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> All people have identical abilities and preferences on average, therefore the demographics of a profession should exactly match the census. That is rubbish.

by leot 10y ago

> All people have identical abilities and preferences on average, therefore the demographics of a profession should exactly match the census. That is rubbish. A straw man. I've spent more than a decade within the so-called Overton bubble at a university, and this is decidedly not the consensus as I experienced it. All biology is known to yield population variation. That is obviously true by necessity. However, there are both ontogenetic and phylogenetic influences on outcomes. The progressive/egalitarian view is that the cultural dynamics that result from small population differences (that are in any case too high variance to be reliable for making individual discriminations) should not inhibit phylogeny. Put another way, an individual's self-expression should not be limited by the fact of their membership in a particular category. Further, while there may well be, in lab settings, reliable significant population level differences, these differences at an individual level may entirely be swamped by cultural influences, rendering them insignificant. Lastly, the sources of the population differences may, in some instances, be factors that are entirely culturally malleable. Males as a population may have a slight predisposition not to understanding mechanisms better, but instead to finding them interesting, which over the course of development leads to greater competence. This predisposition may be easily changed at a young age by an encouraging mentor or compelling Hollywood film. Similarly, someone may be predisposed to kidney failure not because of bad kidney cells, but because they don't have as strong a compulsion to drink water (a deficit trivially remedied).

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
I agree that the best evidence of a person's intelligence and inclinations is their phenotype, not the average of their racial group or sex. Thus, race and sex should not be used as a proxy for any characteristic when employing people. We don't need proxies when we can directly measure - though note, some forms of measurement (such as culture fair IQ tests) are illegal for anyone but universities to use in employment, a delightful hypocrisy. Nonetheless, those parts of academia that define the narrative on these topics (sociology, history, feminist academia, and political science) do not believe there is significant non-cultural variation in any economically relevant trait among the sexes or ethnically distinct populations, and put anyone who openly states the obvious through a struggle session that usually results in their firing, as happened with Summers. Though the vast majority of psychologists admit that IQ is largely genetically heritable, accepting the consensus of the twin studies, any future inference about what this implies is outside the Overton bubble. Just as not knowing disease was caused by small invisible germs made us unable to treat disease properly, our inability to admit that intelligence and stupidity are caused by small, invisible alleles has made us unable to treat social pathologies properly. The distribution of intelligence is grossly unfair. But we can fix it if we are willing to admit its cause. Let us seize the high-IQ alleles and distribute them to the proletariat! I think there is a deep sense in which education as a treatment for stupidity is like wearing perfume to prevent the plague. Also, acknowledging these differences prevents racism. Antisemites love pointing out that jews are overrepresented in many high-status occupations, postulating crazy conspiracy theories for why this is the case. But once you acknowledge the IQ gap (Ashkenazi Jews score roughly a standard deviation above gentiles in most psychometric tests) we have an entirely benign explanation and it's evident that these conspiracy theories hold no water. These differences are a perfectly valid subject of inquiry of very little use to the individual, but becomes necessary to discuss when progressives beg the question, assuming falsely (just as antisemites do) that underrepresentation in cognitively demanding endeavours necessarily implies discrimination that isn't based on ability.
- leot 10y ago
  It is obvious that genetics matter. What isn't obvious is how, or how much. Ontogeny is context dependent at every scale of analysis. As such it is sensitive to precise manipulation in myriad ways, the vast majority of which are likely not yet known. We remain profoundly ignorant of what intelligence is, let alone what underlies it. It's likely that large population differences are the result of a synergistic interaction of genetics and culture, with each depending on the other. Ashkenazi Jews benefit from one such interaction, but there may well be many others yet to be discovered. I disagree that the social theorists as a whole are entirely ignorant of basic biology. I think they would argue that the cultural forces swamp genetic signals often enough to be worthy of criticism. There are no doubt theorists with views that are more extreme, but the appropriate response isn't to counterweight by going further in the other direction. Group membership cannot be destiny. If it is we're not free.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

by leot 10y ago

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago

I agree that the best evidence of a person's intelligence and inclinations is their phenotype, not the average of their racial group or sex. Thus, race and sex should not be used as a proxy for any characteristic when employing people. We don't need proxies when we can directly measure - though note, some forms of measurement (such as culture fair IQ tests) are illegal for anyone but universities to use in employment, a delightful hypocrisy. Nonetheless, those parts of academia that define the narrative on these topics (sociology, history, feminist academia, and political science) do not believe there is significant non-cultural variation in any economically relevant trait among the sexes or ethnically distinct populations, and put anyone who openly states the obvious through a struggle session that usually results in their firing, as happened with Summers. Though the vast majority of psychologists admit that IQ is largely genetically heritable, accepting the consensus of the twin studies, any future inference about what this implies is outside the Overton bubble. Just as not knowing disease was caused by small invisible germs made us unable to treat disease properly, our inability to admit that intelligence and stupidity are caused by small, invisible alleles has made us unable to treat social pathologies properly. The distribution of intelligence is grossly unfair. But we can fix it if we are willing to admit its cause. Let us seize the high-IQ alleles and distribute them to the proletariat! I think there is a deep sense in which education as a treatment for stupidity is like wearing perfume to prevent the plague. Also, acknowledging these differences prevents racism. Antisemites love pointing out that jews are overrepresented in many high-status occupations, postulating crazy conspiracy theories for why this is the case. But once you acknowledge the IQ gap (Ashkenazi Jews score roughly a standard deviation above gentiles in most psychometric tests) we have an entirely benign explanation and it's evident that these conspiracy theories hold no water. These differences are a perfectly valid subject of inquiry of very little use to the individual, but becomes necessary to discuss when progressives beg the question, assuming falsely (just as antisemites do) that underrepresentation in cognitively demanding endeavours necessarily implies discrimination that isn't based on ability.

leot 10y ago
It is obvious that genetics matter. What isn't obvious is how, or how much. Ontogeny is context dependent at every scale of analysis. As such it is sensitive to precise manipulation in myriad ways, the vast majority of which are likely not yet known. We remain profoundly ignorant of what intelligence is, let alone what underlies it. It's likely that large population differences are the result of a synergistic interaction of genetics and culture, with each depending on the other. Ashkenazi Jews benefit from one such interaction, but there may well be many others yet to be discovered. I disagree that the social theorists as a whole are entirely ignorant of basic biology. I think they would argue that the cultural forces swamp genetic signals often enough to be worthy of criticism. There are no doubt theorists with views that are more extreme, but the appropriate response isn't to counterweight by going further in the other direction. Group membership cannot be destiny. If it is we're not free.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]