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What's your stance on the question of race and intelligence? It's a hardball, but fits the bill as something that's hard to talk about. If you determined that

What's your stance on the question of race and intelligence? It's a hardball, but fits the bill as something that's hard to talk about. If you determined that there were differences between races, and it was in the best interest of your children to discriminate against certain people, what would you tell them? Would you ever tell them to discriminate against other races if that was truly in their best interest? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

natrius 18y ago
Even if there are differences between races in terms on intelligence, how could it ever be in their best interest to discriminate against certain groups of people? There is considerable overlap in the distributions of ability among races, so prejudging an individual based on their particular group's distribution doesn't ever make any sense. If my hypothetical child asked about that, I would explain what we actually know about what causes differences in ability, such as socioeconomic factors.
- _h4xr 18y ago
  Even if there are differences between ages in terms of height, how could it ever be in my kid's best interest to think that the average six-year-old is taller than the average five-year-old, even though there are five-year-olds taller than individual six-year-olds? The overlap in these distributions is so considerable that Bayes' Theorem doesn't apply.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    Provided you believe that P(A | B) = P(A & B)/P(B), Bayes theorem always applies.
    - _h4xr 18y ago
      I was making fun of the previous poster, who seems to be arguing that even if group A has an average IQ of 115 and group B has an average IQ of 70, there is overlap between their distributions and so it should be shocking to you that there are more A's with Nobel Prizes and more B's unemployed or in prison.
      - natrius 18y ago
        It's not about having more or less of something. Discrimination implies an act of selection. That more A's have Nobel Prizes doesn't suggest that I should always pick A's over B's when I need an intelligent person. Also, there are no racial groups for which your average IQs hold. My point is not just that there is any overlap, it's that there is considerable overlap, which renders discrimination based on race quite useless.
        _h4xr 18y ago
        Most racists I know of don't suggest that one should use race when other variables are available -- e.g. they don't say that a black guy in a suit is more dangerous than a white meth-head with a gun, even though statistically black people are more criminal, because intuitively the armed cracked-out guy is even more criminal. I don't see how knowing average IQs of different ethnic groups obligates you to make mistaken judgments by overemphasizing them -- are you worried that other people will make this elementary mistake? Also, discrimination means being able to tell different things apart. A 'discriminating' taste in wine means knowing the difference between good wine and bad, not thinking that all the wine from region A is better than any wine from region B. Ashkenazim and sub-Saharan Africans? Again, with the 'some overlap renders it useless' argument. I still don't understand why you will not also educate your child against the dangers of thinking that age correlates with height, when everyone knows that there are ten-year-olds who all taller than particular nine-year-olds -- and that you can have arbitrarily narrow age groups that make the average difference far smaller than the difference within each group. Overlapping bell curves with different medians still have different medians, however much they overlap.
        natrius 18y ago
- helveticaman 18y ago
  The general argument on race is ugly in many ways, but I think it serves as a good example of something that is controversial today, not 120 years ago. Whether racial differences exist and whether discrimination is useful in some cases is debatable. What's more important is whether you (I'm sorry about the ad hominem) would lie to your child about something as controversial as race just to be in sync with society. I'm not saying (or rather, I don't want to say) that race exists and discrimination is good. But it's the closest argument we have to the evolution argument of days past.
_h4xr 18y ago
Parents who think this way probably sound like regular parents, but more succinct. They have one more tool to identify harmful people and situations, and they don't have to rely on proxies ("He's from a bad neighborhood") to say what they mean.
mynameishere 18y ago
race and intelligence? I don't think this subject comes up very often with small children. "Discrimination" is just a probabilistic decision made wherever imperfect knowledge exists. That is, you look at the demographics of a neighborhood before moving there, knowing full well that it's not an ideal measure. Again, what can children do about such a thing? The OP seemed to be setting up a scenario in which his parents said, "...and others disagree" and so made themselves seem "truthful". That's halfway to getting to the real truth which is, "We ourselves are completely without a clue, but prefer Yahweh over Ganesh because an elephant head is bullcrap a mite too obvious for our tastes. Others disagree." The real secret is that truth doesn't matter too much unless it involves something that can damage you. God, it just so happens, is not among the things that can damage you. And so, feel free to believe whatever you want.
lisper 18y ago
> If you determined that there were differences between races, and it was in the best interest of your children to discriminate against certain people, what would you tell them? I would tell them to beware of plausible-sounding theories. And I'd have them read this: http://rondam.blogspot.com/2007/11/science-103-virtue-of-simplicity.html http://rondam.blogspot.com/2007/11/science-103-virtue-of-sim...
Tichy 18y ago
Presumably people could/would tell kids what they believe themselves, or if they don't have a clue, they could tell their kids that they don't have a clue.
maxklein 18y ago
This is a classic case of the harm that not lying to your children can cause. The things my parents told me when I was young shaped a large part of my world view. If you were a racist, enough of that would seep through to influence your child. If you tried to explain bell curves and so on, and you believed that white people were more clever than black people, your child would grasp the subtext of what you are saying. The best thing to do is to not pre-infect your child with your own personal notions on controversial topics till he is equipped to think independently about them.
- thwarted 18y ago
  Which topics qualify as controversial is itself something that there can be disagreement on. Race and intelligence is one of them. The parent who purposely imparts to their child a race preference does not believe that racism is a controversial topic.

natrius 18y ago

Even if there are differences between races in terms on intelligence, how could it ever be in their best interest to discriminate against certain groups of people? There is considerable overlap in the distributions of ability among races, so prejudging an individual based on their particular group's distribution doesn't ever make any sense. If my hypothetical child asked about that, I would explain what we actually know about what causes differences in ability, such as socioeconomic factors.

_h4xr 18y ago
Even if there are differences between ages in terms of height, how could it ever be in my kid's best interest to think that the average six-year-old is taller than the average five-year-old, even though there are five-year-olds taller than individual six-year-olds? The overlap in these distributions is so considerable that Bayes' Theorem doesn't apply.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  Provided you believe that P(A | B) = P(A & B)/P(B), Bayes theorem always applies.
  - _h4xr 18y ago
    I was making fun of the previous poster, who seems to be arguing that even if group A has an average IQ of 115 and group B has an average IQ of 70, there is overlap between their distributions and so it should be shocking to you that there are more A's with Nobel Prizes and more B's unemployed or in prison.
    - natrius 18y ago
      It's not about having more or less of something. Discrimination implies an act of selection. That more A's have Nobel Prizes doesn't suggest that I should always pick A's over B's when I need an intelligent person. Also, there are no racial groups for which your average IQs hold. My point is not just that there is any overlap, it's that there is considerable overlap, which renders discrimination based on race quite useless.
      - _h4xr 18y ago
        Most racists I know of don't suggest that one should use race when other variables are available -- e.g. they don't say that a black guy in a suit is more dangerous than a white meth-head with a gun, even though statistically black people are more criminal, because intuitively the armed cracked-out guy is even more criminal. I don't see how knowing average IQs of different ethnic groups obligates you to make mistaken judgments by overemphasizing them -- are you worried that other people will make this elementary mistake? Also, discrimination means being able to tell different things apart. A 'discriminating' taste in wine means knowing the difference between good wine and bad, not thinking that all the wine from region A is better than any wine from region B. Ashkenazim and sub-Saharan Africans? Again, with the 'some overlap renders it useless' argument. I still don't understand why you will not also educate your child against the dangers of thinking that age correlates with height, when everyone knows that there are ten-year-olds who all taller than particular nine-year-olds -- and that you can have arbitrarily narrow age groups that make the average difference far smaller than the difference within each group. Overlapping bell curves with different medians still have different medians, however much they overlap.
        natrius 18y ago
helveticaman 18y ago
The general argument on race is ugly in many ways, but I think it serves as a good example of something that is controversial today, not 120 years ago. Whether racial differences exist and whether discrimination is useful in some cases is debatable. What's more important is whether you (I'm sorry about the ad hominem) would lie to your child about something as controversial as race just to be in sync with society. I'm not saying (or rather, I don't want to say) that race exists and discrimination is good. But it's the closest argument we have to the evolution argument of days past.

_h4xr 18y ago

Parents who think this way probably sound like regular parents, but more succinct. They have one more tool to identify harmful people and situations, and they don't have to rely on proxies ("He's from a bad neighborhood") to say what they mean.

mynameishere 18y ago

race and intelligence? I don't think this subject comes up very often with small children. "Discrimination" is just a probabilistic decision made wherever imperfect knowledge exists. That is, you look at the demographics of a neighborhood before moving there, knowing full well that it's not an ideal measure. Again, what can children do about such a thing? The OP seemed to be setting up a scenario in which his parents said, "...and others disagree" and so made themselves seem "truthful". That's halfway to getting to the real truth which is, "We ourselves are completely without a clue, but prefer Yahweh over Ganesh because an elephant head is bullcrap a mite too obvious for our tastes. Others disagree." The real secret is that truth doesn't matter too much unless it involves something that can damage you. God, it just so happens, is not among the things that can damage you. And so, feel free to believe whatever you want.

lisper 18y ago

> If you determined that there were differences between races, and it was in the best interest of your children to discriminate against certain people, what would you tell them? I would tell them to beware of plausible-sounding theories. And I'd have them read this: http://rondam.blogspot.com/2007/11/science-103-virtue-of-simplicity.html http://rondam.blogspot.com/2007/11/science-103-virtue-of-sim...

Tichy 18y ago

Presumably people could/would tell kids what they believe themselves, or if they don't have a clue, they could tell their kids that they don't have a clue.

maxklein 18y ago

This is a classic case of the harm that not lying to your children can cause. The things my parents told me when I was young shaped a large part of my world view. If you were a racist, enough of that would seep through to influence your child. If you tried to explain bell curves and so on, and you believed that white people were more clever than black people, your child would grasp the subtext of what you are saying. The best thing to do is to not pre-infect your child with your own personal notions on controversial topics till he is equipped to think independently about them.

thwarted 18y ago
Which topics qualify as controversial is itself something that there can be disagreement on. Race and intelligence is one of them. The parent who purposely imparts to their child a race preference does not believe that racism is a controversial topic.