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If you want to challenge a hypothesis it's insufficient to simply try to spread uncertainty, you need to create and provide data for an alternative hypothesis.

If you want to challenge a hypothesis it's insufficient to simply try to spread uncertainty, you need to create and provide data for an alternative hypothesis. That people, and groups of people, are radically different is supported by everything we know. Genetic factors influence every aspect of our beings, and so to argue that intelligence is somehow immune to this is something that requires evidence. That was the entire point of this study - to show that once environmental factors are carefully controlled for, IQ differences disappear. However, it ended up showing the exact opposite. When there is a hypothesis that is heavily supported by data, something that might be right, but lacks data, is not a credible alternative. This is the same fallacy that 'climate deniers' make. They think that by arguing that our understanding of climatic systems is limited (which is indeed true) that they can then argue that therefore we can claim alternatives that lack the same scale of evidence (such as that climate change is natural and the CO2 link is a correlation, not causation). That's not how this works... --- And there's one meta aspect, I want to consider here for a minute. First consider the case of the numerous parents and children who were led to believe that their child was biologically black. These children, and their adoptive parents, would have behaved in a fashion identical to all other parents of biologically black children. Yet, they performed academically and on the IQ exams at the same level as their genetic peers, other transracial children. This works as a phenomenal control for environmental factors after the period of adoption. And the extremely early period of adoption means if there is indeed an environmental effect happening here then it's either prenatal or in the earliest stages of infancy. Do you understand how enormous the incentive to discover this would be, if people genuinely believed it? You're talking about raising the IQ of millions of people by up to 20 points. That is something that would radically reshape society and would be, by a very wide margin, one of the most important discoveries of the social sciences ever. Yet oddly enough, nobody seems to be running experiments to try to control for environmental factors to see what exactly it might be that all black parents seem to be doing to their children that's lowering their IQ so much. And this isn't something that would be hard. You'd simply need to offer enough to a sample of families seeking to have children, of differing raises, to have their behavior monitored immediately following conception. What would that take? $10k and free medical checkups? I'm sure that'd be plenty, and there would certainly be grants available to fund it. Yet... nobody seems to be going this route. Think about that for a minute. Actions - or the lack thereof, as always, speak much more loudly than words.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
> If you want to challenge a hypothesis it's insufficient to simply try to spread uncertainty, you need to create and provide data for an alternative hypothesis. You've simply repeated my point. All of the existing data supports GP's sibling's competing hypotheses. > When there is a hypothesis that is heavily supported by data, something that might be right, but lacks data, is not a credible alternative. The competing hypotheses are supported by exactly the same data and are further supported by the data from the Asian diaspora and by the twin study data. You must find an experiment that supports one hypothesis and rejects the others, which is what climate science has plenty of. > That people, and groups of people, are radically different is supported by everything we know. Genetic factors influence every aspect of our beings, and so to argue that intelligence is somehow immune to this is something that requires evidence. You make a giant leap. Intelligence is partly inherited -- that is true according to twin studies (which don't control for the fact that adopters have to meet a certain bar and therefore can't show the actual effect of post-natal environment and also don't control for prenatal environment). However, claiming that the difference in intelligence between racial groups is due to genetic differences vs. due to environmental differences is not supported by evidence. In 1947, the literacy rate in India was 12%. After seeing the rise in literacy rate over the past 70 years, you would be hard-pressed to claim that this deficiency was genetic. It seems you can parrot the concepts of scientific reasoning that I explained in the GP post but are simply unable to apply them.
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  If you're actually interested in seeing what experiments have been done and what the results are, this [1] lengthy but also plain english study provides an excellent overview of some 30 years of research results and what has been discovered. It goes over common misconceptions and arguments in quite extensive detail. IQ is dominantly heritable. The consensus on heritability (that is the percent of deviation that's explained by genetics alone) has been increasing over time. It used to be believed to be 'only' around ~60% whereas more recent results have shown it to be upwards of 80%. There are lots of strange things about IQ that can lead to poor measurement, like the fact that environmental roles can play some in young children, yet play a negligible role for people as early as adolescence. Anyhow, that paper again provides a great overview of all the issues here. If you're not up for it, Wiki has a page on it [2]. But I'm already cringing there. On the first page, I noticed some editor apparently and literally thinks regression to the mean means two people with high IQ are more likely to produce children of average IQ... Wiki has gotten really quite awful, but I digress! I'm unsure what you think you're referencing with the "Asian diaspora" or twin study data. Twin study data is conclusive on this topic. I could spam you with sources here, but seriously just searching (google scholar is a useful tool) for iq twin study will lead to a very one-sided picture. If you can provide some papers on the "Asian diaspora" that'd be appreciated, though. [1] - https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

lern_too_spel 9y ago

> If you want to challenge a hypothesis it's insufficient to simply try to spread uncertainty, you need to create and provide data for an alternative hypothesis. You've simply repeated my point. All of the existing data supports GP's sibling's competing hypotheses. > When there is a hypothesis that is heavily supported by data, something that might be right, but lacks data, is not a credible alternative. The competing hypotheses are supported by exactly the same data and are further supported by the data from the Asian diaspora and by the twin study data. You must find an experiment that supports one hypothesis and rejects the others, which is what climate science has plenty of. > That people, and groups of people, are radically different is supported by everything we know. Genetic factors influence every aspect of our beings, and so to argue that intelligence is somehow immune to this is something that requires evidence. You make a giant leap. Intelligence is partly inherited -- that is true according to twin studies (which don't control for the fact that adopters have to meet a certain bar and therefore can't show the actual effect of post-natal environment and also don't control for prenatal environment). However, claiming that the difference in intelligence between racial groups is due to genetic differences vs. due to environmental differences is not supported by evidence. In 1947, the literacy rate in India was 12%. After seeing the rise in literacy rate over the past 70 years, you would be hard-pressed to claim that this deficiency was genetic. It seems you can parrot the concepts of scientific reasoning that I explained in the GP post but are simply unable to apply them.

TangoTrotFox 9y ago
If you're actually interested in seeing what experiments have been done and what the results are, this [1] lengthy but also plain english study provides an excellent overview of some 30 years of research results and what has been discovered. It goes over common misconceptions and arguments in quite extensive detail. IQ is dominantly heritable. The consensus on heritability (that is the percent of deviation that's explained by genetics alone) has been increasing over time. It used to be believed to be 'only' around ~60% whereas more recent results have shown it to be upwards of 80%. There are lots of strange things about IQ that can lead to poor measurement, like the fact that environmental roles can play some in young children, yet play a negligible role for people as early as adolescence. Anyhow, that paper again provides a great overview of all the issues here. If you're not up for it, Wiki has a page on it [2]. But I'm already cringing there. On the first page, I noticed some editor apparently and literally thinks regression to the mean means two people with high IQ are more likely to produce children of average IQ... Wiki has gotten really quite awful, but I digress! I'm unsure what you think you're referencing with the "Asian diaspora" or twin study data. Twin study data is conclusive on this topic. I could spam you with sources here, but seriously just searching (google scholar is a useful tool) for iq twin study will lead to a very one-sided picture. If you can provide some papers on the "Asian diaspora" that'd be appreciated, though. [1] - https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ