Never mind. I guess Trolly's post had genetic in it too. So my bad. We move on.

Ok. I'll answer as best I can.

It would be surprising if any measured biological difference between 2 distinct groups didn't have a genetic component (That is kind of how biology works, for good or bad). But I have been surprised before. For example, I bet the over in the Warrior game and thought I had a lock, but the game went scoreless for about 4 minutes late in the 4th and I got lucky to push on an Iguadala 3 of all things.

So we don't really know, and it is entirely possible there is no difference in IQ that environment couldn't account for. And regardless, reducing social services as a strategy of eugenics seems extremely callous and inappropriate, and arguably racist (I just thought about it, and there really doesn't seem to be a very good counterargument so I am ok taking out the arguably part), even if Murray is completely right about everything.

For like the fifth time, whoever told you that you can just call anything that makes you uncomfortable "emotional" did you a huge disservice. I asked you a very simple yes/no question about whether you agree with the main thesis of The Bell Curve, that IQ disparities reflect genetic differences between races. I expect a straight answer and not a spoilered wall of text from Sam Harris.

You're already one step ahead of the class here. We need to establish that Murray makes a genetic claim about inherent intelligence.

We don't need to "go to the tape" about your opinion on a subject you've posted about 120 times. Just spit it out.

OK and this is approaching playing dumb again.

Do you think Murray is right, or do you think he's wrong?

Unbelievable.

You have to be careful not to beg the question by describing IQ as a "measured biological difference," given the known problems with using IQ as a proxy for innate cognitive ability (e.g. the Flynn effect, other known connections between the environment and IQ)

But, one thing I was really hoping to successfully get across in this thread is just that "black" and "white" are not useful ways of grouping human beings in this context. That's the whole point of saying that race "is a culturally constructed label which crudely and imprecisely describes real variation."

So, for example, I linked the David Reich piece in NYT, where he writes:

I don't think it's wrong to expect some role for genetics in explaining human variation in intelligence, even on average across distinct populations. But it's absolutely wrong (as pointed out by Reich) to take popular racial classifications to be the relevant populations. To quote Reich again:

It's also wrong to use the kind of evidence Murray produced to conclude much at all, because his data and methods were not well suited to the arguments he wanted to make, and there are now far better methods. Yet even with that being true, Reich still makes the above comment.

Well, I would argue that IQ does fit the criteria for a measured biological difference. If we want to argue it doesn't measure anything useful or isn't a very good proxy for innate cognitive ability, that is way past my pay grade.

I definitely agree "black" or "white" as a concept of a genetic race in the US isn't very useful because the populations are so heterogenous. But if you used genetic testing to establish Chinese American vs Western European American, and measured IQ, if there was a significant difference I would argue it is likely there is a genetic component, but maybe not, and even if there was I would guess the environmental component was more important regardless.

And I stand by my claim that if environmental conditions were made more equivalent (hopefully by improving poor environments instead of the other way around) we wouldn't even be that concerned if there were more Asian American software engineers than black or white.

P1: People who identify as black or Hispanic in the US and elsewhere on average obtain lower IQ scores than people who identify as white or Asian.

P2: There are significant genetic differences between those who identify as black or Hispanic and those who identify as white or Asian so that merely looking at their genetic makeup we can tell what race the subjects will identify with.

C: Merely by looking at genetic makeup we can determine who will score higher/lower on IQ tests.

My thinking is that Murray was only justified including racial self-identity if he had strong evidence to believe P2 is true and no evidence to believe it's false. Put another way, what point/thesis, other than a mere possibility, would he not have been able to make if he didn't include racial self-identity? I can't think of one.

There's a bigger problem to your syllogism, at least if you mean your conclusion to imply that genetic makeup is causing the higher/lower scores, rather than just being correlated with them. The wording is slightly ambiguous, but I assume you do mean to imply causation, given the topic. But the problem of spurious correlation is important, e.g.

P1: People who identify as Asian in the US and elsewhere on average are more likely to use chopsticks than people who identify as white.

P2: There are significant genetic differences between those who identify as Asian and those who identify as white so that merely looking at their genetic makeup we can tell what race the subjects will identify with.

C: Merely by looking at genetic makeup we can determine who will use chopsticks and who won't.

The main issue with P2, just fwiw, is that it's culturally dependent. Within the US, you typically could extrapolate from genetic markers to racial identity in some large majority of cases, for historical reasons. But in other contexts those same racial categories don't exist. Chinese citizens for example are probably unlikely to think of themselves as racially "Asian". They think of themselves as Chinese and to be Chinese is (to them) quite different from being Japanese, South Korean, Vietnamese, and so on, despite the fact we group all of those as "Asian."

I’m not saying that. I’m saying there’s no reason Murray would even mention the correlation if he didn’t suspect causation. In other words, why even mention race at all if he didn't have some hypothesis in mind? Or maybe more to the point: put one in his readers' minds.

Seems like fly is owed an apology imo.

Kelhus and coordi are different people. HTH.

It's absolutely wild how none of the IDW defenders in this thread can answer simple questions about the absolute core issue of discussion. They love to whine about how the SJWs use shame and political correctness to shut down productive discussions, but as we see, calling these people racist doesn't shut them up at all.

What shuts them up is asking "hey so what do you think?"

Amazing

Well, Sam Harris and Brett Weinstein (just to name 2 people off the top of my head) have both claimed they have received a lot of private support from colleagues who won't give public support because the social costs are too high. So unless you think they are lying, it is pretty obvious what you are saying isn't true.

But I don't think you were born in a cave and you know this, and are not being particularly honest right now.

Just because a few people decide to admit being contrarian in the open, and even are able to monetize this, does not mean that the silencing tactics you employ are not wildly successful on most people most of the time. But again, unless you are taking the born in a cave defense, you already are well aware of this.

knife fightin'

Ok Fly and Trolly, I answered you question.

Now maybe you can humor me. In other times and places (and probably some here) I have intimated that I more or less believe in determinism and cultural relativism within constraints set by our evolutionary history; although it gets a little fuzzy around the edges. So that (hopefully) explains how my moral philosophy in practice came to be.

Have you given any thought to your own moral philosophy or where it is coming from?

It’s just instinctive for them. Look at this **** over in the next thread:

“I have thoughts but you’ll have to go seek out and listen to a podcast for an hour to know what they are.” Man, if we’re gonna get dinged for making reasonable assumptions about where people stand on issues there should also be a rule about not being completely inscrutable.

Not really. I’m not one for philosophy.

This sounds a lot like someone saying they don't have an opinion on race and IQ.

You probably have thought about it, but it isn't a direction you want to go because of social costs, because what you say will either be highly contradictory and/or JV will start screaming about how it is religious zealotry and you won't have a good counter.

For the nth time:

• The IQ gap is real, nobody doubts that
• Genetics play a role in intelligence, nobody doubts that
• Talking about the two in a way that implies a causal link has no basis in fact and is racist

Whether or not you explicitly agree that there is a causal link, by even allowing that conversation to happen you are giving racists legitimacy. I don't know if Sam Harris actually believes there is a causal relationship but his comments about Murray are wrong and giving him the platform that he did is a bad thing.

You are making an argument that scientific inquiry itself should be regulated by moral concerns. Which is fine, but certainly shifts the paradigm.

That's not exactly a new argument in the sciences, and it's pretty reasonable to point out that scientists can't wall themselves off from ethical concerns; the "science-as-value-neutral" stance is itself an ethical stance. Basically the quandary is inescapable. I think it's a good idea to take the ethical implications of scientific research into consideration directly, rather than having those moral decisions made only subconsciously, or only as a reflection of whatever (potentially unexamined) values specific scientists hold.