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In a large thread about HBD, this comment https://www.themotte.org/post/877/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/187753?context=8#context was not replied. @OliveTapenade @guesswho @HlynkaCG @Questionmark
Since IQ scores are usually unavailable in large genetic databases, largest studies use "educational attainment" (EA, a variable dimensioned in number of years studied for individual's highest degree). Davide Piffer took polygenic index function derived from European populations and computed its values for some other populations, and plotted them vs their phenotypic IQs.
Of course, using polygenic index on another population than which polygenic index was derived isn't good. But this is bad in a sense that it is not accurate for estimating an individual from that another population (mostly because of linkage disequilibrium) but here we are interested in relative ranking of population averages, and they align fairly well. If using PGI to get another population averages was bad, we could predict it would be produce zero correlations and correlation -1 just as likely as +1. We could have seen bias associated with genetic distance from reference population or bias associated with relative position on PCA chart, but we don't. Maybe Piffer cherrypicked results? If so, why wouldn't be the best response to it is to re-do his analysis and show proper ~0 correlation?
Anti-HBD, what's your response to this? Why do you repeat "legacy of slavery" ad nauseam but ignore what genetics starts to explore? (link about mostly the same: https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/sasha-gusev-wont-answer-basic-questions )
Like @The_Nybbler I am deeply skeptical of educational attainment as a proxy for raw intelligence. If anything it strikes me as a case of affirming the consequent. Simple truth is that I've met too many 60th percentile ASVABs who were demonstrably capable of organizing/supervising complex evolutions involving hundreds of people and dozens of moving parts, just as I've met too many post-grads from prestigious institutions who I wouldn't trust to boil water, to take such claims at face value.
More generally I will reiterate my take from the previous thread. While Thomas Sowell does not address HBD directly I find it hard not to read his "vision of the anointed" in to pretty much everything HBDers post here. The scales falling from my eyes moment was when the Wonderlic "Race Norming" scandal came to light in 2019, and a significant portion of users here defended it. To be clear, The NFL had been collecting Wonderlic score on players since the late 70s, and what they got caught doing was artificially adjusting the scores of high-performing black players downward to change the racial distribution of disability payouts. On a dime I saw users who had claimed to support standardized testing flip from "the data obviously supports our conclusion" to "we must
correctmanipulate the data to better reflect the truth". This is what might be called in another context; "saying the quiet part out loud" and it exposes the fact that HBD as it is advocated for here on theMotte and more generally amongst rationalists is much more of a normative belief than a descriptive one. An argument over "ought"s rather "are"s.Yes, I catch lot of flak on this forum for maintaining that Utilitarianism is a stupid and evil ideology that is fundamentally incompatible with human flourishing, but I feel that the discourse surrounding HBD is an apt illustration of the problem. Once you've gone on the record in defense of lying or manipulating data to defend your preferred narrative or achieve your preferred policy outcomes, what reason does anyone else have to trust you? Contra The Sequences and Scott Alexander, information does not exist in a vacuum, and arguments do not spring fully formed from the either. The proles are not stupid. They recognize that the Devil can quote scripture, and that a liar can tell the truth when it suits them. Thus the fundamental question one must always be prepared to ask when evaluating a statement is not whether a statement is true or false, but "Cui Bono?".
Who benefits from Id Pol, HBD Awareness, and Intersectionality? Who benefits from the dismantlement of Anglo/American norms about equality of opportunity and equality before the law? I can tell you who does not benefit in anyway. Those who possess genuine individual merit.
I am sometimes surprised that we have been on the same forum for nearly a decade now, and some of the experiences and things you references are always new and confusing to me.
I had to look this up "Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery"
I've not had the same life experiences as you. I've been around many academics, still work around some. I think a car comparison would help here. Some academics are like drag racers. They are built to go very very fast in a straight line. Ask them to take a turn and they'll crash into a thousand pieces. The Hondas I like driving tend to last and last and last. Without much need of maintenance or for me to worry about the machine itself. They aren't exceptional in any way, but they are reliable and do what you need. I know some people that just seem to be workhorses at life, and they can wade through the shit that gets thrown at them without breaking down. They adapt and fit in where needed.
Comparing via IQ seems a bit like comparing via horsepower. Not the whole story, but still kinda accurate for what you are measuring.
I read Thomas Sowell's Race and Culture, but have not read his other stuff. I'm not familiar with this "vision of the anointed".
I'm unfamiliar with this incident. And your description doesn't totally clear up to me what was happening...
Very well said, highly agree with you. Was one of my big frustrations with Fauci during covid. Stopped trusting him after the mask switcheroo.
I'm generally against Id Pol. I feel like I am aware of HBD. I am not interested in handing off control of society or government to people who claim to know how to judge intersectionality. I like the norms of equality of opportunity and equality before the law. I'd rather live in a society that has benefits for those with genuine individual merit, but mostly contingent on them sharing those merits with society. If you are capable for being a brain surgeon, you should only get paid as a brain surgeon if you actually do brain surgery.
Jobs are tasks to be done, not rewards to be won.
I think maybe we agree, but also sometimes I feel like you are yelling at me, and I'm not sure why?
Me too, but the problem is that those terms have become political signifiers in addition to their true meaning, with both sides claiming to pursue them while pushing their own agenda.
If I said that affirmative action isn't supposed to be opposed to any of that, it's supposed to counteract known disequities of opportunity in order to end at true meritocracy, like adjusting to the left because you know the sites on your gun are off a bit to the right, would you believe me?
If someone else said that all of our laws are already equal and all our bigotry is already ended, so all you have to do to get true meritocracy is get out of the way and let the market work, the invisible hand will take care of it all, would you believe them?
Unfortunately, it's all part of the culture war now, and which one of us someone believes typically has more to do with which side they're on than a careful consideration of all the mountains of evidence.
Which gets back to the basic problem of epistemic learned helplessness, and trusting your own experts and ingroup testimonials.
Sounds like blather so far.
No. Because I am advocating to zero the sights. Level the playing field. Stop trying to pick winners. Are some people dealt different hands? Yes, Jay-Z and Beyonce's kids will grow up uber privileged. What do you propose to do about it?
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