4 ms·

Yes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity-part-5-the-p

Yes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity-part-5-the-people-of-alexander/ https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... 1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute As I said, it's not very rational of them to support such theories. And of course as you scratch the surface, it's the old 20th century racist theories, and of course those theories are supported by (mostly white men, if I had to guess) people claiming to be rational

derangedHorse 1y ago
Nothing about the article you posted in your first comment seems racist. You could argue that believing in the conclusions of Richard Lynn’s work makes someone racist, but to support that claim, you’d need to show that those who believe it do so out of willful ignorance of evidence that his science is flawed.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  Scott itself makes a point of the study being debated. It's not. It's not debated. It's pseudo science,or "science" made with so many questionable points that it's hard to call it "science". He links to a magazine article written by a researcher that has been fired, not surprisingly, for his pseudo scientific stances on racism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Carl https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Carl Saying in 2025 that the study is still debated is not only racist, but dishonest as well. It's not debated, it's junk
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    It is debated: just not by serious scholars or academics. (Which doesn't necessarily make it wrong; but "scientific racism is bunk, and its proponents are persuasive" is a model whose high predictive power has served me well, so I believe it's wrong regardless.)
mjburgess 1y ago
A lot of "rationalists" of this kind are very poorly informed about statistical methodology, a condition they inherit from reading papers written in these pseudoscientific fields about people likewise very poorly informed. This is a pathology that has not really been addressed in the large, anywhere, really. Very few in the applied sciences who understand statistical methodology, "leave their areas" -- and many areas that require it, would disappear if it entered.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  I agree, I had to read things for an ethics course in IT in uni that read more like science fiction than actual science. Anyway, my point is that it feels pretentious - very pretentious, and I'm being kind with words - to support such pseudo scientific theories and call itself rationalist. Especially when these teories can be debunked just by reading the related Wikipedia page
  - saalweachter 1y ago
    More charitably, it is really, really hard to tell the difference between a crank kicked out of a field for being a crank, and an earnest researcher being persecuted for not towing the political line, without being an expert in the field in question and familiar with the power structures involved. A lot of people who like to think of themselves as skeptical could also be categorized as contrarian -- they are skeptical of institutions, and if someone is outside an institution, that automatically gives them a certain credibility. There are three or four logical fallacies in the mix, and if you throw in confirmation bias because what the one side says appeals to your own prior beliefs, it is really, really easy to convince yourself that you're the steely-eyed rationalist perceiving the world correctly while everyone else is deluded by their biases.
- wffurr 1y ago
  I don’t know where you get this idea, at least about Scott. He has written extensively about flaws in science and misuse of statistics. My favorite is the one where he cries at the end “ Science! YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! It was said that you would destroy reliance on biased experts, not join them!” https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
exoverito 1y ago
Human ethnic groups are measurably different in genetic terms, as based on single nucleotide polymorphisms and allelic frequency. There are multiple PCA plots of the 1000 Genomes dataset which show clear cluster separation based on ancestry: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plot-containing-the-current-reference-data-from-the-1000-genomes_fig2_345399987 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plo... We know ethnic groups vary in terms of height, hair color, eye color, melanin, bone density, sprinting ability, lactose tolerance, propensity to diseases like sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, stomach cancer, alcoholism risk, etc. Certain medications need to be dosed differently for different ethnic groups due to the frequency of certain gene variants, e.g. Carbamazepine, Warfarin, Allopurinol. The fixation index (Fst) quantifies the level of genetic variation between groups, a value of 0 means no differentiation, and 1 is maximal. A 2012 study based on SNPs found that Finns and Swedes have a Fst value of 0.0050-0.0110, Chinese and Europeans at 0.110, and Japanese and Yoruba at 0.190. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2675054/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2675054/ A 1994 study based on 120 alleles found the two most distant groups were Mbuti pygmies and Papua New Guineans at a Fst of 0.4573. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Full_Fst_Average.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Full_Fst_Average.png In genome wide association studies, polygenic score have been developed to find thousands of gene variants linked to phenotypes like spatial and verbal intelligence, memory, and processing speed. The distribution of these gene variants is not uniform across ethnic groups. Given that we know there are genetic differences between groups, and observable variation, it stands to reason that there could be a genetic component for variation in intelligence between groups. It would be dogmatic to a priori claim there is absolutely no genetic component, and pretty obviously motivated out of the fear that inequality is much more intractable than commonly believed.
- mock-possum 1y ago
  …but that just sounds like scientific racism. Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence, these kinds of statistical trends allow you to justify judging an individual based on their race, because you feel you can credibly claim that race is an acceptable proxy for their genome, is an acceptable proxy for their intelligence. Or for their trustworthiness, or creativity, or sexuality, or dutifulness, or compassion, or aggressiveness, or alacrity, or humility, etc etc. When you treat a person like a people, that’s still prejudice.
tptacek 1y ago
The Lynn IQ data isn't so much "flawed" as it is "fraudulent". There has never been a global comparative study of IQ; Lynn exploited the fact that IQ is a common diagnostic tool, even in places that don't fund a lot of social science research and thus don't conduct their own internal cross-sectional studies, and so ended up comparing diagnostic tests done at hospitals in the developing world with research studies done of volunteers in the developed world.

derangedHorse 1y ago

Nothing about the article you posted in your first comment seems racist. You could argue that believing in the conclusions of Richard Lynn’s work makes someone racist, but to support that claim, you’d need to show that those who believe it do so out of willful ignorance of evidence that his science is flawed.

amarcheschi 1y ago
Scott itself makes a point of the study being debated. It's not. It's not debated. It's pseudo science,or "science" made with so many questionable points that it's hard to call it "science". He links to a magazine article written by a researcher that has been fired, not surprisingly, for his pseudo scientific stances on racism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Carl https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Carl Saying in 2025 that the study is still debated is not only racist, but dishonest as well. It's not debated, it's junk
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  It is debated: just not by serious scholars or academics. (Which doesn't necessarily make it wrong; but "scientific racism is bunk, and its proponents are persuasive" is a model whose high predictive power has served me well, so I believe it's wrong regardless.)

mjburgess 1y ago

A lot of "rationalists" of this kind are very poorly informed about statistical methodology, a condition they inherit from reading papers written in these pseudoscientific fields about people likewise very poorly informed. This is a pathology that has not really been addressed in the large, anywhere, really. Very few in the applied sciences who understand statistical methodology, "leave their areas" -- and many areas that require it, would disappear if it entered.

amarcheschi 1y ago
I agree, I had to read things for an ethics course in IT in uni that read more like science fiction than actual science. Anyway, my point is that it feels pretentious - very pretentious, and I'm being kind with words - to support such pseudo scientific theories and call itself rationalist. Especially when these teories can be debunked just by reading the related Wikipedia page
- saalweachter 1y ago
  More charitably, it is really, really hard to tell the difference between a crank kicked out of a field for being a crank, and an earnest researcher being persecuted for not towing the political line, without being an expert in the field in question and familiar with the power structures involved. A lot of people who like to think of themselves as skeptical could also be categorized as contrarian -- they are skeptical of institutions, and if someone is outside an institution, that automatically gives them a certain credibility. There are three or four logical fallacies in the mix, and if you throw in confirmation bias because what the one side says appeals to your own prior beliefs, it is really, really easy to convince yourself that you're the steely-eyed rationalist perceiving the world correctly while everyone else is deluded by their biases.
wffurr 1y ago
I don’t know where you get this idea, at least about Scott. He has written extensively about flaws in science and misuse of statistics. My favorite is the one where he cries at the end “ Science! YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! It was said that you would destroy reliance on biased experts, not join them!” https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...

exoverito 1y ago

Human ethnic groups are measurably different in genetic terms, as based on single nucleotide polymorphisms and allelic frequency. There are multiple PCA plots of the 1000 Genomes dataset which show clear cluster separation based on ancestry: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plot-containing-the-current-reference-data-from-the-1000-genomes_fig2_345399987 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plo... We know ethnic groups vary in terms of height, hair color, eye color, melanin, bone density, sprinting ability, lactose tolerance, propensity to diseases like sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, stomach cancer, alcoholism risk, etc. Certain medications need to be dosed differently for different ethnic groups due to the frequency of certain gene variants, e.g. Carbamazepine, Warfarin, Allopurinol. The fixation index (Fst) quantifies the level of genetic variation between groups, a value of 0 means no differentiation, and 1 is maximal. A 2012 study based on SNPs found that Finns and Swedes have a Fst value of 0.0050-0.0110, Chinese and Europeans at 0.110, and Japanese and Yoruba at 0.190. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2675054/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2675054/ A 1994 study based on 120 alleles found the two most distant groups were Mbuti pygmies and Papua New Guineans at a Fst of 0.4573. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Full_Fst_Average.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Full_Fst_Average.png In genome wide association studies, polygenic score have been developed to find thousands of gene variants linked to phenotypes like spatial and verbal intelligence, memory, and processing speed. The distribution of these gene variants is not uniform across ethnic groups. Given that we know there are genetic differences between groups, and observable variation, it stands to reason that there could be a genetic component for variation in intelligence between groups. It would be dogmatic to a priori claim there is absolutely no genetic component, and pretty obviously motivated out of the fear that inequality is much more intractable than commonly believed.

mock-possum 1y ago
…but that just sounds like scientific racism. Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence, these kinds of statistical trends allow you to justify judging an individual based on their race, because you feel you can credibly claim that race is an acceptable proxy for their genome, is an acceptable proxy for their intelligence. Or for their trustworthiness, or creativity, or sexuality, or dutifulness, or compassion, or aggressiveness, or alacrity, or humility, etc etc. When you treat a person like a people, that’s still prejudice.

tptacek 1y ago

The Lynn IQ data isn't so much "flawed" as it is "fraudulent". There has never been a global comparative study of IQ; Lynn exploited the fact that IQ is a common diagnostic tool, even in places that don't fund a lot of social science research and thus don't conduct their own internal cross-sectional studies, and so ended up comparing diagnostic tests done at hospitals in the developing world with research studies done of volunteers in the developed world.