Is anyone else here disturbed over the recent Harvard incident where Stephanie Grace’s perfectly reasonable email where she merley expreses agnosticism over the posiblity that the well documented IQ differences between groups are partially genetic is worthy of harsh and inaccurate condemnation from the Harvard Law school dean?
I feel sorry for the girl since she trusted the wrong people (the email was alegedly leaked by one of her girlfriends who got into a dispute with her over a man). We need to be extra carefull to selfcensure any rationalist discusions about cows “everyone” agrees are holy. These are things I don’t feel comfortable even discussing here since they have ruined many carrers and lives due to relentless persecution. Even recanting dosen’t help at the end of the day, since you are a google away and people who may not even understand the argument will hate you intensly. Scary.
I mean surley everyone here agrees that the only way to discover truth is to allow all the hypothesies to stand on their own without giving them the privilige of supressing competition to a few. Why is our society so insane that this regurarly happens even concerning views that many relevant academics hold in private (or even the majority of if in certain fields if the polling is anon)?
PS Also why does the Dean equate inteligence with genetic superiority and imlicitly even worth as a person? This is a disturbing view since half by definition will always be below average. And we’re all going to be terribly stupid compared to AIs in the near future, such implicit values are dangerus in the context of the time we may be living in.
In my world, that’s dinner-table conversation. If it’s wrong, you argue with it. If it upsets you, you are more praiseworthy the more you control your anger. If your anti-racism is so fragile that it’ll crumble if you don’t shut students up—if you think that is the best use of your efforts to help people, or to help the cause of equality—then something has gone a little screwy in your mind.
The idea that students—students! -- are at risk if they write about ideas in emails is damn frightening to me. I spent my childhood in a university town. This means that political correctness—that is, not being rude on the basis of race or ethnicity—is as deep in my bones as “please” and “thank you.” I generally think it’s a good thing to treat everyone with respect. But the other thing I got from my “university values” is that freedom to look for the truth is sacrosanct. And if it’s tempting to shut someone up, take a few deep cleansing breaths and remember your Voltaire.
My own beef with those studies is that you cannot (to my knowledge) isolate the genetics of race from the experience of race. Every single black subject whose IQ is tested has also lived his whole life as black. And we have a history and culture that makes race matter. You can control for income and education level, because there are a variety of incomes and education levels among all races. You can control for home environment with adoption and twin studies, I guess. But you can’t control for what it’s like to live as a black person in a society where race matters, because all black people do. So I can’t see how such a study can really ever isolate genetics alone. (But correct me if I’m missing something.)
Since mixed racial background should make a difference in genes but makes only a small difference in the way our culture treats a person, if the IQ gap is the result of genetics we should see find that the those with mixed race backgrounds have higher IQs than those of mostly or exclusively African descent. This has been approximated with skin tone studies in the past and my recollection is that one study showed a slight correlation between lighter skin tone and IQ and the other study showed no correlation. There just hasn’t been much research done and I doubt there will ever be much research (which is fine by me).
I’m still not confident because we’re not, as Nancy mentioned, completely binary about race even in the US.
What you’d really need to do is a comparative study between the US and somewhere like Brazil or Cuba, which had a different history regarding mixed race. (The US worked by the one-drop-of-blood rule; Spanish and Portuguese colonies had an elaborate caste system where more white blood meant more legal rights.) If it’s mainly a cultural distinction, we ought to see a major difference between the two countries—the light/dark gap should be larger in the former Spanish colony than it is in the US. If culture doesn’t matter much, and the gap is purely genetic, it should be the same all around the world.
The other thing I would add, which is easy to lose track of, is that this is not research that should be done exclusively by whites, and especially not exclusively by whites who have an axe to grind about race. Bias can go in that direction as well, and a subject like this demands extraordinary care in controlling for it. Coming out with a bad, politically motivated IQ study could be extremely harmful.
The other thing I would add, which is easy to lose track of, is that this is not research that should be done exclusively by whites, and especially not exclusively by whites who have an axe to grind about race.
Frankly, I’m not sure why the research should be done at all.
Minnesota Trans-Racial Adoption Study suggests that a lot of the difference is cultural and/or that white parents are better able to protect their children from the effects of prejudice.
I also have no idea what the practical difference of 4 IQ points might be.
I don’t know where you’d find people who were interested enough in racial differences in intelligence to do major studies on it, but who didn’t have preconceived ideas.
Afaik, skin tone, hair texture, and facial features make a large difference in how African Americans treat each other.
White people, in my experience, are apt to think of race in binary terms, but this might imply that skin tone affects how African Americans actually get treated.
Here is the leaked email by Stephanie Grace if anyone is interested.
… I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.
I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:)
Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.
I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.
In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.
Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me,
A few minor fallacies but overall quite respectable and even stimulating conversation nothing any reasonable person would consider should warrant ostracism. Note the reference to “disscused over Dinner”. She was betrayed by someone she socialised with.
And yes I am violating my own advice by boldening that one sentence. ;) I just wanted to drive home how close she may be to a well meaning if perhaps a bit untactfull poster on Less Wrong. Again, we need to be carefull. What society considers taboo changes over time as well, so one must get a feel for where on the scale of forbidden a subject is at any time and where the winds of change are blowing before deciding whether to discuss it online. Something inoccus could cost you your job a decade or so in the future.
One of the people criticizing the letter accused the letter writer of privileging the hypothesis—that it’s only because of historical contingency (i.e. racism) that someone would decide to carve reality between “African-Americans” and “whites” instead of, say, “people with brown eyes” and “people with blue eyes”. (She didn’t use that exact phrase, but it’s what she meant.)
Isn’t nearly everything a social construct though? We can divide people based into two groups, those with university degrees and those without. People with them may tend to live longer or die earlier, they may earn more money or earn less, ect. We may also divide people into groups based on self identification, do blondes really have more fun than brunettes or do hipsters really feel superior to nonhipsters or do religious people have lower IQs than self-identified atheists ect
Concepts like species, subspecies and family are also constructs that are just about as arbitrary as race.
I dosen’t really matter in the end. Regardless of how we carve up reality, we can then proceed to ask questions and get answers. Suppose we decided to in 1900 take a global test to see whether blue eyed or brown eyed people have higher IQs. Lo and behold we see brown eyed people have higher IQs. But in 2050 the reverse is true. What happened? The population with brown eyes was heterogeneous and its demographics changed! However if we took skin cancer rates we would still see people with blue eyes have higher rates of skin cancer in both periods.
So why should we bother carving up reality on this racial metric and ask questions about it? For the same reason we bother to carve up reality on the family or gender metric. We base policy on it. If society was colour blind, there would be no need for this. But I hope everyone here can see that society isn’t colour blind.
For example Affirmative action’s ethical status (which is currently framed as a nesecary adjustment against biases and not reparations for past wrongs) depends on what the data has to about say about group differences.
If the data shows we people with blue eyes in our country have lower mean IQs when controlling for socioeconomic status and such, we shouldn’t be accusing racism for their higher college drop out rates if the rates are what is to be expected when controlling for IQs. To keep this policy would mean to discriminate against competent brown eyed people. But if there are no difference well then the policy is justified unless it turns out there is another reason that has nothing to do with discrimination behind it.
I hope that you however agree that (regardless of what the truth of this particular matter is) someone should not be vilified for asking questions or proposing hypothesises regarding social constructs we have in place, regularly operate with and even make quantifiable claims about.
I just want to clear up that I’m refering to species and subspecies in the biological sense in that sentence and family in the ordinary every day sense not to the category between order and genus.
For example Affirmative action’s ethical status (which is currently framed as a nesecary adjustment against biases and not reparations for past wrongs) depends on what the data has to about say about group differences.
Only if you accept that particular framing, I would have thought? If one chooses to justify affirmative action as reparations for past wrongs, ‘what the data has to about say about group differences’ won’t change your opinion of affirmative action.
Of course one can do this. But then you get into the sticky issue of why should we group reparations based on race? Aren’t the Chatolic Irish entitled to reparations for their mistreatment as immigrant labour and discrimination against them based on their religion if the same is true of the Chinese? Aren’t Native Americans a bit more entitled to reparations than say Indian immigrants? Also why are African Americans descended from slaves not differenciated to those who have migrated to the US a generation ago (after the civil rights era)?
And how long should such reparations be payed? Indefinetly?
I hope that from the above you can see why there would need to be a new debate on affirmative action if one reframes it.
I don’t believe affirmative action is justified by ‘past wrongs’ - I used that as an example only because you mentioned it. (Personally, I believe it makes more sense to justify affirmative action as a device to offset present disadvantages.) I meant only to make the point that the statement ‘Affirmative action’s ethical status...depends on what the data has to about say about group differences’ is too broad, because there are justifications for affirmative action that do not hinge on the nature of IQ differences between blacks and whites.
I wrote affirmative action as it is currently framed. I consider that an important distinction. I never denied other frames where possible, I’m just saying the current support for affirmative action amongst groups that are harmed by it is loosly based on the notion that it is offseting unwaranted privilige (bias by employers in other words) of the majority.
I think we both agree that ‘what the data has to about say about group differences’ does not necessarily affect ‘Affirmative action’s ethical status’ in general—only if one justifies it on grounds that make assumptions about the nature of IQ differences between groups. That just wasn’t clear to me as of four days ago due to your phrasing.
Black people routinely outperform whites at elite running events, Asians already rule at math and science, so the hypothesis that there are genetic differences in performance between blacks and whites is already something one should consider likely.
IAWYC, but “Asians rule at math and science” seems to have a huge cultural basis, and it’s at least no more obvious that it has a genetic component than that racial IQ gaps do.
To someone who knows that Asian math achievement has a fully or almost fully cultural basis, the Asian math link doesn’t do work privileging the hypothesis that there might be a black/white genetic IQ difference.
However, to someone who simply sees math classes full of people with yellow skin, and doesn’t know why, it does do work privileging the hypothesis that there might be a black/white genetic IQ difference, rather that e.g. anti-black discrimination causing lower grades for blacks etc.
Of course, if you saw Asian-filled math classes, there must have already been something that made you assign some probability to the hypothesis that genes, not memes were responsible.
and it’s at least no more obvious that it has a genetic component than that racial IQ gaps do.
I don’t think it has to be more obvious or clear-cut, it moves you evidentially by simply being another instance of the same thing.
If the only racial-feature correlation in the world was that black people tested low on IQ, then the idea that genes rather than, say, discrimination were responsible would be something of a stretch.
But when you see a whole collection of racial-feature correlations, the idea that genes are responsible to some extent becomes more plausible. It is a reasonable AI/machine learning heuristic to jump from co-variation to some kind of causal link: if you see skin color (which is well known to indicate DNA-type) covary with ability at sport, ability at math, ability at IQ tests, criminality, etc, you place some weight on the hypothesis that DNA directly causally influences these things. Of course, you don’t put all of your weight on that.
Can you explain how you know Asian math acheivement is fully due to cultural bias?
Haven’t crossracial adpotion studies shown that adopted East Asian children do better than their white peers on IQ tests? I also remember hearing claims that generally Asians do beter on the visualspatial component of IQ tests than whites.
I think it would be fascinating if people with blue eyes were more or less intelligent, when controlling for the variables, than people with brown eyes.
That said, I would expect a larger genetic variation when choosing between long-separated and isolated populations rather than eye colors.
I’m using eye color as an example here since CronoDAS mentioned it. Replace it with a particular gene, future time orientation, nose type or whatever. If society makes quantifiable claims about a particular category into which we slice up reality (ie Atheists are more likley to rape and murder!) an individual should have the right to either test or demand proof for this quantifiable claim.
Race is a pretty good proxy form which populations your ancestors came from. Its not perfect since for example the Black race has the most genetic diversity and geneflow has increased after the rise of civilization and especially globalisation. Knowing however, whether for example most of your ancestors lived outside of Africa for the last 60,000 thousand years or that your group of ancestors diverged from the other guys group of ancestors 40,000 thousand years ago is also relevant info.
I stole this graph from Razib’s site (gene expression) for a quick reference of what current biology has to say about ancestral populations.
Most escape me right now but I do recall something that bothered me… She implicity uses stereotypes of African American behvariour and how they change over time as an indicator of the actuall change in violent behaviour.
I’m sure it correlates somewhat, but considering how much stronger changes in wider society where and how much people’s interests regarding what it was best to have other people belive about Black behaviour changed over time I don’t think you can base an argument on this either way.
Here’s a bit more on the “privileging the hypothesis” bit, taken from here:
UPDATE: A lot of commenters have said that not addressing the substance of Stephanie’s email — the contention that it’s possible that black people are genetically inferior to white people — is a mistake, and weakens my point. So, why am I not addressing the idea that maybe black people are intellectually inferior, even if just to quickly debunk Stephanie’s argument? Because if I did that, the comments to this post would turn into a referendum on the genetics of intelligence, and there are always going to be a few very vocal people who have a lot invested in the falsity that black people are genetically inferior, and those people are not going to be convinced by any amount of evidence. It’s also impossible to prove, beyond any scientific doubt at all, that there is no genetic differentiation between racial and ethnic groups. That is, basically, how science works — it’s the reason that people who have some political or religious or personal investment in the idea that evolution is a crock will fall back on the “well evolution is only a theory!” line. Yes, it is “only” a theory, but it’s a theory that has a whole mountain of evidence behind it; and it’s called a theory because scientists are awfully hedgy, for good reason, about calling anything The Absolute Proven Truth. I’ll quote commenter MJ, who makes this point well:
One hears this kind of statement often from advocates of quasi-racist positions. “Oh, of course I could be convinced of perfect equality, if only someone could show me a study the proves that no differences exist!” It’s an extremely disingenuous argument and reflects a fundamental (deliberate?) misunderstanding about statistics.
No study can ever “prove” that no difference between two groups exists—a study can only fail to detect a difference of a certain size with a certain confidence level. Any experiment with enough statistical power will be able to find differences between any two groups, even two flasks of genetically identical bacteria, if you try hard enough.
My point is that asking for a study that demonstrates equality may sound reasonable, but is in fact just a rhetorical technique that can never be satisfied and serves as a shield for racist ideas.
Intelligence, too, is impossible to separate from environment and socialization, again making it impossible for anyone to say with absolute certainty that there is absolutely no biological or genetic difference at all ever between racial and ethnic groups. Intelligence is also incredibly difficult to accurately measure. But for all intents and purposes, the evidence is pretty clear that there aren’t discernible genetic differences when it comes to intelligence. But it’s always possible to make the argument that “We haven’t proven that there are no differences.” That argument tells you a lot more about the person making it than it does about any scientific fact.
I take people who argue that maybe there are race-based genetic differences that determine intelligence about as seriously as I take people who argue that maybe God did create the earth in 7 days with all humans and animals in the exact same form as we find them today. And you know, opening up a free-for-all discussion about race-based genetic difference will be about as fruitful as opening up a discussion about Creationism vs. Evolution. Discussing why Creationists are wrong and trying to convince anyone to switch “sides” in that debate (if you can even call it that) is pointless; if you really feel the need to repeat, “But evolution is just a theory and it doesn’t explain everything, so Creationism can’t be totally ruled out”, then you have some personal or religious or political or cultural investment in that idea, which won’t be toppled by evidence or rationality. Similarly, if you feel the need to repeat, “But it can’t be totally ruled out that there may be genetic differences between the races which make black people intellectually inferior,” you have some personal or political or cultural investment in that idea, which probably won’t be toppled by evidence or rationality. There is no “winning” in this debate.
And the greater danger of even opening up the debate is that, unlike creationism vs. evolution, the question of “are some people genetically inferior to others?” has been used in the service of injustice great and small. Even if we put aside the point that the genetics question has been used to justify slavery, mass sterilization, genocide, incarceration and violence — not a small point to put aside, certainly — the fact remains that the continued asking such an absurd, disproven question does harm. I can understand, for people who are not in the group that has been deemed potentially genetically inferior, that just raising the issue may not feel harmful. But for the people who are in that group? Who know the history? Who are routinely treated to questions like this under the guise of “I’m only asking the question!” but who know quite well that “only asking the question” is, itself, a way of suggesting that the answer to the question just might be yes? Who, by having to respond to the question over and over are basically being told, “You may just not be as intelligent as white people, genetically; you, as you were born, are just less”? It is harmful. It is part of a generations-long continuum of harm. It is a kind of psychological warfare that white people have waged on people of color and other less “fit” populations for centuries, which has augmented, supported and justified physical warfare, slavery, colonialism and genocide.
So no, I am not going to open up a discussion as to why Stephanie Grace’s suggestion that black people may be genetically intellectually inferior to white people is wrong. The asking of the question, and taking the question seriously, suggests that the answer just might be yes, no matter how many times the evidence points in the opposite direction. That does real harm to members of our community; it has done real harm historically to huge numbers of people, and will continue to do real harm in the future. There are many, many places on the internet where you all can talk about this to your heart’s content. I feel no obligation to provide a forum for such a pointless, hateful and harmful debate.
My “wrong-headed thinking” radar is picking up more bleeps from this than from the incriminating email:
“There are people with vested interests” is basically unverifiable, she’s basically assuming anybody who disagrees is a fundamentally racist mutant
“People won’t change their mind anyway, the discussion will be pointless” can be said of any controversial subject
The comparison to creationists can also be used to tar any opponent, there should be some version of Godwin’s law for that
The argument that “one can always find a difference if one looks hard enough”
“No study can ever “prove” that no difference between two groups exists” seems to be besides the point—the question isn’t whether any difference exists, but whether this specific difference exists, something that can be proved or disproved by experiment. (Well, more exactly, the topic would be what the cause of the difference is)
As the prior threadmakes clear, distinguishing between genetic and environmental causes of intelligence is immensely complicated—especially given the confusion over what intelligence is.
However, it is well known that people don’t like being told that they’re statistically less likely to be intelligent. There are actually a fair number of studies showing that promoting stereotypes can actually reduce test scores. This is called “Stereotype Threat”. While there is a recent meta-study which claims that the effect is an artifact of publication bias, that study had not been published when Grace wrote her email.
Grace (a) has no new data, and (b) has no new arguments. When she makes the claim that the search for evidence that the race-iq correlation is not genetic has been “unsuccessful”, she hurts people. But she does not, in return, contribute anything at all to the discourse.
She cannot even claim the virtue of curiosity—note that her open-mindedness extends to the idea that African Americans might be as smart as whites, but not to the idea that they might be smarter.
Someone whose grasp of evidence is that weak, should not be working in the law.
Should someone who callously performs any act which she knows or should know will cause harm to people without any offsetting benefit, should probably be publicly shamed.
When she makes the claim that the search for evidence that the race-iq correlation is not genetic has been “unsuccessful”, she hurts people. But she does not, in return, contribute anything at all to the discourse.
Should someone who callously performs any act which she knows or should know will cause harm to people without any offsetting benefit, should probably be publicly shamed.
She was talking to friends at dinner. No harm there. The harm comes when months later one of the dinner companions forwards the e-mail to those who will likely be hurt.
I belive that “choose what to believe based on evidence” is not too high a standard.
The law connection is that Grace is a law student, going to clerk for a judge. Since the comment was not about her correctness but about her treatment, it’s reasonable to question whether the treatment was justified.
Grace (a) has no new data, and (b) has no new arguments. When she makes the claim that the search for evidence that the race-iq correlation is not genetic has been “unsuccessful”, she hurts people. But she does not, in return, contribute anything at all to the discourse.
Isn’t acknowledging what few others will acknowledge contributing to the discourse? A substantial portion of intellectuals refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that there is a correlation between race and intelligence (controlling for culture, etc). And they don’t get publicly shamed for shoddy science. Yet Grace should get publicly shamed for pointing out that the evidence suggests such a correlation? It’s not as if she claimed a high degree of certainty. Besides, the best way to overcome any disadvantages one race might have in intelligence is to understand why there are differences in the first place. Refusing to believe in a substantial portion of the hypothesis space for no good reason is a potentially huge detriment to this aim.
Grace certainly made a social error, and for that perhaps she can be criticized, but it shouldn’t be a social error to acknowledge different possibilities and the evidence for those possibilities in an intellectual* conversation.
* I.e., truth seeking. The evidence/possibilities shouldn’t be used in a condescending way, of course.
Besides, the best way to overcome any disadvantages one race might have in intelligence is to understand why there are differences in the first place.
It gets a lot more complicated when those differences are significantly directly affected by publicly discussing them, as seems to be the case. This statement may very well be true, but it’s also an applause light, and makes it sound like you think reality is obligated to be set up so that truthseeking wins.
It gets a lot more complicated when those differences are significantly affected by publicly discussing them, as seems to be the case.
Fair enough, though I’ll point out that the discussion was over dinner/email, not in an extremely public forum where many people will be exposed (though there is still the possibility that friends tell friends who tell friends, etc.).
...and makes it sound like you think reality is obligated to be set up so that truthseeking wins.
Yes, I see that now. How about this: it’s unclear that the best strategy for combating any racial disadvantages is not talking about them, rather than determining the cause and attempting to do something proactive about it.
PS Also why does the Dean equate inteligence with genetic superiority and imlicitly even worth as a person?
See Michael Vassar’s discussion of this phenomenon. Also, I think that people discussing statements they see as dangerous often implicitly (and unconsciously) adopt the frames that make those statements dangerous, which they (correctly) believe many people unreflectively hold and can’t easily be talked out of, and treat those frames as simple reality, in order to more simply and credibly call the statement and the person who made it dangerous and Bad.
I think there’s something to be said for not posting opinions such that 1) LW is likely to agree with the opinion, and 2) sites perceived as agreeing with the opinion are likely to be the target of hate campaigns.
This is the best exposition I have seen so far of why I believe strongly that you are very wrong.
On a Bus in Kiev
I remember very little about my childhood in the Soviet Union; I was only seven when I left. But one memory I have is being on a bus with one of my parents, and asking something about a conversation we had had at home, in which Stalin and possibly Lenin were mentioned as examples of dictators. My parent took me off the bus at the next stop, even though it wasn’t the place we were originally going.
Please read the whole thing and remember that this is where the road inevitably leads.
Yes, self-censorship is Prisoner’s Dilemma defection, but unilaterally cooperating has costs (in terms of LW’s nominal purpose) which may outweigh that (and which may in turn be outweighed by considerations having nothing to do with this particular PD).
Also, I think that’s an overly dramatic choice of example, especially in conjunction with the word “inevitably”.
Also, I think that’s an overly dramatic choice of example, especially in conjunction with the word “inevitably”.
I don’t, which is why I posted it.
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
It isn’t inevitable. There’s a trivial demonstration that censorship self-censorship don’t form necessarily form a collective downward spiral: There are societies that at one point had much heavier censorship and now don’t. That’s not easily made consistent with your claim.
Censorship is bad. Self-censorship is very bad. Especially on a website devoted to improving rationality we shouldn’t censor what we have to say. But the notion that small bits of self-censorship will eventually lead to believing that 2+2=5 if the Party says so is simply not called for. This is a classic example where a strong argument can be made for a claim but that claim is being inherently undermined by the use of a very weak argument for the claim instead of the strong one.
(Incidentally, generalization from fictional evidence also comes up here).
It isn’t inevitable. There’s a trivial demonstration that censorship self-censorship don’t form necessarily form a collective downward spiral: There are societies that at one point had much heavier censorship and now don’t. That’s not easily made consistent with your claim.
I am claiming that this road leads to totalitarianism. That is not the same as claiming that the road is one way with no exits and no U-turns. If I thought otherwise there would be little point in me expressing my concerns. As long as society keeps its foot on the pedal and fails to realize it is heading in the wrong direction however that is where it will end up. Inevitably.
(Incidentally, generalization from fictional evidence also comes up here).
This is not generalizing from fictional evidence. It is using a literary quote to express an idea more eloquently than I can myself. Since the book can be seen as a parable illustrating the same concerns I am emphasizing I believe it is quite appropriate to quote from it. I am not using the fictional story as proof of my claim, I am quoting it to elaborate on what it is I am claiming.
I’m sympathetic to this as a general principle, but it’s not clear to me that LW doesn’t have specific battles to fight that are more important than the general principle.
Logic would suggest that such a section would be secret, if it existed. It would be simple enough to send private messages to trusted members alerting them to the existence of a private invitation-only forum on another website where such discussions could be held.
Naturally, I would say none of this if I knew of such a forum, or had any intention of creating such. And I would not appreciate any messages informing me of the existence of such a forum—if for no other reason than that I am the worst keeper of secrets I have ever known.
There could still be a lower level of ‘secrecy’ where it wont show up on google and you cant actually read it unless you have the minimum karma, but its existence is acknowledged.
It’s not where you’d plan to take over the world, but I’d hope it’d be sufficient for talking about race/intelligence issues
I share your concern. Literal hate campaigns seem unlikely to me, but such opinions probably do repulse some people, and make it considerably easier for us to lose credibility in some circles, that we might (or might not) care about. On the other hand, we pretty strongly want rationalists to be able to discuss, and if necessary slay, sacred cows, for which purpose leading by example might be really valuable.
I think when arguing about really controversial things that don’t fit your tribe’s beliefs via email or online means its best to only use them to send sources and citations. Avoid comments, any comments whatsoever, perhaps even quotes or Galileo forbid boldening anything but the title. Encourage people involved in the debate to do the same.
Keep any controversial conclusions gleaned from the data or endorsals of any paper from the electronic record.Then when you are private tell them, did you manage to read the Someguyson study I sent you in email 6#? When you’ve exausted the mailed links talk switch to gossip or the weather.
If the mail was leaked and they don’t have you on record for saying anything forbidden except just mailing around sources, how exactly will they tar and feather you?
I can say, this mode of conversation is actually quite stimulating since I’ve engaged in it before but I’ve only tested it for noncontraversial and complex subjects. It lets you catch up on what starting points he is coming from as well as gives you time to cool off in heated arguments. It is something however that drags on for weeks so not really appropirate with strangers.
I’m more directly disturbed by the bias present in your exposition: “perfectly reasonable”, “merely expresses agnosticism”, “well documented”, “harsh and inaccurate”.
Starting off a discussion with assorted applause lights and boo lights strikes me as unlikely to lead to much insight.
What would be likely to lead to useful insight? Making use of the tools LessWrong’s mission is to introduce us to, such as the applications of Bayesian reasoning.
“Intelligence has a genetic component” strikes me as a causal statement. If it is, we ought to be able to represent it formally as such, tabooing the terms that give rise to cognitive muddles, until we can tell precisely what kind of data would advance our knowledge on that topic.
I’ve only just cracked open Pearl’s Causality, and started playing with the math, so am still very much an apprentice at such things. (I have my own reasons to be fooling with that math, which are not related to the race-IQ discussion.) But it has already convinced me that probability and causality are deep topics which it’s very easy to draw mistaken conclusions about if you rely solely on a layman’s intuition.
For instance, “the well documented IQ differences between groups” are purely probabilistic data, which tell us very little about causal pathways generating the data, until and unless we have either controlled experiments, or further data sets which do discriminate between the competing causal models (only very grossly distinguished into “nature” and “nurture”).
I don’t know if the email you quoted (thanks for that, BTW, it’s a treat to have access to a primary source without needing to chase it down) is racist, but it does sound very ignorant to me. It makes unwarranted inferential leaps, e.g. from “skin and hair color are definitely genetic” to “some part of intelligence is genetic”, omitting the very different length of developmental chains leading from genes to pigmentation on the one hand, and intelligence on the other. It comes across as arrogant and elitist as well as ignorant when saying “I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria”.
It is not bad science to be on the lookout specifically for data that claims to be “scientific proof” of some old and demonstrably harmful prejudices, and to hold such claims to a higher standard. Just as we do hold claims of “scientific proof of ESP” to a higher standard—at least of scrutiny and replicability—than, say, claims of a correlation between apparel color and competitive performance. We have more reason to suspect ulterior motives in the former case than in the latter.
Dinnertime conversations between regular, even educated people do not contain probabilistic causal analyses. In the email Grace claimed something was a live possibility and gave some reasons why. Her argument was not of the quality we expect comments to have here at Less Wrong. And frankly, she does sound kind of annoying.
But that all strikes me as irrelevant compared to being made into a news story and attacked on all sides, by her dean, her classmates and dozens of anonymous bloggers. By the standards of normal, loose social conversation she did nothing deserving of this reaction.
I feel a chilling effect and I’ve only ever argued against the genetic hypothesis. Frankly, you should too since in your comment you quite clearly imply that you don’t know for sure there is no genetic component. My take from the reaction to the email is that the only socially acceptable response to encountering the hypothesis is to shout “RACIST! RACIST!” at the top of your lungs. If you think we’d be spared because we’re more deliberate and careful when considering the hypothesis you’re kidding yourself.
By the standards of normal, loose social conversation she did nothing deserving of this reaction.
Sure. What I do find disturbing is how, knowing what she was doing (and who she was sending it to), the “friend” who leaked that email went ahead and did it anyway. That’s positively Machiavellian, especially six months after the fact.
However, I do not feel a need to censure myself when discussing the race-IQ hypothesis. If intelligence has a genetic component, I want to see the evidence and understand how the evidence rules out alternatives. I would feel comfortable laying out the case for and against in an argument map, more or less as I feel comfortable laying out my current state of uncertainty regarding cryonics in the same format.
Neither do I feel a need to shout at the top of my lungs, but it does seem clear to me that racism was a strong enough factor in human civilization that it is necessary, for the time being, to systematically compensate, even at the risk of over-compensating.
“I absolutely do not rule out the possibility [of X]” can be a less than open-minded, even-handed stance, depending on what X you declare it about. (Consider “I absolutely do not rule of the possibility that I will wake up tomorrow with my left arm replaced by a blue tentacle.”) Saying this and mistaking it for an “agnostic” stance is kidding oneself.
Since people are discussing group differences anyway. I would just like people to be a bit clearer in their phrasing.
Inteligence does have a genetic component. I hope no one argues that the cognitive difference between the average Chimpanzee and Resus monkey are result of nurture. The question is if there is any variation in the genetic component in Humans.
Studies have shown a high heritability for IQ, this dosen’t nesecarily mean much of it is genetic but it does seem a strong position to take, especially considering results from twin studies. A good alternative explanation I can think of, that could be considered equivalent in explanatory power, would be differences in prenatal environment beyond those controled in previous studies (which could get sticky since such differences may also show group genetic variation ! for example the average lenght of pregnancy and risks associated with postterm complications does vary slightly between races).
The question disscused here however is whether there are any meaningfull differences between human groups regarding their genetic predispositions towards mental faculties.
We know quite a bit from genetic analysis about where people with certain markers have spread and which groups have been isolated. Therefore the real question we face is twofold:
Just how really evolutionary recent is abstract thinking and other mental tricks the IQ test measures? The late advent of behavioral modernity compared vs. the early evidence of anatomically nearly modern could be considered for example. Some claim it was an evolutionary change following the well documented recent bottleneck of the Human species others say the advent of modern behaviour was a radical cultural adaptation to a abrupt environmental change or just part of a long and slow progress of rising population density and material culture complexity we haven’t yet spotted. Considering how sketchy the archeological record is we can’t be suprised at all if it turns out we’ve been wrong for decades and modern behvaiour isn’t recent at all.
Is the selective value of inteligence compared to other traits identical in all environments econuntered by Homo Sapiens? Remember we may already have some evidence that sometimes inteligence may not be that usefull for hominids depending on how we interpret the fossiles of Homo Floresiensis. Could this also be true of Homo Sapiens population as well?
The answers to these two questions would tell us how likley it would be to see these differences appear and how noticeable they may be in the time window current biology estimates we have for differences between populations to occur.
If genetic differences in intelligence could not be relevant to reproductive success within a single generation it is difficult to see how human intelligence could have evolved.
I don’t know if the email you quoted (thanks for that, BTW, it’s a treat to have access to a primary source without needing to chase it down) is racist, but it does sound very ignorant to me. It makes unwarranted inferential leaps, e.g. from “skin and hair color are definitely genetic” to “some part of intelligence is genetic”, omitting the very different length of developmental chains leading from genes to pigmentation on the one hand, and intelligence on the other.
Let’s be careful here. The letter does not assert baldly that “some part of intelligence is genetic”. Rather, the letter asserts that some evidence “suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic”.
Furthermore, that particular inferential leap does not begin with the observation that “skin and hair color are definitely genetic”. Rather, the inferential leap begins with the claim that “Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders.” Therefore, at least with regards to that particular inference, it is not fair to criticize the author for “omitting the very different length of developmental chains leading from genes to pigmentation on the one hand, and intelligence on the other.”
[ETA: Of course, the inference that the author did make is itself open to criticism, just not the criticism that you made.]
I say all this as someone who considers Occam to be pretty firmly on the side of nongenetic explanations for the racial IQ gaps. But no progress in these kinds of discussions is possible without assiduous effort to avoid misrepresenting the other side’s reasoning.
We have a very long thread about a not very interesting subject, but it has finally made me annoyed. I hope it does not show too much because I accept that being polite is important.
1)Nature or nurture, genetics or environment, is a discredited dichotomy. Both are probably active at the same time for each and every aspect of intelligence (as they would be for any complex trait). Not only is it unlikely to be one or the other, it is unlikely to be x% for one and 1-x% for the other. They are too interwoven and the patterns of interactive too individual and unique to each person’s life to be thought of as two separate influences. Is it nuture or nature? - wrong question.
2)Intelligence as a measure of the worth of a person is not reasonable. We define the worth of a person legally. We say that all people have equal worth. Their intelligence does not change that definition.
3)Measurement of intelligence in the form of IQ scores is not without problems and always needs to be examined to see if it is likely that factors other than ‘g’ have biased the results. It is only theoretically valid within a group and not between groups. Each human group should have an average IQ of 100 by definition.
4)Comparisons between groups never apply to individuals and are therefore useless in judging the potential of a particular person. One has to wonder of what use such group comparisons really are.
5)If it is considered a good idea to try to increase the intelligence of individuals in the society than it is going to be easier and more socially acceptable to use environmental rather than genetic methods. Good nutrition, lack of lead and other poisons, lack of continuous stress, enriched environment, good education and so on will help all, the smart and the not so smart.
6)Dividing a population into two (or a handful of) racial types is simplistic in societies as genetically and ethically diverse as North America or Western Europe.
7)Differences in mean IQ that have been reported (for what they are worth given the points above) are so small compared to the natural range of IQ within groups, that they are of no value other than in arguments about various stereotypes, pro and con. Investigating how genes affect the structure and functioning of the brain and investigating how environmental aspects affect the brain are both reasonable science. They are both likely to give results that are valuable. Comparing the IQ of racial groups is plainly no longer science but racial politics. It is hard to credit, in this day and age, that educated people are so ignorant that they would actually believe that the brain is built and operated without genes or that an organ that functions to perceive and move in the environment is immune to its effects. Give me a break! Anyone who insists that genetics is not important to intelligence has a big ax to grind. Anyone who insists that environment is not important to intelligence also has a big ax to grind. Trust the motives of neither. The PC gang and the racialist/sexist gang are both acting like bullies.
Is anyone else here disturbed over the recent Harvard incident where Stephanie Grace’s perfectly reasonable email where she merley expreses agnosticism over the posiblity that the well documented IQ differences between groups are partially genetic is worthy of harsh and inaccurate condemnation from the Harvard Law school dean?
I feel sorry for the girl since she trusted the wrong people (the email was alegedly leaked by one of her girlfriends who got into a dispute with her over a man). We need to be extra carefull to selfcensure any rationalist discusions about cows “everyone” agrees are holy. These are things I don’t feel comfortable even discussing here since they have ruined many carrers and lives due to relentless persecution. Even recanting dosen’t help at the end of the day, since you are a google away and people who may not even understand the argument will hate you intensly. Scary.
I mean surley everyone here agrees that the only way to discover truth is to allow all the hypothesies to stand on their own without giving them the privilige of supressing competition to a few. Why is our society so insane that this regurarly happens even concerning views that many relevant academics hold in private (or even the majority of if in certain fields if the polling is anon)?
PS Also why does the Dean equate inteligence with genetic superiority and imlicitly even worth as a person? This is a disturbing view since half by definition will always be below average. And we’re all going to be terribly stupid compared to AIs in the near future, such implicit values are dangerus in the context of the time we may be living in.
I’m a bit upset.
In my world, that’s dinner-table conversation. If it’s wrong, you argue with it. If it upsets you, you are more praiseworthy the more you control your anger. If your anti-racism is so fragile that it’ll crumble if you don’t shut students up—if you think that is the best use of your efforts to help people, or to help the cause of equality—then something has gone a little screwy in your mind.
The idea that students—students! -- are at risk if they write about ideas in emails is damn frightening to me. I spent my childhood in a university town. This means that political correctness—that is, not being rude on the basis of race or ethnicity—is as deep in my bones as “please” and “thank you.” I generally think it’s a good thing to treat everyone with respect. But the other thing I got from my “university values” is that freedom to look for the truth is sacrosanct. And if it’s tempting to shut someone up, take a few deep cleansing breaths and remember your Voltaire.
My own beef with those studies is that you cannot (to my knowledge) isolate the genetics of race from the experience of race. Every single black subject whose IQ is tested has also lived his whole life as black. And we have a history and culture that makes race matter. You can control for income and education level, because there are a variety of incomes and education levels among all races. You can control for home environment with adoption and twin studies, I guess. But you can’t control for what it’s like to live as a black person in a society where race matters, because all black people do. So I can’t see how such a study can really ever isolate genetics alone. (But correct me if I’m missing something.)
Since mixed racial background should make a difference in genes but makes only a small difference in the way our culture treats a person, if the IQ gap is the result of genetics we should see find that the those with mixed race backgrounds have higher IQs than those of mostly or exclusively African descent. This has been approximated with skin tone studies in the past and my recollection is that one study showed a slight correlation between lighter skin tone and IQ and the other study showed no correlation. There just hasn’t been much research done and I doubt there will ever be much research (which is fine by me).
I’m still not confident because we’re not, as Nancy mentioned, completely binary about race even in the US.
What you’d really need to do is a comparative study between the US and somewhere like Brazil or Cuba, which had a different history regarding mixed race. (The US worked by the one-drop-of-blood rule; Spanish and Portuguese colonies had an elaborate caste system where more white blood meant more legal rights.) If it’s mainly a cultural distinction, we ought to see a major difference between the two countries—the light/dark gap should be larger in the former Spanish colony than it is in the US. If culture doesn’t matter much, and the gap is purely genetic, it should be the same all around the world.
The other thing I would add, which is easy to lose track of, is that this is not research that should be done exclusively by whites, and especially not exclusively by whites who have an axe to grind about race. Bias can go in that direction as well, and a subject like this demands extraordinary care in controlling for it. Coming out with a bad, politically motivated IQ study could be extremely harmful.
Frankly, I’m not sure why the research should be done at all.
Minnesota Trans-Racial Adoption Study suggests that a lot of the difference is cultural and/or that white parents are better able to protect their children from the effects of prejudice.
I also have no idea what the practical difference of 4 IQ points might be.
I don’t know where you’d find people who were interested enough in racial differences in intelligence to do major studies on it, but who didn’t have preconceived ideas.
Afaik, skin tone, hair texture, and facial features make a large difference in how African Americans treat each other.
White people, in my experience, are apt to think of race in binary terms, but this might imply that skin tone affects how African Americans actually get treated.
Here is the leaked email by Stephanie Grace if anyone is interested.
A few minor fallacies but overall quite respectable and even stimulating conversation nothing any reasonable person would consider should warrant ostracism. Note the reference to “disscused over Dinner”. She was betrayed by someone she socialised with.
And yes I am violating my own advice by boldening that one sentence. ;) I just wanted to drive home how close she may be to a well meaning if perhaps a bit untactfull poster on Less Wrong. Again, we need to be carefull. What society considers taboo changes over time as well, so one must get a feel for where on the scale of forbidden a subject is at any time and where the winds of change are blowing before deciding whether to discuss it online. Something inoccus could cost you your job a decade or so in the future.
Edit: For anyone wondering what a “Larry Summers” is.
Paul Graham’s “What You Can’t Say”
One of the people criticizing the letter accused the letter writer of privileging the hypothesis—that it’s only because of historical contingency (i.e. racism) that someone would decide to carve reality between “African-Americans” and “whites” instead of, say, “people with brown eyes” and “people with blue eyes”. (She didn’t use that exact phrase, but it’s what she meant.)
Isn’t nearly everything a social construct though? We can divide people based into two groups, those with university degrees and those without. People with them may tend to live longer or die earlier, they may earn more money or earn less, ect. We may also divide people into groups based on self identification, do blondes really have more fun than brunettes or do hipsters really feel superior to nonhipsters or do religious people have lower IQs than self-identified atheists ect Concepts like species, subspecies and family are also constructs that are just about as arbitrary as race.
I dosen’t really matter in the end. Regardless of how we carve up reality, we can then proceed to ask questions and get answers. Suppose we decided to in 1900 take a global test to see whether blue eyed or brown eyed people have higher IQs. Lo and behold we see brown eyed people have higher IQs. But in 2050 the reverse is true. What happened? The population with brown eyes was heterogeneous and its demographics changed! However if we took skin cancer rates we would still see people with blue eyes have higher rates of skin cancer in both periods.
So why should we bother carving up reality on this racial metric and ask questions about it? For the same reason we bother to carve up reality on the family or gender metric. We base policy on it. If society was colour blind, there would be no need for this. But I hope everyone here can see that society isn’t colour blind.
For example Affirmative action’s ethical status (which is currently framed as a nesecary adjustment against biases and not reparations for past wrongs) depends on what the data has to about say about group differences.
If the data shows we people with blue eyes in our country have lower mean IQs when controlling for socioeconomic status and such, we shouldn’t be accusing racism for their higher college drop out rates if the rates are what is to be expected when controlling for IQs. To keep this policy would mean to discriminate against competent brown eyed people. But if there are no difference well then the policy is justified unless it turns out there is another reason that has nothing to do with discrimination behind it.
I hope that you however agree that (regardless of what the truth of this particular matter is) someone should not be vilified for asking questions or proposing hypothesises regarding social constructs we have in place, regularly operate with and even make quantifiable claims about.
This is a matter of much dispute and a lot of confusion. See here.
I wondered how humans are grouped, so I got some genes from the world, and did an eigenvalue analysis, and this is what i found:
http://kim.oyhus.no/EigenGenes.html
As you can see, humans are indeed clustered in subspecies.
This doesn’t demonstrate subspecies.
Thanks for the link, I’m reading it now.
I just want to clear up that I’m refering to species and subspecies in the biological sense in that sentence and family in the ordinary every day sense not to the category between order and genus.
Only if you accept that particular framing, I would have thought? If one chooses to justify affirmative action as reparations for past wrongs, ‘what the data has to about say about group differences’ won’t change your opinion of affirmative action.
(ETA—Also.)
Of course one can do this. But then you get into the sticky issue of why should we group reparations based on race? Aren’t the Chatolic Irish entitled to reparations for their mistreatment as immigrant labour and discrimination against them based on their religion if the same is true of the Chinese? Aren’t Native Americans a bit more entitled to reparations than say Indian immigrants? Also why are African Americans descended from slaves not differenciated to those who have migrated to the US a generation ago (after the civil rights era)?
And how long should such reparations be payed? Indefinetly?
I hope that from the above you can see why there would need to be a new debate on affirmative action if one reframes it.
I don’t believe affirmative action is justified by ‘past wrongs’ - I used that as an example only because you mentioned it. (Personally, I believe it makes more sense to justify affirmative action as a device to offset present disadvantages.) I meant only to make the point that the statement ‘Affirmative action’s ethical status...depends on what the data has to about say about group differences’ is too broad, because there are justifications for affirmative action that do not hinge on the nature of IQ differences between blacks and whites.
I wrote affirmative action as it is currently framed. I consider that an important distinction. I never denied other frames where possible, I’m just saying the current support for affirmative action amongst groups that are harmed by it is loosly based on the notion that it is offseting unwaranted privilige (bias by employers in other words) of the majority.
I think we both agree that ‘what the data has to about say about group differences’ does not necessarily affect ‘Affirmative action’s ethical status’ in general—only if one justifies it on grounds that make assumptions about the nature of IQ differences between groups. That just wasn’t clear to me as of four days ago due to your phrasing.
I didn’t say I agreed.
I never said you did. :) Would you however agree with the sentiment of my last paragraph?
This thread of conversation is easily derailed since whether group differences exist isn’t really its topic.
Yeah, I do...
Black people routinely outperform whites at elite running events, Asians already rule at math and science, so the hypothesis that there are genetic differences in performance between blacks and whites is already something one should consider likely.
IAWYC, but “Asians rule at math and science” seems to have a huge cultural basis, and it’s at least no more obvious that it has a genetic component than that racial IQ gaps do.
To someone who knows that Asian math achievement has a fully or almost fully cultural basis, the Asian math link doesn’t do work privileging the hypothesis that there might be a black/white genetic IQ difference.
However, to someone who simply sees math classes full of people with yellow skin, and doesn’t know why, it does do work privileging the hypothesis that there might be a black/white genetic IQ difference, rather that e.g. anti-black discrimination causing lower grades for blacks etc.
Of course, if you saw Asian-filled math classes, there must have already been something that made you assign some probability to the hypothesis that genes, not memes were responsible.
I don’t think it has to be more obvious or clear-cut, it moves you evidentially by simply being another instance of the same thing.
If the only racial-feature correlation in the world was that black people tested low on IQ, then the idea that genes rather than, say, discrimination were responsible would be something of a stretch.
But when you see a whole collection of racial-feature correlations, the idea that genes are responsible to some extent becomes more plausible. It is a reasonable AI/machine learning heuristic to jump from co-variation to some kind of causal link: if you see skin color (which is well known to indicate DNA-type) covary with ability at sport, ability at math, ability at IQ tests, criminality, etc, you place some weight on the hypothesis that DNA directly causally influences these things. Of course, you don’t put all of your weight on that.
@Nick Tarleton:
Can you explain how you know Asian math acheivement is fully due to cultural bias? Haven’t crossracial adpotion studies shown that adopted East Asian children do better than their white peers on IQ tests? I also remember hearing claims that generally Asians do beter on the visualspatial component of IQ tests than whites.
Edit: Originally adressed @Roko
Nick Tarleton said it, not me ;-)
I have not seen evidence either way; my arguments given above are not dependent upon it being true or false.
I misread the first sentence. Thanks for the correction, I’ll put a @Nick Tarleton in there then.
I think it would be fascinating if people with blue eyes were more or less intelligent, when controlling for the variables, than people with brown eyes.
That said, I would expect a larger genetic variation when choosing between long-separated and isolated populations rather than eye colors.
I’m using eye color as an example here since CronoDAS mentioned it. Replace it with a particular gene, future time orientation, nose type or whatever. If society makes quantifiable claims about a particular category into which we slice up reality (ie Atheists are more likley to rape and murder!) an individual should have the right to either test or demand proof for this quantifiable claim.
Race is a pretty good proxy form which populations your ancestors came from. Its not perfect since for example the Black race has the most genetic diversity and geneflow has increased after the rise of civilization and especially globalisation. Knowing however, whether for example most of your ancestors lived outside of Africa for the last 60,000 thousand years or that your group of ancestors diverged from the other guys group of ancestors 40,000 thousand years ago is also relevant info.
I stole this graph from Razib’s site (gene expression) for a quick reference of what current biology has to say about ancestral populations.
http://www.gnxp.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PIIS096098220902065X.gr2_.lrg_.jpg
Care to point them out?
Most escape me right now but I do recall something that bothered me… She implicity uses stereotypes of African American behvariour and how they change over time as an indicator of the actuall change in violent behaviour.
I’m sure it correlates somewhat, but considering how much stronger changes in wider society where and how much people’s interests regarding what it was best to have other people belive about Black behaviour changed over time I don’t think you can base an argument on this either way.
Here’s a bit more on the “privileging the hypothesis” bit, taken from here:
My “wrong-headed thinking” radar is picking up more bleeps from this than from the incriminating email:
“There are people with vested interests” is basically unverifiable, she’s basically assuming anybody who disagrees is a fundamentally racist mutant
“People won’t change their mind anyway, the discussion will be pointless” can be said of any controversial subject
The comparison to creationists can also be used to tar any opponent, there should be some version of Godwin’s law for that
The argument that “one can always find a difference if one looks hard enough”
“No study can ever “prove” that no difference between two groups exists” seems to be besides the point—the question isn’t whether any difference exists, but whether this specific difference exists, something that can be proved or disproved by experiment. (Well, more exactly, the topic would be what the cause of the difference is)
As the prior threadmakes clear, distinguishing between genetic and environmental causes of intelligence is immensely complicated—especially given the confusion over what intelligence is.
However, it is well known that people don’t like being told that they’re statistically less likely to be intelligent. There are actually a fair number of studies showing that promoting stereotypes can actually reduce test scores. This is called “Stereotype Threat”. While there is a recent meta-study which claims that the effect is an artifact of publication bias, that study had not been published when Grace wrote her email.
Grace (a) has no new data, and (b) has no new arguments. When she makes the claim that the search for evidence that the race-iq correlation is not genetic has been “unsuccessful”, she hurts people. But she does not, in return, contribute anything at all to the discourse.
She cannot even claim the virtue of curiosity—note that her open-mindedness extends to the idea that African Americans might be as smart as whites, but not to the idea that they might be smarter.
Someone whose grasp of evidence is that weak, should not be working in the law.
Should someone who callously performs any act which she knows or should know will cause harm to people without any offsetting benefit, should probably be publicly shamed.
She was talking to friends at dinner. No harm there. The harm comes when months later one of the dinner companions forwards the e-mail to those who will likely be hurt.
It is the dinner companion who should be condemned, if this account of the matter is accurate.
There is always harm when a person makes a statement without regard to its truth.
Your standards for a dinner time discussion among law students are awfully high.
Incidentally, the only poster here who has ever claimed to be a practicing attorney (afaik) was Brazil, from the prior thread.
So that’s why I felt like he was cross-examining me in that thread. Mystery solved...
Well perhaps, fundamental attribution error and all that. Maybe he was just having a bad week or got defensive after we ganged up on him.
(Edit: but his global warming blog had the same kind of tone and approach)
Good point.
I belive that “choose what to believe based on evidence” is not too high a standard.
The law connection is that Grace is a law student, going to clerk for a judge. Since the comment was not about her correctness but about her treatment, it’s reasonable to question whether the treatment was justified.
Isn’t acknowledging what few others will acknowledge contributing to the discourse? A substantial portion of intellectuals refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that there is a correlation between race and intelligence (controlling for culture, etc). And they don’t get publicly shamed for shoddy science. Yet Grace should get publicly shamed for pointing out that the evidence suggests such a correlation? It’s not as if she claimed a high degree of certainty. Besides, the best way to overcome any disadvantages one race might have in intelligence is to understand why there are differences in the first place. Refusing to believe in a substantial portion of the hypothesis space for no good reason is a potentially huge detriment to this aim.
Grace certainly made a social error, and for that perhaps she can be criticized, but it shouldn’t be a social error to acknowledge different possibilities and the evidence for those possibilities in an intellectual* conversation.
* I.e., truth seeking. The evidence/possibilities shouldn’t be used in a condescending way, of course.
It gets a lot more complicated when those differences are significantly directly affected by publicly discussing them, as seems to be the case. This statement may very well be true, but it’s also an applause light, and makes it sound like you think reality is obligated to be set up so that truthseeking wins.
Fair enough, though I’ll point out that the discussion was over dinner/email, not in an extremely public forum where many people will be exposed (though there is still the possibility that friends tell friends who tell friends, etc.).
Yes, I see that now. How about this: it’s unclear that the best strategy for combating any racial disadvantages is not talking about them, rather than determining the cause and attempting to do something proactive about it.
See Michael Vassar’s discussion of this phenomenon. Also, I think that people discussing statements they see as dangerous often implicitly (and unconsciously) adopt the frames that make those statements dangerous, which they (correctly) believe many people unreflectively hold and can’t easily be talked out of, and treat those frames as simple reality, in order to more simply and credibly call the statement and the person who made it dangerous and Bad.
The Harvard incident is business as usual: http://timtyler.org/political_correctness/
I think there’s something to be said for not posting opinions such that 1) LW is likely to agree with the opinion, and 2) sites perceived as agreeing with the opinion are likely to be the target of hate campaigns.
This is the best exposition I have seen so far of why I believe strongly that you are very wrong.
Please read the whole thing and remember that this is where the road inevitably leads.
Yes, self-censorship is Prisoner’s Dilemma defection, but unilaterally cooperating has costs (in terms of LW’s nominal purpose) which may outweigh that (and which may in turn be outweighed by considerations having nothing to do with this particular PD).
Also, I think that’s an overly dramatic choice of example, especially in conjunction with the word “inevitably”.
I don’t, which is why I posted it.
It isn’t inevitable. There’s a trivial demonstration that censorship self-censorship don’t form necessarily form a collective downward spiral: There are societies that at one point had much heavier censorship and now don’t. That’s not easily made consistent with your claim.
Censorship is bad. Self-censorship is very bad. Especially on a website devoted to improving rationality we shouldn’t censor what we have to say. But the notion that small bits of self-censorship will eventually lead to believing that 2+2=5 if the Party says so is simply not called for. This is a classic example where a strong argument can be made for a claim but that claim is being inherently undermined by the use of a very weak argument for the claim instead of the strong one.
(Incidentally, generalization from fictional evidence also comes up here).
I am claiming that this road leads to totalitarianism. That is not the same as claiming that the road is one way with no exits and no U-turns. If I thought otherwise there would be little point in me expressing my concerns. As long as society keeps its foot on the pedal and fails to realize it is heading in the wrong direction however that is where it will end up. Inevitably.
This is not generalizing from fictional evidence. It is using a literary quote to express an idea more eloquently than I can myself. Since the book can be seen as a parable illustrating the same concerns I am emphasizing I believe it is quite appropriate to quote from it. I am not using the fictional story as proof of my claim, I am quoting it to elaborate on what it is I am claiming.
I’m sympathetic to this as a general principle, but it’s not clear to me that LW doesn’t have specific battles to fight that are more important than the general principle.
Perhaps there should be a “secret underground members only” section where we can discuss these things?
Logic would suggest that such a section would be secret, if it existed. It would be simple enough to send private messages to trusted members alerting them to the existence of a private invitation-only forum on another website where such discussions could be held.
Naturally, I would say none of this if I knew of such a forum, or had any intention of creating such. And I would not appreciate any messages informing me of the existence of such a forum—if for no other reason than that I am the worst keeper of secrets I have ever known.
The first rule of rationality club is: you do not talk about rationality club.
There could still be a lower level of ‘secrecy’ where it wont show up on google and you cant actually read it unless you have the minimum karma, but its existence is acknowledged.
It’s not where you’d plan to take over the world, but I’d hope it’d be sufficient for talking about race/intelligence issues
I share your concern. Literal hate campaigns seem unlikely to me, but such opinions probably do repulse some people, and make it considerably easier for us to lose credibility in some circles, that we might (or might not) care about. On the other hand, we pretty strongly want rationalists to be able to discuss, and if necessary slay, sacred cows, for which purpose leading by example might be really valuable.
Undiscriminating skepticism strikes again: here’s the thread on the very topic of genetic IQ differences.
Oh good. Make it convenient for the guys running background searches.
Thanks for the link! I’m new here and really appreciate stuff to read up on since its mostly new to me. :)
I agree with what you’ve written, with particular emphasis on the problem of privacy on the Internet (and off, for that matter).
Given that I don’t even know who Stephanie Grace is, though, I think I don’t care.
I think when arguing about really controversial things that don’t fit your tribe’s beliefs via email or online means its best to only use them to send sources and citations. Avoid comments, any comments whatsoever, perhaps even quotes or Galileo forbid boldening anything but the title.
Encourage people involved in the debate to do the same.
Keep any controversial conclusions gleaned from the data or endorsals of any paper from the electronic record.Then when you are private tell them, did you manage to read the Someguyson study I sent you in email 6#? When you’ve exausted the mailed links talk switch to gossip or the weather.
If the mail was leaked and they don’t have you on record for saying anything forbidden except just mailing around sources, how exactly will they tar and feather you?
I can say, this mode of conversation is actually quite stimulating since I’ve engaged in it before but I’ve only tested it for noncontraversial and complex subjects. It lets you catch up on what starting points he is coming from as well as gives you time to cool off in heated arguments. It is something however that drags on for weeks so not really appropirate with strangers.
I’m more directly disturbed by the bias present in your exposition: “perfectly reasonable”, “merely expresses agnosticism”, “well documented”, “harsh and inaccurate”.
Starting off a discussion with assorted applause lights and boo lights strikes me as unlikely to lead to much insight.
What would be likely to lead to useful insight? Making use of the tools LessWrong’s mission is to introduce us to, such as the applications of Bayesian reasoning.
“Intelligence has a genetic component” strikes me as a causal statement. If it is, we ought to be able to represent it formally as such, tabooing the terms that give rise to cognitive muddles, until we can tell precisely what kind of data would advance our knowledge on that topic.
I’ve only just cracked open Pearl’s Causality, and started playing with the math, so am still very much an apprentice at such things. (I have my own reasons to be fooling with that math, which are not related to the race-IQ discussion.) But it has already convinced me that probability and causality are deep topics which it’s very easy to draw mistaken conclusions about if you rely solely on a layman’s intuition.
For instance, “the well documented IQ differences between groups” are purely probabilistic data, which tell us very little about causal pathways generating the data, until and unless we have either controlled experiments, or further data sets which do discriminate between the competing causal models (only very grossly distinguished into “nature” and “nurture”).
I don’t know if the email you quoted (thanks for that, BTW, it’s a treat to have access to a primary source without needing to chase it down) is racist, but it does sound very ignorant to me. It makes unwarranted inferential leaps, e.g. from “skin and hair color are definitely genetic” to “some part of intelligence is genetic”, omitting the very different length of developmental chains leading from genes to pigmentation on the one hand, and intelligence on the other. It comes across as arrogant and elitist as well as ignorant when saying “I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria”.
It is not bad science to be on the lookout specifically for data that claims to be “scientific proof” of some old and demonstrably harmful prejudices, and to hold such claims to a higher standard. Just as we do hold claims of “scientific proof of ESP” to a higher standard—at least of scrutiny and replicability—than, say, claims of a correlation between apparel color and competitive performance. We have more reason to suspect ulterior motives in the former case than in the latter.
Dinnertime conversations between regular, even educated people do not contain probabilistic causal analyses. In the email Grace claimed something was a live possibility and gave some reasons why. Her argument was not of the quality we expect comments to have here at Less Wrong. And frankly, she does sound kind of annoying.
But that all strikes me as irrelevant compared to being made into a news story and attacked on all sides, by her dean, her classmates and dozens of anonymous bloggers. By the standards of normal, loose social conversation she did nothing deserving of this reaction.
I feel a chilling effect and I’ve only ever argued against the genetic hypothesis. Frankly, you should too since in your comment you quite clearly imply that you don’t know for sure there is no genetic component. My take from the reaction to the email is that the only socially acceptable response to encountering the hypothesis is to shout “RACIST! RACIST!” at the top of your lungs. If you think we’d be spared because we’re more deliberate and careful when considering the hypothesis you’re kidding yourself.
Sure. What I do find disturbing is how, knowing what she was doing (and who she was sending it to), the “friend” who leaked that email went ahead and did it anyway. That’s positively Machiavellian, especially six months after the fact.
However, I do not feel a need to censure myself when discussing the race-IQ hypothesis. If intelligence has a genetic component, I want to see the evidence and understand how the evidence rules out alternatives. I would feel comfortable laying out the case for and against in an argument map, more or less as I feel comfortable laying out my current state of uncertainty regarding cryonics in the same format.
Neither do I feel a need to shout at the top of my lungs, but it does seem clear to me that racism was a strong enough factor in human civilization that it is necessary, for the time being, to systematically compensate, even at the risk of over-compensating.
“I absolutely do not rule out the possibility [of X]” can be a less than open-minded, even-handed stance, depending on what X you declare it about. (Consider “I absolutely do not rule of the possibility that I will wake up tomorrow with my left arm replaced by a blue tentacle.”) Saying this and mistaking it for an “agnostic” stance is kidding oneself.
Since people are discussing group differences anyway. I would just like people to be a bit clearer in their phrasing.
Inteligence does have a genetic component. I hope no one argues that the cognitive difference between the average Chimpanzee and Resus monkey are result of nurture. The question is if there is any variation in the genetic component in Humans.
Studies have shown a high heritability for IQ, this dosen’t nesecarily mean much of it is genetic but it does seem a strong position to take, especially considering results from twin studies. A good alternative explanation I can think of, that could be considered equivalent in explanatory power, would be differences in prenatal environment beyond those controled in previous studies (which could get sticky since such differences may also show group genetic variation ! for example the average lenght of pregnancy and risks associated with postterm complications does vary slightly between races).
The question disscused here however is whether there are any meaningfull differences between human groups regarding their genetic predispositions towards mental faculties.
We know quite a bit from genetic analysis about where people with certain markers have spread and which groups have been isolated. Therefore the real question we face is twofold:
Just how really evolutionary recent is abstract thinking and other mental tricks the IQ test measures? The late advent of behavioral modernity compared vs. the early evidence of anatomically nearly modern could be considered for example. Some claim it was an evolutionary change following the well documented recent bottleneck of the Human species others say the advent of modern behaviour was a radical cultural adaptation to a abrupt environmental change or just part of a long and slow progress of rising population density and material culture complexity we haven’t yet spotted. Considering how sketchy the archeological record is we can’t be suprised at all if it turns out we’ve been wrong for decades and modern behvaiour isn’t recent at all.
Is the selective value of inteligence compared to other traits identical in all environments econuntered by Homo Sapiens? Remember we may already have some evidence that sometimes inteligence may not be that usefull for hominids depending on how we interpret the fossiles of Homo Floresiensis. Could this also be true of Homo Sapiens population as well?
The answers to these two questions would tell us how likley it would be to see these differences appear and how noticeable they may be in the time window current biology estimates we have for differences between populations to occur.
Note: This from Razib Khan’s site (Gene Expression), I’m reposting it here so you don’t need to hunt it down in my other post. http://www.gnxp.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PIIS096098220902065X.gr2_.lrg_.jpg
If genetic differences in intelligence could not be relevant to reproductive success within a single generation it is difficult to see how human intelligence could have evolved.
Group selection may help you imagine more.
Isn’t group selection largely discredited?
Let’s be careful here. The letter does not assert baldly that “some part of intelligence is genetic”. Rather, the letter asserts that some evidence “suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic”.
Furthermore, that particular inferential leap does not begin with the observation that “skin and hair color are definitely genetic”. Rather, the inferential leap begins with the claim that “Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders.” Therefore, at least with regards to that particular inference, it is not fair to criticize the author for “omitting the very different length of developmental chains leading from genes to pigmentation on the one hand, and intelligence on the other.”
[ETA: Of course, the inference that the author did make is itself open to criticism, just not the criticism that you made.]
I say all this as someone who considers Occam to be pretty firmly on the side of nongenetic explanations for the racial IQ gaps. But no progress in these kinds of discussions is possible without assiduous effort to avoid misrepresenting the other side’s reasoning.
We have a very long thread about a not very interesting subject, but it has finally made me annoyed. I hope it does not show too much because I accept that being polite is important.
1)Nature or nurture, genetics or environment, is a discredited dichotomy. Both are probably active at the same time for each and every aspect of intelligence (as they would be for any complex trait). Not only is it unlikely to be one or the other, it is unlikely to be x% for one and 1-x% for the other. They are too interwoven and the patterns of interactive too individual and unique to each person’s life to be thought of as two separate influences. Is it nuture or nature? - wrong question.
2)Intelligence as a measure of the worth of a person is not reasonable. We define the worth of a person legally. We say that all people have equal worth. Their intelligence does not change that definition.
3)Measurement of intelligence in the form of IQ scores is not without problems and always needs to be examined to see if it is likely that factors other than ‘g’ have biased the results. It is only theoretically valid within a group and not between groups. Each human group should have an average IQ of 100 by definition.
4)Comparisons between groups never apply to individuals and are therefore useless in judging the potential of a particular person. One has to wonder of what use such group comparisons really are.
5)If it is considered a good idea to try to increase the intelligence of individuals in the society than it is going to be easier and more socially acceptable to use environmental rather than genetic methods. Good nutrition, lack of lead and other poisons, lack of continuous stress, enriched environment, good education and so on will help all, the smart and the not so smart.
6)Dividing a population into two (or a handful of) racial types is simplistic in societies as genetically and ethically diverse as North America or Western Europe.
7)Differences in mean IQ that have been reported (for what they are worth given the points above) are so small compared to the natural range of IQ within groups, that they are of no value other than in arguments about various stereotypes, pro and con. Investigating how genes affect the structure and functioning of the brain and investigating how environmental aspects affect the brain are both reasonable science. They are both likely to give results that are valuable. Comparing the IQ of racial groups is plainly no longer science but racial politics. It is hard to credit, in this day and age, that educated people are so ignorant that they would actually believe that the brain is built and operated without genes or that an organ that functions to perceive and move in the environment is immune to its effects. Give me a break! Anyone who insists that genetics is not important to intelligence has a big ax to grind. Anyone who insists that environment is not important to intelligence also has a big ax to grind. Trust the motives of neither. The PC gang and the racialist/sexist gang are both acting like bullies.
I completely agree with each of these points. Thank you!