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> IQ does negatively correlate with race, that's a fact This is not as much of a slam-dunk as one might think. There's a need for more very careful work that a

> IQ does negatively correlate with race, that's a fact This is not as much of a slam-dunk as one might think. There's a need for more very careful work that attempts to isolate race from culture. Race is not even a well defined concept, although obviously heredity works, and we understand a lot of the detailed biology behind it (heredity). If you come from a culture of learning, with centuries of history of scholarship, and many scholarly role-models, it's going to affect how you do on IQ tests. It's not nature OR nurture, but BOTH. As a programmer and scientific-minded person, I can't overstate how much I can teach my kids about the areas I'm highly trained in, almost independent of their interests or even aptitudes. There's a reason why children of lawyers become lawyers, why children of doctors become doctors, and why children of athletes become athletes, etc. It's not just genetics, although it can seem that way. By modeling behaviours in the home you teach so much more than kids learn at school, etc. So ... be very careful not to conflate race and culture, and if you have any info on how people have systematically tried to isolate the two, I'd be interested in refs. Thanks.

bufferoverflow 9y ago
You are correct, both matter, but the genetic part definitely plays a role, and it snowballs (less intelligent parents will not teach their children as well). The point remains, when you see a random black person and a white one and an asian, and a jew, your average racist will factually be right in guessing their relative intelligence, regardless of the cause. The point I'm trying to make is that we shouldn't treat people like shit, just because they are less intelligent - it's rarely their fault. There are other factors, like the brain size, which is again negatively correlated with black race. None of that matters, I think. In a few decades all humans will be dumb in almost every field, even if don't invent general AI (which we likely will). Peterson actually talks about low-IQ people in the increasingly automated world, and he is predicting they will be the earliest victims of automation, not only because they tend to work manual repetitive jobs, but because it's nearly impossible to train them to do something that requires higher intelligence. We won't be seeing millions of truck drivers converting to programmers and surgeons.
- markc 9y ago
  >when you see a random black person and a white one and an asian, and a jew, your average racist will factually be right in guessing their relative intelligence Wrong. Individuals are not populations. The most you could say is that if someone guesses a large number of times they'll be right slightly more often than not. This is not a trivial point.
  - utbabya 9y ago
    * Unpopular comment alert * I get where you're coming from, racism sucks. Statistically the odds are different, stereotypes are usually pretty accurate. Think recruitment and probability, let's say it cost you $200/hr to screen a candidate from CV to interview and you have $1000. We have law to ban it as an assessment criteria, on paper. It's also morally wrong (at level 3 or level 4 of the moral pyramid). Warm fuzzy feeling is just that, politically correct is easy. Personally I think nationalism is stupidity, but that's our history and who we are. I feel comments like these is head burying in some way, that masks us from the actual fixable problems like unconscious bias. How about we acknowledge the act of giving equal opportunity to assess people individually as a good act of social responsibility while we're still trying to fix environment and education for the less fortunate.
    - markc 9y ago
      You miss my point which has nothing to do with warm fuzzies or political correctness. I'm not accepting as fact that there are innate intelligence differences, but for the sake of argument let's postulate small differences between race/ethnic/gender populations. When you screen that way you throw away almost half your candidate pool for no good reason. You achieve worse results than if you use some other, not quite as lousy, method of culling. You'd probably have to work at it to find as weak a correlation. Sexism and racism aren't only evil, they're stupid too - even if the tiny intelligence differences that disputed authors claim to have found were real. So in what way are stereotypes "pretty accurate" in the context of hiring? You aren't hiring a population so small population differences aren't super useful - except perhaps at the tails of the distribution. If you attract just the cream of the crop, you might have an argument. That population is likely to be very skewed.

bufferoverflow 9y ago

You are correct, both matter, but the genetic part definitely plays a role, and it snowballs (less intelligent parents will not teach their children as well). The point remains, when you see a random black person and a white one and an asian, and a jew, your average racist will factually be right in guessing their relative intelligence, regardless of the cause. The point I'm trying to make is that we shouldn't treat people like shit, just because they are less intelligent - it's rarely their fault. There are other factors, like the brain size, which is again negatively correlated with black race. None of that matters, I think. In a few decades all humans will be dumb in almost every field, even if don't invent general AI (which we likely will). Peterson actually talks about low-IQ people in the increasingly automated world, and he is predicting they will be the earliest victims of automation, not only because they tend to work manual repetitive jobs, but because it's nearly impossible to train them to do something that requires higher intelligence. We won't be seeing millions of truck drivers converting to programmers and surgeons.

markc 9y ago
>when you see a random black person and a white one and an asian, and a jew, your average racist will factually be right in guessing their relative intelligence Wrong. Individuals are not populations. The most you could say is that if someone guesses a large number of times they'll be right slightly more often than not. This is not a trivial point.
- utbabya 9y ago
  * Unpopular comment alert * I get where you're coming from, racism sucks. Statistically the odds are different, stereotypes are usually pretty accurate. Think recruitment and probability, let's say it cost you $200/hr to screen a candidate from CV to interview and you have $1000. We have law to ban it as an assessment criteria, on paper. It's also morally wrong (at level 3 or level 4 of the moral pyramid). Warm fuzzy feeling is just that, politically correct is easy. Personally I think nationalism is stupidity, but that's our history and who we are. I feel comments like these is head burying in some way, that masks us from the actual fixable problems like unconscious bias. How about we acknowledge the act of giving equal opportunity to assess people individually as a good act of social responsibility while we're still trying to fix environment and education for the less fortunate.
  - markc 9y ago
    You miss my point which has nothing to do with warm fuzzies or political correctness. I'm not accepting as fact that there are innate intelligence differences, but for the sake of argument let's postulate small differences between race/ethnic/gender populations. When you screen that way you throw away almost half your candidate pool for no good reason. You achieve worse results than if you use some other, not quite as lousy, method of culling. You'd probably have to work at it to find as weak a correlation. Sexism and racism aren't only evil, they're stupid too - even if the tiny intelligence differences that disputed authors claim to have found were real. So in what way are stereotypes "pretty accurate" in the context of hiring? You aren't hiring a population so small population differences aren't super useful - except perhaps at the tails of the distribution. If you attract just the cream of the crop, you might have an argument. That population is likely to be very skewed.