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I started writing a post for the culture war thread, and it got longer than I thought it would so I ended up just posting it as its own thread. I know some people don't always see those threads, so I thought I'd post a link here. I'm open to discussing it in either location:
https://www.themotte.org/post/604/the-case-for-ignoring-race
Adding to what I've said in the thread.
I think @Amadan has written on this a few times; I objected to his normative conclusions, but on facts it's true. You can't have a major European nation's worth of ethnically distinct people – and at that proud, self-assured, suspicious, confident in having been historically slighted, often outright ferocious people (whose self-perception of being Main Characters and moral core of the country is artificially inflated by the media) – with strong common identity, who disproportionately cannot compete in your economy, and expect them to buy the White/Asian "git gud" ethos. They may cope somehow, they may come to fear the punishment for insubordination and value rewards of cooperation, but they won't take it to heart. It's not as stable a form of race relations as the status quo. The whole system needs to be revamped into a drastically smarter thing to make it viable.
P.S. The issue with race comes from tail effects. I think you're underplaying just how bad the crime statistics are for prime age Black men. I'm wary of lily-white gopniks due to several violent encounters, but for most prime age White guys who look kinda sus it's fair to assume more or less good faith. With equivalent Black guys the odds are, like, 10X higher and that's probably an underestimate. I am positive that this one bit weighs too much to realistically discard.
This is, as far was I can tell, the crux of the matter. It’s fine as far as it goes to mathematically prove via HBD that black under representation in intellectual fields and poor achievement in general is largely the fault of them having worse genes, but it’s not an explanation that a population with an average IQ of 100 would accept, much less 85. You can repress sporadic violent outbursts, you can pay them to shut up and come down with maximum force on defectors, you can use affirmative action until they get taken care of, but ‘just letting them fail’ is not a way to deal with an unassimilable ethnic group with a population of 40 million dispersed throughout your country, which has a ready made excuse for failure that blames you.
Can you point me to a name, link that does the genetic proof for HBD. Most of the content I see here already assumes this axiomatically or is low resolution. What id like is something where I can start to 'cleave the arguments at their bones'
Eg, I'm curious what interpretation people have for the Flynn effect, or what the evidence base is for isolated genetic pools over long history..
HBD has been done to death in this forum. It's kinda like going on to an atheist sub and asking for a proof of evolution when everyone knows that God created the world in 6 days. They're probably not going to answer this question for the millionth time.
Start from here. Do you believe that genetics play a role in sprinting speed? Why wouldn't they also play a role in intelligence?
HBD can never be proven correct, nor can blank slate theory. But the overwhelming preponderance of evidence is on the side of HBD, as is basic common sense.
Yes, absolutely - a range of physical talents have genetic basis. And why shouldn't different kinds of intelligence have genetic elements. Fine, it is the coarse theory I'm critiquing which ends up with some people in a Victorian hierarchy of being argument l. Human intelligence is multifaceted and overlaps with culture. Why has IQ gone up over time, why is it I can increase my IQ from practice? What is the genetics of a mixed race person in HBD, what level of mixing do different groups have, how much is adaptation to environment over shorter timescales, how well does the tail reflect mean behaviour.
Do you really believe common sense is a reliable scientific guide. Phrenology was once accepted. I'm open to inquiry in this space but I've noticed people prefer the axiomatic assumptions than thinking about it.
In reference to a previous conversation Im not race blind but I don't get the hate boner people carry, sometimes over their lifetimes, around race. If you're going to make a strong claim, you need strong evidence.
I'm not going to give the case for HBD because it's been done to death here and I'm not the best person to do.
So let's talk about phrenology instead!
Phrenology, of course, is mostly wrong. But is it common sense? Not in the slightest. In fact, it's the furthest thing from common sense. Why would the bumps on someone's head make them evil. That's not common sense.
Phrenology is instead a pseudoscience, meaning that it uses the trappings of science without the actual scientific method. It's worth pointing out that a lot of modern research, especially in psychology, is so poor as to fall under the realm of pseudoscience as well. Remember "stereotype threat"?
But here's something a phrenologist might say which is common sense: "People with bigger brains are smarter". As it turns, out this is actually true. Brain volume has about a 0.3 correlation with intelligence, explaining about 10% of variance in intelligence. Note how bad the media reporting was on this topic as well.
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/brain-size-and-intelligence-2022
Incidentally, just in: Century-Old Paradigm Overturned – Brain Shape Matters More Than Neural Connectivity
Huh! The more you know! I guess phrenologists just had to sound it a little with some sticks or something, to tell the shape of the drum under the skull. Or maybe make some sacrifices… for science! They were so close…
Oh, those functional connectomics researchers with their contrived mathematical mumbo-jumbo must be getting real uncomfortable now, the silly geese!
Check this out @ShariaHeap @orca-covenant
(I haven't actually verified if the paper makes sense, but the writing is just hilarious with all those repeated metaphors, it reads like a GPT-generated shitpost for Sneerclub)
That's a wild concept, phrenology indeed, perhaps skull transplants or 'brain moulding' could be the way to go... The link up to phrenology is indeed quite hilarious given the recent discussions..! Everything in circles perhaps
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That's a nice philosophic distinction and I actually think there is a common sense we can moor to. I don't know how people, scientists actually thought of phrenology, perhaps it was more in the not-obvious science can tell us realm. What tends to happen I would guess is that established ideas can become 'common sense' over time, even if wrong.
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It's not common sense now, because everyone now knows that phrenology is balderdash. But once you know that intelligence and personality reside in the brain, but don't know exactly what the anatomy and function of each part of the brain is, it seems quite natural to believe different personalities are due to different brains → differences in the physical shape of the brain correspond to differences in personality → differences in a particular area of the brain correspond to differences in a particular aspect of personality, e.g. time preference or empathy → differences in the shape of the brain correspond to visible differences in the shape of the braincase → observing the shape of the skull allows one to make specific inferences about its owner's personality.
Thinking you can predict someone's propensity to, say, alcoholism, by the shape of their skull is not inherently less commonsensical than thinking you can predict it from their genes. A priori, there's a perfectly plausible causal path either way. That's why you need to proceed with actual scientific research instead of stopping at common sense.
It sounds like we agree for the most part. Knowing that thought originates in the brain, common sense would indicate that statistical analysis of human brains would yield insights. And indeed it has! Larger brains are correlated with higher IQ.
But phrenology was not that! There was no rigor. There was no analysis. It was just making shit up, similar to astrology. It's not common sense to make wild conclusions based on tiny shreds of evidence.
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The scores on some tests have increased, but the major figures seem to believe that this is due to cultural change, and that in other tests, scores have not increased. The scores with less cultural influence have seen no increase, for example.
Supposedly, practice can increase the IQ score on one test but will not have an effect on a test that you have not studied for. For example, reaction time is a measure of IQ and learning more vocabulary does not increase your reaction time (citation needed).
HBDers spend a lot of time showing that mixed-race people have the IQs that are the weighted sum of their constituent races. The more white admixture, the high the IQ, etc. They look at this at the gene level rather than relying on physical features. I have no idea how valid this work is.
African Americans are about 15% white admixture, for example. This is fairly easy to measure.
Given the population size, the distribution is fairly normal. The standard deviations may vary, of course.
These seem all a bit rote, and again don't really address much complexity. If I can practice and improve on a test then there is a cultural element. You mention speed reaction can't be trained for, but I'm assuming elite black athletes have superior scores on these, does this imply that blacks have superior native intelligence on aspects of intelligence?
Populations at the level of black v white v mixed are mixed of genetic lineages. This means tail genetics doesn't have to relate to median genetics.
Your genetic pot analogy seems a bit naive scientifically. To infer a causal relationship I'm going to need a bit more in terms of genetics.
My beef isn't that there's 'nothing there', just that the complexity is not engaged with, which implies a dunning-kruger potential. I am a scientist so I'm actually interested in the complexity and science. Others aren't interested in this but in making blanket statements about groups of people (with immense intragroup genetic variation), which overindexes on skin attributes.
Why do you assume this? I will look up the results. Lynn claims that black children have slower choice time but faster movement times. IQ is related to choice time (I am told, but I have not seen anyone doubt this.).
Lynn concludes:
I don't understand what you mean. Sorry.
The idea that there would be a linear relationship comes from the assumption (or observation?) that intelligence is influenced by many genes. This is fairly well accepted in other areas. I don't know any arguments why it would not apply to intelligence, but that might be my failure.
If you were around a few years ago, there was a lot of complexity, but I did not pay that much attention, and the major proponents don't post anymore.
For an example of engaging with the question, have a look at this paper. I have not checked the data, the analysis, or even if the study they are using ever happened, but it shows the kind of reasoning that HBDers do. They take seriously the kind of questions you ask.
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