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Liberal views are very anti-science on race. Some famous professors even lost their positions just for adopting the statistically correct position that the majo

Liberal views are very anti-science on race. Some famous professors even lost their positions just for adopting the statistically correct position that the majority of the difference in outcomes between races is accounted for by IQ, which is mostly immutable after childhood, not some societal conspiracy against certain races.

tptacek 4mo ago
Which famous professors would those be? This is an active research area, with papers published year-round.
- jayGlow 4mo ago
  James Watson the guy who discovered DNA was stripped of honorary titles based on comments related to race and IQ. there was a lot of discussion about that recently when he died.
  - tptacek 4mo ago
    Before I reply, let me ask: is that your best example?
    - jayGlow 4mo ago
      Does he not meet the criteria of a famous professor?
      - tptacek 4mo ago
        Maybe you could start with an actual practicing scientist. One problem you're going to run into here is that, as I said, this is an active area of study. If these papers are firing offenses, someone ought to be telling HR.
        jujube3 4mo ago
        Person 1: give me an example of someone who was kicked out of academia for uncomfortable truths. Person 2: [gives examples] Person 1: oh ho! But those people are not in academia any more! They're not "practicing scientists"! Person 2: ...
        tptacek 4mo ago
        Yes, me and my Calvinball rule of "actual scientist prevented from publishing on this subject". There's a kind of Schneierism thing that happens in these threads; like: I could ask, ok, name a scientist practicing in this field. They exist, but they don't have names your 3rd grade science teacher knows.
        Windchaser 4mo ago
        ...I don't think Watson was kicked out for "uncomfortable truths", but because his conclusions kept overstepping the evidence he presented, and in particularly sexist or racist ways. Again, to be explicit: he did not establish that his claims were true. That is why it's quite worthwhile to ask if Watson is the best example available. The guy was pretty openly and casually sexist, and his racism wasn't much better.
        tptacek 4mo ago
        Even stipulating the imprecise language here, he couldn't "establish that his claims were true", because he did not work in these fields. This is a pop science argument where any "scientist" can just "do science" to answer deep or controversial questions, but obviously that't not how science actually works. His racist comments pertained to several highly specialized fields of study, none of which he worked in. You might as well have asked Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
  - lopsotronic 4mo ago
    "just for adopting . ." OK, I'm really sorry, but "just for adopting" is doing some heavy lifting here. Watson's other greatest hits: worries about Big Black Dicks; melanin injections as boner pill; what I call "The Cunning Chinaman"; and a whole bucket of others. Taken in sum: it turns out you can be asked to leave a private club if you are being an asshole. To clear the air, as a card carrying liberal (even a !gasp! Socialist) I don't necessarily reject empirical racial differences based on genetics. Maybe even for "intelligence", for whatever good that does ya, since "intelligence" lacks anything like a quantitative definition. But I also think that - if they're even present, which is by no means certain - these are not significant differences. Structuring your entire society around quantitative racial differences, from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, is not enough juice for the squeeze. But, well, the juice isn't the point, is it? It's the squeezing - the ability to brutalize your citizenry, to purge Unmanly Virtues like "empathy" or "introspection", to be always prepared for violence - the squeezing, being able to squeeze, is what is important. And the fastest way to do that is convince a bunch of people that other people aren't people. Europe tried that, a few years ago. You might remember that it did not go well. A lesson America never really got. Maybe someday we'll need to learn the same damn thing the same way, except instead of B-17s and Red Army Sex Crime we get to enjoy thermonuclear weapons. Come back Ivan. All is forgiven.
    - tptacek 4mo ago
      I mean I like to hold my cards closer to my vest than this, but if we're just going right at it: (1) He wasn't a practicing scientist. (2) He wasn't fired for making scientific claims, but rather for saying things like "I'm pessimistic about Africa". (3) He didn't do any research in behavioral genetics, psychometrics, or molecular genetics; his authority in the discussion was "famous science guy". (4) He lost an honorary and, later, an emeritus position, in which his role was not "scientist" but rather "spokesperson for a scientific organization". I wouldn't want him for a spokesperson either, any more than I'd want Ibram X. Kendi or, maybe closer to the mark, Elijah Mohammed as my spokesperson. James Watson was closer to Donald Sterling than to Galileo.
- pickleRick243 4mo ago
  Not a Nobel prize winner (his advisor was though), but Stephen Hsu was a fairly high profile case. I remember watching a 2008 Google lecture of his on YouTube in 2019 and wondering- wow, the kind of research people could present a decade ago. Lo and behold...
  - tptacek 4mo ago
    This is closer, but again: (1) Lost an administrative position, retained his tenured academic position. (2) Did not practice in the space. As I understand it, he got jumped for appearing on Stefan Molyneaux's show (Molyneaux is a proud, open white nationalist, though that was not as obvious at the time) and saying he was agnostic about group differences. The key thing here is, again: Hsu doesn't publish in this field. He himself loudly pointed this out! He's a physicist, not a geneticist or a psychometrician/quant psych. From what I can tell, the mob attack on Hsu was not well founded. It's not my claim that there haven't been brigaded attacks on academics; there obviously have been. Rather: it's that the scientists who actually practice in this field and actually publish results continue to do so, largely without drama. "Group differences" in "intelligence" (or proxies like EA) are not verboten in academia. There's an example of a scientist who published on group differences and lost his job, but that example won't do the work this thread hopes it'll do; he was fired for good reason.
etchalon 4mo ago
"Liberal views" are not anti-science on race. "Liberal views" tend to reject the reductionism and selectivity of "race science" that points to arbitrarily defined measurements like IQ as being the sole explanation for things we can easily prove have multiple better, non-arbitrary explanations. Bluntly, racists have decided IQ measurements mean they're not racist instead of wondering whether IQ, as a measurement, is itself racist.
bencorman 4mo ago
Race science is just about the apex of pseudoscience. Academics haven't rejected it because it doesn't mesh with their liberal politics, they've rejected it because it's junk.
akerl_ 4mo ago
Are we just ignoring all the major societal factors that happen to children before and during childhood?
- Windchaser 4mo ago
  Yeah, I recall that average Irish citizens and Irish immigrants were measured to have pretty bad IQs around a century ago. This changed with improvements to nutrition, health, less alcoholism, and education. So the research shows that IQ is not purely innate. And this is, at this point, rather old research.
esarbe 4mo ago
Watson's comments are not based in scientific fact. First of - there is no such thing as a "race". Putting people in classes based on the colour of their skin is ludicrously simplistic, ignoring the incredible genetic diversity in the human genome. There's simply no viable scientific concept that is able to capture the features that "race" is supposed to capture. Secondly there's no strong argument that links larger population groups genetic makeup to intelligence - that's what Watson claimed and what's so infuriating; it's plain racism. There's an inherited component in intelligence - that much is right. But population groups have enough diversity that this does not have a statistically relevant impact on these groups as a whole. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/james-watson-scientist-honors-stripped-reprehensible-race-comments https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/james-watson-s...
platevoltage 4mo ago
For real. We are doing race science on HN?
- etchalon 4mo ago
  Turns out racists love tech news too.
datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
Simple people are drawn to simple models of the world. IQ is an extremely simple model.

tptacek 4mo ago

Which famous professors would those be? This is an active research area, with papers published year-round.

jayGlow 4mo ago
James Watson the guy who discovered DNA was stripped of honorary titles based on comments related to race and IQ. there was a lot of discussion about that recently when he died.
- tptacek 4mo ago
  Before I reply, let me ask: is that your best example?
  - jayGlow 4mo ago
    Does he not meet the criteria of a famous professor?
    - tptacek 4mo ago
      Maybe you could start with an actual practicing scientist. One problem you're going to run into here is that, as I said, this is an active area of study. If these papers are firing offenses, someone ought to be telling HR.
      - jujube3 4mo ago
        Person 1: give me an example of someone who was kicked out of academia for uncomfortable truths. Person 2: [gives examples] Person 1: oh ho! But those people are not in academia any more! They're not "practicing scientists"! Person 2: ...
        tptacek 4mo ago
        Yes, me and my Calvinball rule of "actual scientist prevented from publishing on this subject". There's a kind of Schneierism thing that happens in these threads; like: I could ask, ok, name a scientist practicing in this field. They exist, but they don't have names your 3rd grade science teacher knows.
        Windchaser 4mo ago
        ...I don't think Watson was kicked out for "uncomfortable truths", but because his conclusions kept overstepping the evidence he presented, and in particularly sexist or racist ways. Again, to be explicit: he did not establish that his claims were true. That is why it's quite worthwhile to ask if Watson is the best example available. The guy was pretty openly and casually sexist, and his racism wasn't much better.
        tptacek 4mo ago
        Even stipulating the imprecise language here, he couldn't "establish that his claims were true", because he did not work in these fields. This is a pop science argument where any "scientist" can just "do science" to answer deep or controversial questions, but obviously that't not how science actually works. His racist comments pertained to several highly specialized fields of study, none of which he worked in. You might as well have asked Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
- lopsotronic 4mo ago
  "just for adopting . ." OK, I'm really sorry, but "just for adopting" is doing some heavy lifting here. Watson's other greatest hits: worries about Big Black Dicks; melanin injections as boner pill; what I call "The Cunning Chinaman"; and a whole bucket of others. Taken in sum: it turns out you can be asked to leave a private club if you are being an asshole. To clear the air, as a card carrying liberal (even a !gasp! Socialist) I don't necessarily reject empirical racial differences based on genetics. Maybe even for "intelligence", for whatever good that does ya, since "intelligence" lacks anything like a quantitative definition. But I also think that - if they're even present, which is by no means certain - these are not significant differences. Structuring your entire society around quantitative racial differences, from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, is not enough juice for the squeeze. But, well, the juice isn't the point, is it? It's the squeezing - the ability to brutalize your citizenry, to purge Unmanly Virtues like "empathy" or "introspection", to be always prepared for violence - the squeezing, being able to squeeze, is what is important. And the fastest way to do that is convince a bunch of people that other people aren't people. Europe tried that, a few years ago. You might remember that it did not go well. A lesson America never really got. Maybe someday we'll need to learn the same damn thing the same way, except instead of B-17s and Red Army Sex Crime we get to enjoy thermonuclear weapons. Come back Ivan. All is forgiven.
  - tptacek 4mo ago
    I mean I like to hold my cards closer to my vest than this, but if we're just going right at it: (1) He wasn't a practicing scientist. (2) He wasn't fired for making scientific claims, but rather for saying things like "I'm pessimistic about Africa". (3) He didn't do any research in behavioral genetics, psychometrics, or molecular genetics; his authority in the discussion was "famous science guy". (4) He lost an honorary and, later, an emeritus position, in which his role was not "scientist" but rather "spokesperson for a scientific organization". I wouldn't want him for a spokesperson either, any more than I'd want Ibram X. Kendi or, maybe closer to the mark, Elijah Mohammed as my spokesperson. James Watson was closer to Donald Sterling than to Galileo.
pickleRick243 4mo ago
Not a Nobel prize winner (his advisor was though), but Stephen Hsu was a fairly high profile case. I remember watching a 2008 Google lecture of his on YouTube in 2019 and wondering- wow, the kind of research people could present a decade ago. Lo and behold...
- tptacek 4mo ago
  This is closer, but again: (1) Lost an administrative position, retained his tenured academic position. (2) Did not practice in the space. As I understand it, he got jumped for appearing on Stefan Molyneaux's show (Molyneaux is a proud, open white nationalist, though that was not as obvious at the time) and saying he was agnostic about group differences. The key thing here is, again: Hsu doesn't publish in this field. He himself loudly pointed this out! He's a physicist, not a geneticist or a psychometrician/quant psych. From what I can tell, the mob attack on Hsu was not well founded. It's not my claim that there haven't been brigaded attacks on academics; there obviously have been. Rather: it's that the scientists who actually practice in this field and actually publish results continue to do so, largely without drama. "Group differences" in "intelligence" (or proxies like EA) are not verboten in academia. There's an example of a scientist who published on group differences and lost his job, but that example won't do the work this thread hopes it'll do; he was fired for good reason.

etchalon 4mo ago

"Liberal views" are not anti-science on race. "Liberal views" tend to reject the reductionism and selectivity of "race science" that points to arbitrarily defined measurements like IQ as being the sole explanation for things we can easily prove have multiple better, non-arbitrary explanations. Bluntly, racists have decided IQ measurements mean they're not racist instead of wondering whether IQ, as a measurement, is itself racist.

bencorman 4mo ago

Race science is just about the apex of pseudoscience. Academics haven't rejected it because it doesn't mesh with their liberal politics, they've rejected it because it's junk.

akerl_ 4mo ago

Are we just ignoring all the major societal factors that happen to children before and during childhood?

Windchaser 4mo ago
Yeah, I recall that average Irish citizens and Irish immigrants were measured to have pretty bad IQs around a century ago. This changed with improvements to nutrition, health, less alcoholism, and education. So the research shows that IQ is not purely innate. And this is, at this point, rather old research.

esarbe 4mo ago

Watson's comments are not based in scientific fact. First of - there is no such thing as a "race". Putting people in classes based on the colour of their skin is ludicrously simplistic, ignoring the incredible genetic diversity in the human genome. There's simply no viable scientific concept that is able to capture the features that "race" is supposed to capture. Secondly there's no strong argument that links larger population groups genetic makeup to intelligence - that's what Watson claimed and what's so infuriating; it's plain racism. There's an inherited component in intelligence - that much is right. But population groups have enough diversity that this does not have a statistically relevant impact on these groups as a whole. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/james-watson-scientist-honors-stripped-reprehensible-race-comments https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/james-watson-s...

platevoltage 4mo ago

For real. We are doing race science on HN?

etchalon 4mo ago
Turns out racists love tech news too.

datsci_est_2015 4mo ago

Simple people are drawn to simple models of the world. IQ is an extremely simple model.