Have you considered the alternative hypothesis that you’re hyper-sensitized to noticing people who believe 3-and-ONLY-3, and are therefore ignoring evidence of people who believe 2-and-3, or occasionally 2-and-3-with-a-smattering-of-1? Because I know of PLENTY of people who agree that 2-and-3 are likely causes (with maybe a weak influence from 1), and operate together in a feedback loop—but I also know plenty of people that listen to the feedback loop theory and hear “so it’s really all 3 then” instead of the actual message of “it’s complicated, but 2 and 3 are entangled together in ways that make 2 difficult to treat without dealing with 3, and that make 3 difficult to stop as long as 2 continues”.
And part of the problem is, people can’t say “2-and-3 with a weak influence from 1” without having people jump up and down on them and say “SEE? SEE! YOU DO ADMIT 1! YOU ADMIT 1! THAT MEANS CONTINUING 3 IS JUSTIFIED! I WIN! I WIN!”, which is a strong emotional disincentive to admitting 1 AT ALL. Going on and on and on about how “racial differences are real and EVERYONE IS LYING SO STOP LYING DAMNIT” is a great way to ensure that people become MORE mind-killed, because it doesn’t leave a line of retreat.
Yes, I’m aware of the feedback theory. I will point out that you still have the problem of how other groups, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, were able to break out of the feedback loop.
Also why aren’t there any proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, e.g., actively criticizing ghetto culture? Notice, that the groups I listed above broke out of their feedback loops while the wider culture was focusing on (2) (and to a certain extent (1)) rather than (3).
Then as an aside (and I will address the rest of your post momentarily), why did you assert:
On the occasion most intellectuals are willing to admit this correlation exists at all, they immediately insist that it is completely due to (3) and proceed to ingeniously seek ever subtler forms of racism.
Secondarily, there are plenty of proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, both from blacks and whites. Bill Cosby is rather famous for them; Chris Rock also has a particularly poignant set of criticisms. Part of the problem is that plenty of people have polluted the “criticize (2)” pathway by using it as a justification for reinforcing process (3) - “concern trolling” is a well-worn path.
As for the other groups, each of those groups came into their situations differently; I might suggest comparing black culture to native American culture, rather than Jewish, Irish or Asian culture. Sociology and history are complex, and outcomes are highly path-dependent.
This assertion looks true to me by empirical observation.
plenty of proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, both from blacks and whites
Can you show some examples of whites proposing interventions into black culture (and not immediately being tarred and feathered)? You mentioned two black guys.
Can you show some examples of whites proposing interventions into black culture (and not immediately being tarred and feathered)? You mentioned two black guys.
If you add the second criteria (not immediately being tarred and feathered), it becomes more difficult. I’m aware of several hypotheses for why that may be. Would we like to discuss them?
The reasons look pretty obvious and hardly a mystery to me.
I’d prefer to backtrack a bit to the list of the three hypotheses about the black-white gap. Are you asserting that reason(1) is insignificant and the real cause is the feedback loop due to (2) and (3)?
That depends on what you mean by “insignificant”. I think that (1) has less of an affect than (2)+(3) by about half an order of magnitude or so, AND that (1) is much harder to do anything about in an ethical manner than (2)+(3). Is that the same thing?
I think that (1) has less of an affect than (2)+(3) by about half an order of magnitude or so
Let’s use numbers! :-)
The black-white IQ gap is about 15 points or about 1 standard deviation. Half an order of magnitude is five times greater. So you are saying that the genetic component has the effect of about 2.5 IQ points and the culture+racism have the effect of about 12.5 IQ points. Correct?
AND that (1) is much harder to do anything about in an ethical manner than (2)+(3)
Depends on your ethics. Not to mention that reality doesn’t care about what’s easy to do in an ethical manner and what’s not.
The black-white IQ gap is about 15 points or about 1 standard deviation. Half an order of magnitude is five times greater. So you are saying that the genetic component has the effect of about 2.5 IQ points and the culture+racism have the effect of about 12.5 IQ points. Correct?
Actually, half an order of magnitude is 3.2ish times greater, since “orders of magnitude” are logarithmic. Half an order of magnitude means 10 ^ 0.5, not 10 0.5, since two orders of magnitude means 10 ^ 2, not 10 2.
So I would be saying the genetic component has the effect of about 5 IQ points on average, and the culture+racism has the effect of about 10 IQ points, if all we’re talking about is IQ points. When I made the assertion I was thinking more about outcome quality in general, but thinking about it, I think that somewhere between 3 genetic/12 cultural and 5 genetic/10 cultural sounds highly plausible; I’d be willing to peg those as the endposts for my 90% confidence interval, and I’d be willing to update quite a bit given particularly challenging evidence to the contrary (but it’d have to be particularly challenging evidence).
Not to mention that reality doesn’t care about what’s easy to do in an ethical manner and what’s not.
Actually, half an order of magnitude is 3.2ish times greater, since “orders of magnitude” are logarithmic.
Depends on how you treat this, but OK.
So I would be saying the genetic component has the effect of about 5 IQ points on average, and the culture+racism has the effect of about 10 IQ points.
Well, even if culture+racism is 3.2 times more important that translates to about 3.6 points for genetic and 11.4 for c+r. However I don’t think precise numbers affect the argument here.
I think that somewhere between 3 genetic/12 cultural and 5 genetic/10 cultural sounds highly plausible; I’d be willing to peg those as the endposts for my 90% confidence interval, and I’d be willing to update quite a bit given particularly challenging evidence to the contrary (but it’d have to be particularly challenging evidence).
So, did you actually look at any evidence? There is a lot of it.
Given your preferred hypothesis, what would you expect the IQ of African populations be? They share some genes with the Aftican-Americans, but don’t share the culture and there shouldn’t be much suppressive racism outside of South Africa during the last 50 years or so.
They share some genes with the Aftican-Americans, but don’t share the culture and there shouldn’t be much suppressive racism outside of South Africa during the last 50 years or so.
I’m not sure this is the right way to be looking at the issue. It’s implausible that racism directly affects IQ; your stem cells don’t go out and check other people’s opinions of your ethnic background before they develop into a central nervous system. The idea is more that it’s associated with environmental factors that are reflected as a lower actual or apparent IQ: worse nutrition or other types of neglect in childhood, for example, or less motivation. It’s plausible that these more or less closely mirror what you’d see in nations without the same racial politics but which are unstable in other ways—and much of sub-Saharan Africa does have that reputation. (The continent’s own ethnic politics might also play a role—American-style racism isn’t the only type out there. How do Japanese-born ethnic Koreans do in comparison to Korean-born Koreans?)
One possible way of testing this would be to look at rapidly developing African countries in comparison with flatlined ones (Google Public Data is good for picking out which are which) and see if that’s reflected in IQ, if the data exists at that granularity. Other ways of breaking it down might also be useful: rural vs. urban, say, or by socioeconomic status.
I’m not sure this is the right way to be looking at the issue.
Well, yes, if we un-anchor from the way the discussion went in this thread, the basic issue is nature or nurture—are IQ differences caused by genes or by some/any/all “environmental” factors which can range from cultural oddities to micronutrient deficiencies.
My impression—and I’m too lazy to go, collect, and array the evidence properly—is that while it’s clear that environmental factors can suppress IQ in populations, after you correct and adjust for everything that comes to mind, the IQ gaps persist.
If by IQ you mean one’s performance on IQ tests, rather than the g-factor they seek to measure, there isa not-so-implausible mechanism by which racism can affect the former.
your stem cells don’t go out and check other people’s opinions of your ethnic background before they develop into a central nervous system
IAWYC but children retain lots of neuroplasticity even after their central nervous system has developed, and even adults do a little bit.
I meant g in that sentence, yes. The bit about motivation later was alluding to stereotype threat and similar effects.
Point taken re: neuroplasticity. It doesn’t seem likely that that’s an overwhelmingly large contributor to adult intelligence, but correlation between adult and childhood IQ scores isn’t so high that it couldn’t be playing a role. I’d be interested to see how that correlation changes between populations, now.
Given your preferred hypothesis, what would you expect the IQ of African populations be? They share some genes with the Aftican-Americans, but don’t share the culture and there shouldn’t be much suppressive racism outside of South Africa during the last 50 years or so.
That depends, do they share cultural overlap with Protestant Europe/America, or with post-Confuscian Asia? And if so, how much?
What are the IQs of other aboriginal cultures like, that diverged from, say, Asian or Polynesian stock, but also lack cultural influence from Protestant Europe/America or post-Confuscian Asia?
Yes, I’ve looked at evidence, but under which lens should I have looked at that evidence?
The question was “what would you expect..?” I am sure that it depends, but what is the outcome?
do they share cultural overlap with Protestant Europe/America
The culture of African-Americans clearly has more “cultural overlap” than the culture of Africans—would you agree? Given this, would you claim that African-Americans (after adjusting for the percentage of white, etc. genes that most of them have) have considerably higher (10-12 points) measured IQ than Africans?
under which lens should I have looked at that evidence?
I find “matching reality” to be a reasonably good lens :-)
Given this, would you claim that African-Americans (after adjusting for the percentage of white, etc. genes that most of them have) have considerably higher (10-12 points) measured IQ than Africans?
Last time I looked the former did have considerably higher measured IQ than the latter (around 85 vs around 70), so what’s your point?
Did you adjust for the percentage of white genes? Most African-Americans are about 25-50% non-black by ancestry, as far as I remember. That would influence the mean IQ.
When comparing populations of third-world and first-world countries you also have to be very careful to account for things like malnutrition, etc.
Did you adjust for the percentage of white genes? Most African-Americans are about 25-50% non-black by ancestry, as far as I remember. That would influence the mean IQ.
No, actually I remembered mentioning something about Ethiopians having lots of Caucasian DNA, used Wei Dai’s tool to search my comments for it, and… I was kind of surprised it was talking to the same person that time too.
I think that somewhere between 3 [thing A]/12 [thing B] and 5 [thing A]/10 [thing B] sounds highly plausible; I’d be willing to peg those as the endposts for my 90% confidence interval
I didn’t ask if you were aware of it, I asked if you had considered it.
I will point out that you still have the problem of how other groups, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, were able to break out of the feedback loop.
I am going to make a criticism about tone, here, but please understand that I’m not doing this as an attempt to refute or dismiss your argument; I’m doing this out of a legitimate desire to help you get your message across to people who would otherwise be unreceptive to it. You have a tendency to force your idea of other people’s position down their throats; it often comes across as wanting to ‘win points’ against liberal positions, rather than an attempt to actually seek truth. If you avoided personalizing language when criticizing liberal positions, you might help people see an opportunity to distance themselves from those positions, and thus help people avoid mind-killing emotional responses to having their positions challenged.
Have you considered the alternative hypothesis that you’re hyper-sensitized to noticing people who believe 3-and-ONLY-3, and are therefore ignoring evidence of people who believe 2-and-3, or occasionally 2-and-3-with-a-smattering-of-1? Because I know of PLENTY of people who agree that 2-and-3 are likely causes (with maybe a weak influence from 1), and operate together in a feedback loop—but I also know plenty of people that listen to the feedback loop theory and hear “so it’s really all 3 then” instead of the actual message of “it’s complicated, but 2 and 3 are entangled together in ways that make 2 difficult to treat without dealing with 3, and that make 3 difficult to stop as long as 2 continues”.
And part of the problem is, people can’t say “2-and-3 with a weak influence from 1” without having people jump up and down on them and say “SEE? SEE! YOU DO ADMIT 1! YOU ADMIT 1! THAT MEANS CONTINUING 3 IS JUSTIFIED! I WIN! I WIN!”, which is a strong emotional disincentive to admitting 1 AT ALL. Going on and on and on about how “racial differences are real and EVERYONE IS LYING SO STOP LYING DAMNIT” is a great way to ensure that people become MORE mind-killed, because it doesn’t leave a line of retreat.
Yes, I’m aware of the feedback theory. I will point out that you still have the problem of how other groups, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, were able to break out of the feedback loop.
Also why aren’t there any proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, e.g., actively criticizing ghetto culture? Notice, that the groups I listed above broke out of their feedback loops while the wider culture was focusing on (2) (and to a certain extent (1)) rather than (3).
Then as an aside (and I will address the rest of your post momentarily), why did you assert:
Secondarily, there are plenty of proposed interventions in the (2) part of the feedback, both from blacks and whites. Bill Cosby is rather famous for them; Chris Rock also has a particularly poignant set of criticisms. Part of the problem is that plenty of people have polluted the “criticize (2)” pathway by using it as a justification for reinforcing process (3) - “concern trolling” is a well-worn path.
As for the other groups, each of those groups came into their situations differently; I might suggest comparing black culture to native American culture, rather than Jewish, Irish or Asian culture. Sociology and history are complex, and outcomes are highly path-dependent.
This assertion looks true to me by empirical observation.
Can you show some examples of whites proposing interventions into black culture (and not immediately being tarred and feathered)? You mentioned two black guys.
If you add the second criteria (not immediately being tarred and feathered), it becomes more difficult. I’m aware of several hypotheses for why that may be. Would we like to discuss them?
The reasons look pretty obvious and hardly a mystery to me.
I’d prefer to backtrack a bit to the list of the three hypotheses about the black-white gap. Are you asserting that reason(1) is insignificant and the real cause is the feedback loop due to (2) and (3)?
That depends on what you mean by “insignificant”. I think that (1) has less of an affect than (2)+(3) by about half an order of magnitude or so, AND that (1) is much harder to do anything about in an ethical manner than (2)+(3). Is that the same thing?
Let’s use numbers! :-)
The black-white IQ gap is about 15 points or about 1 standard deviation. Half an order of magnitude is five times greater. So you are saying that the genetic component has the effect of about 2.5 IQ points and the culture+racism have the effect of about 12.5 IQ points. Correct?
Depends on your ethics. Not to mention that reality doesn’t care about what’s easy to do in an ethical manner and what’s not.
Sweet! I love this part. :)
Actually, half an order of magnitude is 3.2ish times greater, since “orders of magnitude” are logarithmic. Half an order of magnitude means 10 ^ 0.5, not 10 0.5, since two orders of magnitude means 10 ^ 2, not 10 2.
So I would be saying the genetic component has the effect of about 5 IQ points on average, and the culture+racism has the effect of about 10 IQ points, if all we’re talking about is IQ points. When I made the assertion I was thinking more about outcome quality in general, but thinking about it, I think that somewhere between 3 genetic/12 cultural and 5 genetic/10 cultural sounds highly plausible; I’d be willing to peg those as the endposts for my 90% confidence interval, and I’d be willing to update quite a bit given particularly challenging evidence to the contrary (but it’d have to be particularly challenging evidence).
No, but humans tend to.
Depends on how you treat this, but OK.
Well, even if culture+racism is 3.2 times more important that translates to about 3.6 points for genetic and 11.4 for c+r. However I don’t think precise numbers affect the argument here.
So, did you actually look at any evidence? There is a lot of it.
Given your preferred hypothesis, what would you expect the IQ of African populations be? They share some genes with the Aftican-Americans, but don’t share the culture and there shouldn’t be much suppressive racism outside of South Africa during the last 50 years or so.
I’m not sure this is the right way to be looking at the issue. It’s implausible that racism directly affects IQ; your stem cells don’t go out and check other people’s opinions of your ethnic background before they develop into a central nervous system. The idea is more that it’s associated with environmental factors that are reflected as a lower actual or apparent IQ: worse nutrition or other types of neglect in childhood, for example, or less motivation. It’s plausible that these more or less closely mirror what you’d see in nations without the same racial politics but which are unstable in other ways—and much of sub-Saharan Africa does have that reputation. (The continent’s own ethnic politics might also play a role—American-style racism isn’t the only type out there. How do Japanese-born ethnic Koreans do in comparison to Korean-born Koreans?)
One possible way of testing this would be to look at rapidly developing African countries in comparison with flatlined ones (Google Public Data is good for picking out which are which) and see if that’s reflected in IQ, if the data exists at that granularity. Other ways of breaking it down might also be useful: rural vs. urban, say, or by socioeconomic status.
Well, yes, if we un-anchor from the way the discussion went in this thread, the basic issue is nature or nurture—are IQ differences caused by genes or by some/any/all “environmental” factors which can range from cultural oddities to micronutrient deficiencies.
My impression—and I’m too lazy to go, collect, and array the evidence properly—is that while it’s clear that environmental factors can suppress IQ in populations, after you correct and adjust for everything that comes to mind, the IQ gaps persist.
If by IQ you mean one’s performance on IQ tests, rather than the g-factor they seek to measure, there is a not-so-implausible mechanism by which racism can affect the former.
IAWYC but children retain lots of neuroplasticity even after their central nervous system has developed, and even adults do a little bit.
I meant g in that sentence, yes. The bit about motivation later was alluding to stereotype threat and similar effects.
Point taken re: neuroplasticity. It doesn’t seem likely that that’s an overwhelmingly large contributor to adult intelligence, but correlation between adult and childhood IQ scores isn’t so high that it couldn’t be playing a role. I’d be interested to see how that correlation changes between populations, now.
That depends, do they share cultural overlap with Protestant Europe/America, or with post-Confuscian Asia? And if so, how much?
What are the IQs of other aboriginal cultures like, that diverged from, say, Asian or Polynesian stock, but also lack cultural influence from Protestant Europe/America or post-Confuscian Asia?
Yes, I’ve looked at evidence, but under which lens should I have looked at that evidence?
The question was “what would you expect..?” I am sure that it depends, but what is the outcome?
The culture of African-Americans clearly has more “cultural overlap” than the culture of Africans—would you agree? Given this, would you claim that African-Americans (after adjusting for the percentage of white, etc. genes that most of them have) have considerably higher (10-12 points) measured IQ than Africans?
I find “matching reality” to be a reasonably good lens :-)
Last time I looked the former did have considerably higher measured IQ than the latter (around 85 vs around 70), so what’s your point?
Did you adjust for the percentage of white genes? Most African-Americans are about 25-50% non-black by ancestry, as far as I remember. That would influence the mean IQ.
When comparing populations of third-world and first-world countries you also have to be very careful to account for things like malnutrition, etc.
Looks like we already had this same conversation before. ;-)
Ah. You have a better memory than I do :-)
No, actually I remembered mentioning something about Ethiopians having lots of Caucasian DNA, used Wei Dai’s tool to search my comments for it, and… I was kind of surprised it was talking to the same person that time too.
That sounds overconfident.
On a seperate channel:
I didn’t ask if you were aware of it, I asked if you had considered it.
I am going to make a criticism about tone, here, but please understand that I’m not doing this as an attempt to refute or dismiss your argument; I’m doing this out of a legitimate desire to help you get your message across to people who would otherwise be unreceptive to it. You have a tendency to force your idea of other people’s position down their throats; it often comes across as wanting to ‘win points’ against liberal positions, rather than an attempt to actually seek truth. If you avoided personalizing language when criticizing liberal positions, you might help people see an opportunity to distance themselves from those positions, and thus help people avoid mind-killing emotional responses to having their positions challenged.