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That's a strange argument to make on this article. Sure, races are an attempt at categorization of something much more complicated than the categories can enco

That's a strange argument to make on this article. Sure, races are an attempt at categorization of something much more complicated than the categories can encode. As such, there's differing perspectives about how many racial categories there are, how to draw the boundaries, and no matter what, there will be people who don't fit into any of your categories. None of this detracts from the fact that racial categorizations are useful and predictive for the overwhelming majority of the Earth's population, just as the questionable status of Pluto doesn't interfere with research on extra-solar planets. By HBD, I assume you're referring to differences in intelligence between races, but please correct me if you're referring to something else. It's always a bad idea to start with the conclusion you want and work backwards. However, in the US, amongst the present-day population, there is OVERWHELMING evidence that there are average IQ differences between races. The open question is what causes these differences in the averages. We know IQ is partly genetic, and we know races differ in allele frequency of many genes. It's possible, though exceedingly unlikely, that genetic differences between races contribute precisely zero to average IQ differences. And there seems to be some circumstantial evidence that genetic differences between races do account for some of the average differences. This is a question that is at least amenable to study, by correlating genes with IQ, and matching this against allele frequency in groups. HBD is not unscientific, and the comparison to psychics is unwarranted. HBD is an attempt to explain an observation (IQ deltas) with a hypothesis.

jonnybgood 9y ago
What races are you referring to? Irish, German, English, Spanish? What’s their average IQ? And what genes play a factor in IQ?
- bordercases 9y ago
  > what genes play a factor in IQ? All of them play a little bit (majority of quantitative differences) and some of them play a lot (when there are significant qualitative differences). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSbFAcBAyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSbFAcBAyw
- vixen99 9y ago
  Genes and IQ? For instance, https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869 https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869 and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-017-0001-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-017-0001-5
- spacehome 8y ago
  What I said is true no matter how you split races, because any sufficiently complex trait will have average group differences. You can read about average IQ differences at lots of different levels of granularity.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> None of this detracts from the fact that racial categorizations are useful and predictive for the overwhelming majority of the Earth's population, just as the questionable status of Pluto doesn't interfere with research on extra-solar planets. The issue is that racial categories are completely arbitrary to begin with. The fact that the members of each category are not completely indistinguishable doens't mean the category makes any sense. For example, you could categorize animals into two groups, one containing all animals that are small, nocturnal or green and the other containing all other animals. The members of each group will certainly have differences, but that doesn't change the fact that the category itself is incoherent. There is no good reason to draw a line in that particular place. And, in the case of race, a very good reason not to -- the category was originally created as a tool of oppression and used to drive a wedge between people, which is what it continues to do whenever people continue to use it.
- fvdessen 9y ago
  > The issue is that racial categories are completely arbitrary to begin with It's not entirely arbitrary. If you run a clustering algorithm on the human genome you get clusters that match quite well the usual definition of races and ethnicities.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    You get clusters that match quite well with geographic origin for obvious reasons. But that isn't race. Irish, Sicilians and Kazakhstanis will be in three different clusters even though they're all supposed to be the same "race".
pjc50 9y ago
It would perhaps be more surprising that after centuries of denying people educational opportunities, subjecting people to discrimination and police violence, and discriminatory medical treatment from or even before birth, the effect of this didn't show up in IQ test scores.
lmm 9y ago
> the questionable status of Pluto doesn't interfere with research on extra-solar planets. It will do as soon as we get to the point of being able to detect Pluto-sized objects orbiting other stars. The IAU definition is terrible for planet-hunting, since you can't say whether a given body is or isn't a planet without knowing about all the other bodies orbiting its parent star, even much smaller ones. (Not to detract from the rest of your point)
- bmm6o 8y ago
  That assumes that there is something about "planets" that makes their discovery more important than the discovery of other orbiting bodies. If the IAU definition isn't fit for purpose, don't use it! That's literally the point of the article. If you do your hunting from ships, it's not wrong to call whales fish.

jonnybgood 9y ago

What races are you referring to? Irish, German, English, Spanish? What’s their average IQ? And what genes play a factor in IQ?

bordercases 9y ago
> what genes play a factor in IQ? All of them play a little bit (majority of quantitative differences) and some of them play a lot (when there are significant qualitative differences). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSbFAcBAyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSbFAcBAyw
vixen99 9y ago
Genes and IQ? For instance, https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869 https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3869 and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-017-0001-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-017-0001-5
spacehome 8y ago
What I said is true no matter how you split races, because any sufficiently complex trait will have average group differences. You can read about average IQ differences at lots of different levels of granularity.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> None of this detracts from the fact that racial categorizations are useful and predictive for the overwhelming majority of the Earth's population, just as the questionable status of Pluto doesn't interfere with research on extra-solar planets. The issue is that racial categories are completely arbitrary to begin with. The fact that the members of each category are not completely indistinguishable doens't mean the category makes any sense. For example, you could categorize animals into two groups, one containing all animals that are small, nocturnal or green and the other containing all other animals. The members of each group will certainly have differences, but that doesn't change the fact that the category itself is incoherent. There is no good reason to draw a line in that particular place. And, in the case of race, a very good reason not to -- the category was originally created as a tool of oppression and used to drive a wedge between people, which is what it continues to do whenever people continue to use it.

fvdessen 9y ago
> The issue is that racial categories are completely arbitrary to begin with It's not entirely arbitrary. If you run a clustering algorithm on the human genome you get clusters that match quite well the usual definition of races and ethnicities.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  You get clusters that match quite well with geographic origin for obvious reasons. But that isn't race. Irish, Sicilians and Kazakhstanis will be in three different clusters even though they're all supposed to be the same "race".

pjc50 9y ago

It would perhaps be more surprising that after centuries of denying people educational opportunities, subjecting people to discrimination and police violence, and discriminatory medical treatment from or even before birth, the effect of this didn't show up in IQ test scores.

lmm 9y ago

> the questionable status of Pluto doesn't interfere with research on extra-solar planets. It will do as soon as we get to the point of being able to detect Pluto-sized objects orbiting other stars. The IAU definition is terrible for planet-hunting, since you can't say whether a given body is or isn't a planet without knowing about all the other bodies orbiting its parent star, even much smaller ones. (Not to detract from the rest of your point)

bmm6o 8y ago
That assumes that there is something about "planets" that makes their discovery more important than the discovery of other orbiting bodies. If the IAU definition isn't fit for purpose, don't use it! That's literally the point of the article. If you do your hunting from ships, it's not wrong to call whales fish.