
How Stifling Debate Around Race, Genes and IQ Can Do Harm (2018) - danielam
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-018-0152-x
======
rjkennedy98
I think the bigger debate is whether eugenics or anti-dysgenics should be a
policy goal of the government.

Whether we like it or not - if we don't pass our best genes down to our
children we are hurting future generations. I suspect the fact that we've
turned so against eugenics goes hand in hand with the fact that we've also
destroyed the environment, the financial well-being, and even the mental
health of the next generation (especially here in America).

~~~
thebigspacefuck
We don't know what the best genes are or will be. Furthermore as humans we
work together to overcome personal shortcomings and develop
technological/medical solutions to overcome genetic "issues". ADHD or ASD can
be a gift or a curse depending on the environment you live in.

I find different cultures/religions to be quite interesting in their
characteristics of families. Mormons seem to have larger families. They
require 10% of income goes to the church which increases the church's
influence, so the church gets stronger the more people are in it. It's like a
self-sustaining organism that gets stronger with each generation.

As an intelligent individual belonging to no particular culture or religion, I
feel less inclined to have children than others I know since it's not part of
my values. It's likely that people like myself are going to have a difficult
time passing on our genetics. If you want to encourage smart people to have
kids, create a religion/culture that makes sense to them and give them that
directive.

~~~
candiodari
> We don't know what the best genes are or will be.

True, but we know of a LOT of situations which genes _won 't_ be any good.
ADHD, ASD are survivable, but despite the fact that one of the great
physicists of the 20th century had it, I think even he would agree that ALS
should not be allowed to occur.

Also interfering in health effectively means everybody is being asked to bear
a burden for those faulty genes. Which is where the real argument will come
from.

------
swifting
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.deseretnews.com/article/695...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.deseretnews.com/article/695215490/Dont-
let-hysterics-taint-the-debate-on-IQ-heredity.amp)

-Thomas Sowell

~~~
tivert
I loved it when he read out that URL, too.

------
zozbot123
One of the ways that stifling debate on such matters does harm, is that it
sure makes it look like kooky opinions like James Watson's or Charles Murray's
(seriously, if you don't think Murray is a kook, take a look at his work on "
_Human Achievement_ " and the purported measurement thereof - which is of
course hopelessly biased to favor Europe and the West) have a lot more
currency and more basis in science than they actually do.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Any such debate is quickly flagged on HN. The authors call it 'sacred value';
I call it 'taboo'.

~~~
ForHackernews
I don't trust the HN audience to have a sensible discussion on this topic. Too
many armchair evolutionary "experts" and crypto-racists.

~~~
goldenkey
Forgive me, what is a crypto-racist?

~~~
ForHackernews
Assuming you're asking in good faith: a racist who pretends not to be a
racist. They'll often show up asking "Why can't we just have a reasonable
discussion about low IQs in the Sub-Saharan African phenotype?" and ready with
a Gish gallop list of dubious studies.

If this post stays up, I'm sure they'll make an appearance.

~~~
goldenkey
Isn't it pretty much proven that IQ is mostly determined by genetics, and that
races like the Ashkenazi Jews are extremely above average compared to the rest
of the world?

Tell me - what is racist about this scientific fact: Black people are stronger
and run faster (indubitably due to slavery / selective breeding.) Jews are
smarter (most nobel prizes.)

Races are different, sure. To say that smarter or stronger means superior, is
racist. But before that, understanding of differences... that's just science.

Since strength and smartness are both held by society as virtues, it's easy to
look like a racist if you simply state science.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Isn't it pretty much proven that IQ is mostly determined by genetics

The evidence currently seems to suggest that just barely more than half of
variation in IQ is genetic.

> and that races like the Ashkenazi Jews are extremely above average

No. Askhenazi Jews specifically (not some group of “races” of which they are
an example) are signficantly above average (that is, the tested samples are
above average of other samples in a way which is extremely improbable if the
real population average of the group isn't actually higher, too), but not
_extremely_ higher.

> Tell me - what is racist about this scientific fact: Black people are
> stronger and run faster (indubitably due to slavery / selective breeding.)
> Jews are smarter (most nobel prizes.)

Those two claims are not _a_ fact, they are two separate racial stereotypes,
one of which is offered with a parenthetical explanation for a potential set
of causes, the other with a parenthetical apparently about an putative effect
for which the offered stereotype is conjectured as a cause, and both ignore
social reasons why the groups involved might be overrepresented in the highly
visible top-tier performers in given categories without the group itself
having a general advantage, much less a genetic one.

------
deogeo
I thought it was already proven that humans are all the same?

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but one thing we can say for sure is
that there are differences between sexes and sets of genetic traits associated
with the concept of race. Now, whether these differences extend beyond biology
- that's what scientists currently would rather not discuss for fear of
consequences. The authors of the article argue this attitude is harmful for
the society as a whole.

------
_Schizotypy
IQ is a shit measure of intelligence

~~~
commandlinefan
Maybe, maybe not, but how would you know? As of now, IQ is the _only_ measure
of intelligence, so there's nothing to compare it against except anecdotes.
You can say, "so and so has a low IQ but he seems smart to me", but there's
nothing objective to compare it against, so there's really no good way to tell
if it does measure that ephemeral quality that we attribute to the term
"intelligence". It does track pretty closely with every other objective
measure of intelligence, though, like academic performance and financial
success.

~~~
_Schizotypy
Just because something is the only game in town doesn't mean you should use
it, that logic doesn't make sense. We need to work on developing better
systems rather than saying "oh well, it's the only thing we've got!"

~~~
candiodari
You don't understand. IQ isn't "the only game in town" because there aren't
any other games, it's the only game in town because all other games were
gradually unmasked to all be the "IQ game". IQ started out being one of about
5 measurements of people. Because of the age, one other measure was
"nobility". Well, corrected for IQ, it turned out, that didn't matter. Same
happened to _many_ others.

You can characterize and predict how humans will perform in many, many games
with this single variable. It's the one that works best. So the current
thinking is that there is only one measurement of intelligence. They all
converge into a single one. It's called IQ because that was the first one that
worked well enough, not because there's just one way to measure it.

(Technically there is also age. Younger people are dumber than older ones up
to a pretty high age. But that's the IQ game: age and "raw iq". Nothing else
really matters in predicting if someone can succeed at something. IQ, the
measure used, is corrected for age, so it should take that out. But a 10 year
old with 100 IQ is, in absolute terms, dumber than a 20 year old with IQ 100)

So your criticism is rather a lot beside the point. We have worked, a long and
hard and often on developing better systems. We have just never actually
succeeded in creating a truly different system (this of course is a
"technically incorrect" statement. There are recent research results, there
are ... blah blah blah ... there is no halfway decent reason to assume those
research directions will lead to anything, but we're still trying. We've been
doing that for >100 years, so the odds of the next big thing being in the
pipeline right now is small).

The basic observation behind IQ is that "all skills converge" (I would argue
this has even been observed in machine learning). If you know one skill,
whichever one it is, you become faster, better and quicker to learn almost any
other skill. Not much, a little. In machine learning there are papers that
point out that the ability to distinguish poodle races in pictures help with
music composition. Not "much", but the key is what happens over time. It helps
something like 2-5% (measured in time to learn a certain proficiency in music
composition). The issue is what happens with kids when you give them new
skills regularly over a 10 year period. Then they have 100 more skills, or 100
times 2% easier time to learn a new skill compared to someone who learned
nothing. 100 times 2% easier ... is (1.02^100)-1, which is an enormous number
(which is why IQ is an exponential score, not a linear one. Someone with 120
should be about double as smart as someone scoring 100. By which we mean that
if you take a random intellectual skill, the odds of the person with 120
having some proficiency at that skill is about double that of the person with
100). To add insult to injury IQ compounds on itself. The higher your IQ, the
easier it is to get it even higher.

What people hate about IQ is the underlying theory clearly shows that human
brains are designed to amplify differences in intelligence over time, not to
minimize them. That is a clear and incontestable fact at this point. This is
presumably also not a bad thing, or it would have been selected out. This also
won't change because of any amount of changes occurring in psychology or the
measurement of it. We can prevent ourselves from knowing about it, but we
can't change it.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Not my experience. Being a good tester is a different skill than being a good
developer. Management/leadership requires different talents than team
membership. Folks excel at one but not another. All uncorrelated with IQ.

Not to mention music, boxing, acting, teaching and on and on.

The only thing the silly 'IQ' correlates with is, taking IQ tests. I think its
all part of the education vicious cycle. People who were good at school
subjects (preparing for tests at root) end up teaching school. So we end up
with that skill being held up as the principle valuable skill. Because
'educated' people value it. So it must be true.

~~~
candiodari
IQ is a measure of how easy it is for someone to acquire a new skill, not
really about which specific skills they have.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And I contradict that. Folks have talents, and interests, and learn some
things easily and some evade them forever. There's a lot more going on, and
its not just 'IQ greases the skids' for learning.

~~~
candiodari
Oh sure. If someone really doesn't want to learn, they mostly won't. And of
course, yes, that happens a lot.

There's a European proverb I quite like which roughly goes "glasses nor lights
will help if the owl does not _want_ to see", meaning exactly that. It doesn't
matter how easy something is if the person doesn't want to do it.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Still not making myself clear. Some folks will never learn to be a leader,
even if they are very intelligent. Things like that are not measured by IQ.
Unrelated to being willing to learn. There are many brain-based talents and
skills going unmeasured by 'IQ'. Acting. Lying. Empathizing. And on and on.

It may be a symptom of what's wrong with our technological Western view of the
world, that we ignore/discount all these when taking the measure of a person.

~~~
candiodari
Maybe it's just me but I resent this way of thinking. The science behind IQ is
based around statistics and coming up with rational, reasoned way to measure
it, and then testing statistical hypotheses.

It CANNOT be argued against, for me, by any argument assuming that one's
"view" of the situation has anything to do with reality. That is the exact
opposite of science, and different only in details to any other religion. If
you want to have your postmodern view of the world, go and enjoy it. But
you've left science behind.

Also: if you believe postmodernism, and that your view can change reality,
please explain to me: no matter how much I believe a chair flies, it never
flies. I wanted to really test this when I was 19, I literally spent 3 days
trying that (2 on a spoon, and this was before the matrix so nothing to do
with that, 1 day on a chair). Needless to say didn't work. It wasn't a waste
of time, but it proved to me that me spending enormous effort to change my
view of the world changes precisely nothing. That science is the only way
forward. I have also noticed that me putting in 3 days of sincere effort is
far more than anyone I've ever met defending how "one's view changes X" has
ever put into it.

If such efforts fail to change a spoon, then please explain how any view can
change the outcome of studies involving tens of thousands of participants,
over more than a century of study. And yes, it's been tested with people who
didn't have a western world view too. Same result.

So go enjoy your postmodern world view. Seriously. I'm sure it gets you many
girls around the campfire. But never again suggest that any such view can
compete with any insight gained by real science. Science is right, and not
just when it comes to IQ. You are no better than a homeopathic doctor. You are
wrong and should restrict your views to settings involving alcohol.

