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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1276 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 1, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Here's Noam Chomsky doing the "let's not go there" bit in 1972:

In fact, it seems that the question of the relation, if any, between race and intelligence has very little scientific importance (as it has no social importance, except under the assumptions of a racist society). A possible correlation between mean I.Q. and skin color is of no greater scientific interest than a correlation between any two other arbitrarily selected traits, say, mean height and color of eyes. The empirical results, whatever they might be, appear to have little bearing on any issue of scientific significance. In the present state of scientific understanding, there would appear to be little interest in the discovery that one partly heritable trait correlates (or does not) with another partly heritable trait. Such questions might be interesting if the results had some bearing, say, on hypotheses about the physiological mechanisms involved, but this is not the case. Therefore the investigation seems of quite limited scientific interest, and the zeal and intensity with which some pursue or welcome it cannot reasonably be attributed to a dispassionate desire to advance science. It would, of course, be foolish to claim, in response, that "society should not be left in ignorance." Society is happily "in ignorance" of an infinitude of insignificant matters of all sorts. And, with the best of will, it is difficult to avoid questioning the good faith of those who deplore the alleged "anti-intellectualism" of the critics of scientifically trivial and socially malicious investigations. On the contrary, the investigator of race and intelligence might do well to explain the intellectual significance of the topic he is studying, and thus enlighten us as to the moral dilemma he perceives. If he perceives none, the conclusion is obvious, with no further discussion.

As to social importance, a correlation between race and mean I.Q. (were this shown to exist) entails no social consequences except in a racist society in which each individual is assigned to a racial category and dealt with not as an individual in his own right, but as a representative of this category. Herrnstein mentions a possible correlation between height and I.Q. Of what social importance is that? None, of course, since our society does not suffer under discrimination by height. We do not insist on assigning each adult to the category "below six feet in height" or "above six feet in height" when we ask what sort of education he should receive or where he should live or what work he should do. Rather, he is what he is, quite independent of the mean I.Q. of people of his height category. In a nonracist society, the category of race would be of no greater significance. The mean I.Q. of individuals of a certain racial background is irrelevant to the situation of a particular individual, who is what he is. Recognizing this perfectly obvious fact, we are left with little, if any, plausible justification for an interest in the relation between mean I.Q. and race, apart from the "justification" provided by the existence of racial discrimination.

IIRC Pinker quoted exactly this to buttress his argument.

So has Pinker genuinely not realized by 2025 that people flipped the argument around in the last decade into the form that since the existence of hereditary IQ differences is unspeakable, observed outcome differences are necessarily due to racism, or is he just playing dumb? Charles Murray spelled this out in Facing Reality back in 2021, making it the main thread of the whole book, and Pinker is probably pretty familiar with Murray.

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