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>The talk about heritable IQ is pointless, even dangerous, because it leads to complacency around issues around structural racism and equality in education. Ca
by daenz 5y ago
>The talk about heritable IQ is pointless, even dangerous, because it leads to complacency around issues around structural racism and equality in education.
Can you say more about this? Why would it lead to complacency? If there is scientific merit to some ideas like IQ heritability, don't you think we need to find a way to incorporate those ideas safely into our formulation of society, rather than suppress them as heretical?
- bayesian_horse 5y agoYou never heard about the trope of African people being called genetically inferior? That one is reverberating around time and space in a million variations. And if intelligence is genetic, well, you don't need to improve their public schools to help them achieve equal grades, do you?
- daenz 5y agoMy understanding of IQ is that its not fully heritable... an individual's potential is maximized by their environment, up to some limit. This alone gives a strong argument for improving public schools especially where students may be falling behind. So I am still not understanding the complacency aspect fully. I suppose a bigoted person could say "well those kids are dumb, they're expected to do bad." But the counter to that is, "they can do much better than they're doing," and the science would support it.