if these people understand what they're doing, or if they're RLHF'd into mentally circling the drain like ChatGPT is RLHF'd into incoherently preferring an H-bomb to the N-word, and are no more conscious than most folks imagine ChatGPT is. Or if there even is any substance to the idea that there could be difference. @Chrisprattalpharaptr, what say you?
I don't know; I've never met a population geneticist, let alone tried to talk to them about IQ or race so it's difficult for me to model their thinking. While trying to figure out what he was saying, I ran into both twitter blocking me from following external links (thanks Elon) and paywalled papers with high-minded titles like 'Understanding human genetics for the benefit of society.' If they can afford it, anyways.
If you weren't joking, I've taken the sentience blackpill and will maybe expand on it with a toplevel post at some point. If you wanted to talk about HBD again, I don't think I've changed much since the last time we've discussed it other than to retreat further into uncertainty. I tried picking up some books from the 'race is a social construct' crowd and they do, indeed, seem to be trash. Evolutionary psych arguments are almost always just as bad, as well as people holding up studies claiming to have found 'The Intelligence Gene' distinguishing Whites and Blacks. I'd maintain:
Definitionally, complex traits are determined by a mixture of genetics and environment.
IQ is a complex trait, therefore there should be a substantial genetic component and I accept the data showing this is the case.
GWAS studies and other approaches for studying complex traits have not been particularly illuminating, even in model cases like height and with massive sample sizes.
Study of environmental factors seems to have made even less progress, though whether that is due to poor methodology/researchers or even greater complexity I don't know.
All this said, I don't think any of this would substantially change my politics or worldview whichever way the chips fall.
As an aside, if you avoid using the words HBD/genetics and talk to people about talent you can get them to reveal some hilariously hardline positions. Once they agree that some kids are just more talented than others, it's easy to segue from that to nature vs. nurture so long as you aren't explicitly calling for genocide or mandatory eugenics.
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Notes -
I don't know; I've never met a population geneticist, let alone tried to talk to them about IQ or race so it's difficult for me to model their thinking. While trying to figure out what he was saying, I ran into both twitter blocking me from following external links (thanks Elon) and paywalled papers with high-minded titles like 'Understanding human genetics for the benefit of society.' If they can afford it, anyways.
If you weren't joking, I've taken the sentience blackpill and will maybe expand on it with a toplevel post at some point. If you wanted to talk about HBD again, I don't think I've changed much since the last time we've discussed it other than to retreat further into uncertainty. I tried picking up some books from the 'race is a social construct' crowd and they do, indeed, seem to be trash. Evolutionary psych arguments are almost always just as bad, as well as people holding up studies claiming to have found 'The Intelligence Gene' distinguishing Whites and Blacks. I'd maintain:
Definitionally, complex traits are determined by a mixture of genetics and environment.
IQ is a complex trait, therefore there should be a substantial genetic component and I accept the data showing this is the case.
GWAS studies and other approaches for studying complex traits have not been particularly illuminating, even in model cases like height and with massive sample sizes.
Study of environmental factors seems to have made even less progress, though whether that is due to poor methodology/researchers or even greater complexity I don't know.
All this said, I don't think any of this would substantially change my politics or worldview whichever way the chips fall.
As an aside, if you avoid using the words HBD/genetics and talk to people about talent you can get them to reveal some hilariously hardline positions. Once they agree that some kids are just more talented than others, it's easy to segue from that to nature vs. nurture so long as you aren't explicitly calling for genocide or mandatory eugenics.
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