This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Agreed
Yet Russia's PISA scores are consistently middle-of-the-pack, in mathematics above the US.
Obviously things other than IQ matter. But what, precisely, are you arguing against?
Do you believe genetics is responsible for, say, 10% of variation in educational outcomes? 20%? 50%? 80%? And I specifically mean current variation, not hypothetical variation with different forms of education (which would push up black and white equally, and leave them ranked the same).
Russia has an average IQ similar to France and my understanding is that the ethnic minorities who drag it down are concentrated in the same areas of the country. It’s Pisa scores are OK and it’s consistently capable of producing very talented people. By HBD metrics the Russian majority areas of the country should be as nice a place to live as Western Europe, but they’re definitely not.
And it’s not even compensating for history because EG Poland and the Baltics have done a much better job of closing the gap. It’s pure culture and mismanagement.
More options
Context Copy link
In this case? nothing. I'm agreeing with @hydroacetylene
Sorry, reinterpret that in the context of the overall discussion. How much impact do you think genes have on academic achievement? Both among individuals of the same race (where imo studies demonstrate it's >50%), and between races (i.e. how much of the jewish/white achievement gap is due to differences in genes between jews/whites)
Ahh.
To answer your question, when it comes to things like academics, athletics, or military effectiveness, I think that the effect of genetics (excluding the presence of serous congenital defects) is marginal to non-existant unless you're focusing on the extreme tail-ends of the bell curve. Otherwise the "noise" of individual environmental factors is inevitably going to overwhelm whatever "signal" there is that can be drawn from genetics.
HBDers ask "why is it that some kids run the mile faster than others?" And my response is that it could be any number of reasons, footwear, running form, general levels of lower body strength, differences in cardio fitness, a willingness to push one's body to the point of discomfort/distress, and/or all of the above.
In order to prove that genetics is the only meaningful factor you need to be able to prove that all of these other factors are not.
I strongly disagree, and think that this disagreement is a 'crux' for the race-iq disagreement. Obviously if genes play no role in individual intelligence for the median individual, it plays no role in group difference.
You are/were engineer of some sort, right? Imagine you're buying parts for a series of machines at a factory. One brand fails in an average of 3 years, another brand fails in an average of 4 years. These are the only two possible choices, and they both have the same price. But - the standard deviation is .7 years! Does the "noise" overwhelm the "environmental factors"? In one sense, yes, for any individual washer it's tough to guess which brand they came from. In another sense, no, you know which brand you're choosing. And if you see a washer last 7 years, its' probably from the second brand (depending on the distribution).
The point is that whether the environmental 'noise' washes out the gene 'signal' depends on how large they both are. If genes cause +.1 stddev, then they don't matter in practice. If they cause +1 stddev, they do. Different natural histories for humanity could give us alternatives either way. If we took my gene editing suggestion - in a hundred years - probably environment would suddenly become the best way to improve human intelligence again (well, ignoring AI). But we have to measure how strong both are.
And that takes us to science.
Essentially, when you try to measure whether the signal or noise is higher with twin studies, the signal is stronger. We can also do GWASes, where we estimate the effect of individual genes on a trait like intelligence. Each gene has an extremely small effect, but when put together this can predict (some of the time - genetics-based heritability estimates are lower than those from twin studies, because many genes + small effect is hard, but it's increased over the past five years) which of two siblings will score higher on intelligence tests just from their genes.
This is also intuitively true. Clarence's son with another lawyer will be smarter than random joe. If Mahomes marries the daughter of another great football player, they'll be a better athlete than joe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link