I mean “equally likely” in wedrifid’s sense: not that, having done a proper Bayesian analysis on all evidence, I may set the probability of p(W>B)=p(B>W}=.5 (assuming intelligence works in such a way that this implied division into genetic and environmental components makes sense), but that 1) I don’t know enough about Spanish gold to make an informed judgement and 2) my rough estimate is that “I could see it going either way”—something inherent in saying that environmental differences are “sufficient to explain” extant differences. So actually forming beliefs about these relative levels is both insufficiently grounded and unnecessary.
I suppose if I had to write some median expectation it’s that they’re equal in the sense that we would regard any other two things in the phenomenal world of everyday experience equal—when you see two jars of peanut butter of the same brand and size next to each other on a shelf in the supermarket, it’s vanishingly unlikely that they have exaaaactly the same amount of peanut butter, but it’s close enough to use the word.
I don’t think this is really a case of writing things down on the bottom line. What reason would there be to suppose ex ante that these arbitrarily constructed groups differ to some more-than-jars-of-peanut-butter degree? Is there some selective pressure for intelligence that exists above the Sahara but not below it (more obvious than counter-just-so-stories we could construct?) Cet par I expect a population of chimpanzees or orangutans in one region to be peanut butter equal in intelligence to those in another region, and we have lower intraspecific SNP variation than other apes.
“I could see it going either way” is consistent with having a best estimate that goes one way rather than another.
Just as you have the Flynn effect with intelligence, so average height has also been increasing. Would you say the same thing about height, that the average height of white people and black people has no significant genetic difference, but it is basically all cultural? If not, what is the difference?
In any case, both height and intelligence are subject to sexual selection, not merely ordinary natural selection. And where you have sexual selection, one would indeed expect to find substantial differences between diverse populations: for example, it would not be at all surprising to find significantly different peacock tails among peacock populations that were separated for thousands of years. You will find these significant differences because there are so many other factors affecting sexual preference; to the degree that you have a sexual preference for smarter people, you are neglecting taller people (unless these are 100% correlated, which they are not), and to the degree that you have a sexual preference for taller people, you are neglecting smarter people. So one just-so-story would be that black people preferred taller people more (note the basketball players) and so preferred more intelligent people less. This just-so-story would be supported even more by the fact that the Japanese are even shorter, and still more intelligent.
Granted, that remains a just-so-story. But yes, I would expect “ex ante” to find significant genetic differences between races in intelligence, along with other factors like height.
I mean “equally likely” in wedrifid’s sense: not that, having done a proper Bayesian analysis on all evidence, I may set the probability of p(W>B)=p(B>W}=.5 (assuming intelligence works in such a way that this implied division into genetic and environmental components makes sense), but that 1) I don’t know enough about Spanish gold to make an informed judgement and 2) my rough estimate is that “I could see it going either way”—something inherent in saying that environmental differences are “sufficient to explain” extant differences. So actually forming beliefs about these relative levels is both insufficiently grounded and unnecessary.
I suppose if I had to write some median expectation it’s that they’re equal in the sense that we would regard any other two things in the phenomenal world of everyday experience equal—when you see two jars of peanut butter of the same brand and size next to each other on a shelf in the supermarket, it’s vanishingly unlikely that they have exaaaactly the same amount of peanut butter, but it’s close enough to use the word.
I don’t think this is really a case of writing things down on the bottom line. What reason would there be to suppose ex ante that these arbitrarily constructed groups differ to some more-than-jars-of-peanut-butter degree? Is there some selective pressure for intelligence that exists above the Sahara but not below it (more obvious than counter-just-so-stories we could construct?) Cet par I expect a population of chimpanzees or orangutans in one region to be peanut butter equal in intelligence to those in another region, and we have lower intraspecific SNP variation than other apes.
“I could see it going either way” is consistent with having a best estimate that goes one way rather than another.
Just as you have the Flynn effect with intelligence, so average height has also been increasing. Would you say the same thing about height, that the average height of white people and black people has no significant genetic difference, but it is basically all cultural? If not, what is the difference?
In any case, both height and intelligence are subject to sexual selection, not merely ordinary natural selection. And where you have sexual selection, one would indeed expect to find substantial differences between diverse populations: for example, it would not be at all surprising to find significantly different peacock tails among peacock populations that were separated for thousands of years. You will find these significant differences because there are so many other factors affecting sexual preference; to the degree that you have a sexual preference for smarter people, you are neglecting taller people (unless these are 100% correlated, which they are not), and to the degree that you have a sexual preference for taller people, you are neglecting smarter people. So one just-so-story would be that black people preferred taller people more (note the basketball players) and so preferred more intelligent people less. This just-so-story would be supported even more by the fact that the Japanese are even shorter, and still more intelligent.
Granted, that remains a just-so-story. But yes, I would expect “ex ante” to find significant genetic differences between races in intelligence, along with other factors like height.