5 ms·

I can't take any of this seriously so long as any research on race and intelligence continues to be banned as heresy rather than being discussed scientifically.

762236 9mo ago
Totally agree.
conception 9mo ago
For one the idea of race is a social, not scientific, construct. It doesn’t mean anything scientifically.
- blargthorwars 9mo ago
  Some medicines work better or worse depending on race. Based on the scientific methodology, your statement is incorrect.
- terminalshort 9mo ago
  You are a perfect example of what I am talking about. That is an obvious lie. Of course it means something scientifically because it refers to a genetic grouping. e.g. black people are much more likely to have the genetic disease sickle cell anemia. Nobody seems to have much of a problem with that statement but if it were a gene related to intelligence you people would lose your minds. If it isn't a scientifically valid concept, then why did the NIH label the genetic data by race?
  - just_once 9mo ago
    Would you feel better if people said "people of African descent are much more likely to have a genetic disease sickle cell anemia"?
  - amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
    The problem here is that "black" can mean anybody with dark skin from anywhere in the world. The sickle cell stuff is likely related to the fact that most "black" people in the US are descended from slaves that pretty much all came from the same small region in West Africa.
    - terminalshort 9mo ago
      My point here is that this problem only seems to be brought up when the research has to do with intelligence. If you talk about genetic differences between "black," "white," or any other racial grouping on any other metric nobody ever brings it up as in my example above. So, while I acknowledge the fundamental weaknesses of the category, I have to conclude that the real objection here isn't the categories, but the topic of the research.
      - just_once 9mo ago
        Most of the examples that you've used gain very little from added specificity. It's essentially linguistic laziness. That linguistic laziness is not identically consequential in all contexts.
  - dragonwriter 9mo ago
    Races are not genetic groupings, they are social constructs whose boundaries evolve over time, which is particularly clear when they are formalized in a way which resista change and that formalization drifts increasingly far from the current common usage, such as the way the White racial category in common usage in America currently roughly corresponds to the the subset of the White racial category that excludes the Hispanic ethnicity in the US Census categorization. The construction of race at any given time and place will tend to have non-zero correlation with genetic frequencies, in part by chance and in part because it is usually largely (but not entirely) drivn by appearance which is to some degree associated with some aspects of underlying genetics. > e.g. black people are much more likely to have the genetic disease sickle cell anemia. People with ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa (and within that, even more West Africa), India, the Middle East, and Mediterranean are more likely to have the gene that provides malaria resistance with one copy and sickle cell disease with two than other populations. While the highest incidence group is also commonly “Black” in most constructions of race, a lot of the American perception of it as a nearly exclusively Black disease is because the population perceived as Black in the US is heavily drawn from West Africa, and the US population also underrepresents other populations in which it is more common than average AND does not include, and may not construct as Black, populations constructed as Black elsewhere in the world where it is not common.
    - terminalshort 9mo ago
      You are 100% correct, but also 100% missing the point. When I say white people are more likely to carry the gene for cystic fibrosis, or black people are more likely to carry genetic risk factors for kidney disease, nobody will reply with a long winded explanation claiming that statement is invalid because "white" and "black" are not scientifically valid because... Comments like yours appear only when the topic of intelligence comes up, so I conclude that the real problem you have with this is the subject of intelligence, and not the categories. And when the science on race and intelligence came out, the response of the scientific community was not "your categories are bad, and here is my study on intelligence that actually uses scientifically valid genetic groupings." It was "any further science on this subject will not be funded and if you express disagreement it will risk your career."
amarcheschi 9mo ago
The person in question in the article is kirkegaard, you should not take seriously what he does anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation edit since i was feeling really daring today i found an old archived page of a wiki holding a lot of interesting thoughts from him, such as eugenics to prevent the loss of western civilization, and other points that at this point you should imagine. link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250416005529/https:/rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_O._W._Kirkegaard https://web.archive.org/web/20250416005529/https:/rationalwi...
- inshard 9mo ago
  Interesting comparing these two entries: https://grokipedia.com/page/OpenPsych https://grokipedia.com/page/OpenPsych https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych
  - amarcheschi 9mo ago
    the entire microuniverse of some rationalist/pseudoscience groups feeling really "rational" and then having racist, sexist, (insert -ist or -ism here) views is a bit of a joke at this point
- terminalshort 9mo ago
  This criticism seems to mostly be that he is associated with bad people who say naughty things. Maybe he is a bad scientist, but where are all the well designed scientific studies that show his conclusions are wrong? That's what I care about, but they don't exist because you would never get funding and even to propose running such a study would be career suicide.
rf15 9mo ago
Yeah I agree, considering how much my black kid is beating all the other white kids intellectually. Good to know you know your place. /s
bryanlarsen 9mo ago
Race is not a genetic concept, it's social. Or more accurately, if it were genetic the races would look very different. The genetic diversity of "black" alone exceeds the rest of the world combined. So you have two choices: 1. Everybody is black. 2. The other races roughly stand, but there are dozens of different black races. Or you can be more accurate and say race is cultural.
- hubber 9mo ago
  [flagged]
- terminalshort 9mo ago
  OK, then let's do it right. But I think you know that isn't really the issue here. Nobody is putting out studies on correctly defined races by genetic groupings and intelligence either because the topic is still considered heresy. Your point that the commonly used definition of race is inaccurate is simply deflecting from this fact.
  - yed 9mo ago
    The point is there is no such thing as a “correct” grouping. The choice of what constitutes a group is completely subjective, it all depends on how far you choose to zoom in or out.
    - terminalshort 9mo ago
      There absolutely are correct and incorrect ways of partitioning data into groups. Human genetics is no exception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup
      - yed 9mo ago
        There are correct ways to group but there is no correct group size. Clustering algorithms inherently require some choice of sensitivity. There is no single correct choice for a given set of data, it all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
tptacek 9mo ago
Well then I have good news for you: you can begin taking it seriously, because research on race and intelligence is an active field of research that is not suppressed and produces lots of papers --- in several different disciplines, including psychometrics (the Intelligence Journal people), behavioral genetics, and molecular genetics (the GWAS people).

762236 9mo ago

Totally agree.

conception 9mo ago

For one the idea of race is a social, not scientific, construct. It doesn’t mean anything scientifically.

blargthorwars 9mo ago
Some medicines work better or worse depending on race. Based on the scientific methodology, your statement is incorrect.
terminalshort 9mo ago
You are a perfect example of what I am talking about. That is an obvious lie. Of course it means something scientifically because it refers to a genetic grouping. e.g. black people are much more likely to have the genetic disease sickle cell anemia. Nobody seems to have much of a problem with that statement but if it were a gene related to intelligence you people would lose your minds. If it isn't a scientifically valid concept, then why did the NIH label the genetic data by race?
- just_once 9mo ago
  Would you feel better if people said "people of African descent are much more likely to have a genetic disease sickle cell anemia"?
- amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
  The problem here is that "black" can mean anybody with dark skin from anywhere in the world. The sickle cell stuff is likely related to the fact that most "black" people in the US are descended from slaves that pretty much all came from the same small region in West Africa.
  - terminalshort 9mo ago
    My point here is that this problem only seems to be brought up when the research has to do with intelligence. If you talk about genetic differences between "black," "white," or any other racial grouping on any other metric nobody ever brings it up as in my example above. So, while I acknowledge the fundamental weaknesses of the category, I have to conclude that the real objection here isn't the categories, but the topic of the research.
    - just_once 9mo ago
      Most of the examples that you've used gain very little from added specificity. It's essentially linguistic laziness. That linguistic laziness is not identically consequential in all contexts.
- dragonwriter 9mo ago
  Races are not genetic groupings, they are social constructs whose boundaries evolve over time, which is particularly clear when they are formalized in a way which resista change and that formalization drifts increasingly far from the current common usage, such as the way the White racial category in common usage in America currently roughly corresponds to the the subset of the White racial category that excludes the Hispanic ethnicity in the US Census categorization. The construction of race at any given time and place will tend to have non-zero correlation with genetic frequencies, in part by chance and in part because it is usually largely (but not entirely) drivn by appearance which is to some degree associated with some aspects of underlying genetics. > e.g. black people are much more likely to have the genetic disease sickle cell anemia. People with ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa (and within that, even more West Africa), India, the Middle East, and Mediterranean are more likely to have the gene that provides malaria resistance with one copy and sickle cell disease with two than other populations. While the highest incidence group is also commonly “Black” in most constructions of race, a lot of the American perception of it as a nearly exclusively Black disease is because the population perceived as Black in the US is heavily drawn from West Africa, and the US population also underrepresents other populations in which it is more common than average AND does not include, and may not construct as Black, populations constructed as Black elsewhere in the world where it is not common.
  - terminalshort 9mo ago
    You are 100% correct, but also 100% missing the point. When I say white people are more likely to carry the gene for cystic fibrosis, or black people are more likely to carry genetic risk factors for kidney disease, nobody will reply with a long winded explanation claiming that statement is invalid because "white" and "black" are not scientifically valid because... Comments like yours appear only when the topic of intelligence comes up, so I conclude that the real problem you have with this is the subject of intelligence, and not the categories. And when the science on race and intelligence came out, the response of the scientific community was not "your categories are bad, and here is my study on intelligence that actually uses scientifically valid genetic groupings." It was "any further science on this subject will not be funded and if you express disagreement it will risk your career."

amarcheschi 9mo ago

The person in question in the article is kirkegaard, you should not take seriously what he does anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation edit since i was feeling really daring today i found an old archived page of a wiki holding a lot of interesting thoughts from him, such as eugenics to prevent the loss of western civilization, and other points that at this point you should imagine. link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250416005529/https:/rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_O._W._Kirkegaard https://web.archive.org/web/20250416005529/https:/rationalwi...

inshard 9mo ago
Interesting comparing these two entries: https://grokipedia.com/page/OpenPsych https://grokipedia.com/page/OpenPsych https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych
- amarcheschi 9mo ago
  the entire microuniverse of some rationalist/pseudoscience groups feeling really "rational" and then having racist, sexist, (insert -ist or -ism here) views is a bit of a joke at this point
terminalshort 9mo ago
This criticism seems to mostly be that he is associated with bad people who say naughty things. Maybe he is a bad scientist, but where are all the well designed scientific studies that show his conclusions are wrong? That's what I care about, but they don't exist because you would never get funding and even to propose running such a study would be career suicide.

rf15 9mo ago

Yeah I agree, considering how much my black kid is beating all the other white kids intellectually. Good to know you know your place. /s

bryanlarsen 9mo ago

Race is not a genetic concept, it's social. Or more accurately, if it were genetic the races would look very different. The genetic diversity of "black" alone exceeds the rest of the world combined. So you have two choices: 1. Everybody is black. 2. The other races roughly stand, but there are dozens of different black races. Or you can be more accurate and say race is cultural.

hubber 9mo ago
[flagged]
terminalshort 9mo ago
OK, then let's do it right. But I think you know that isn't really the issue here. Nobody is putting out studies on correctly defined races by genetic groupings and intelligence either because the topic is still considered heresy. Your point that the commonly used definition of race is inaccurate is simply deflecting from this fact.
- yed 9mo ago
  The point is there is no such thing as a “correct” grouping. The choice of what constitutes a group is completely subjective, it all depends on how far you choose to zoom in or out.
  - terminalshort 9mo ago
    There absolutely are correct and incorrect ways of partitioning data into groups. Human genetics is no exception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup
    - yed 9mo ago
      There are correct ways to group but there is no correct group size. Clustering algorithms inherently require some choice of sensitivity. There is no single correct choice for a given set of data, it all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

tptacek 9mo ago

Well then I have good news for you: you can begin taking it seriously, because research on race and intelligence is an active field of research that is not suppressed and produces lots of papers --- in several different disciplines, including psychometrics (the Intelligence Journal people), behavioral genetics, and molecular genetics (the GWAS people).