I’ve only skimmed the Wikipedia article, but how about this?
I would rather be right; I can only hope that racism is wrong. If it were right, I (we?) would have to think long and hard about how precisely it is right, what the implications should be, and what I (we?) should do about it. Among others, there should be a debate on whether the general public should be trusted with this truth; what do you think they would do with it?
Assuming they would accept it, I can easily see the members of the groups branded as “better” looking down on the rest with condescendence and contempt, resentful feelings of entitlement from those of the “better” group that are “worse” than many members of the “worse” groups, and so on and so forth.
The Bell Curve suggests that intelligence (synergetically with wealth and power) is concentrating among an elite, a slowly-emerging “master race”, if you will. Let’s have a thought experiment, and assume this is true: should measures be taken against that?
The most obvious measure that comes to mind is to discourage making children among the “poor and stupid”, and encourage it among the “bright and rich”, so that eventually both wealth and intelligence even out from the top. However, it’s not very hard to imagine this measure being extremely unpopular, and not just because of pattern-matching with the Nazis and other previous eugenic movements.
It would also require lots of secondary adjustments (the poor and stupid would need an extra-large pension to compensate for the lack of children to support them in their old age, for example).
So, yeah, it’s no laughing matter, and most certainly not something to be treated lightly.
I’ve only skimmed the Wikipedia article, but how about this?
Try not skimming but reading. For example, to quote from your own link: “There was a long-standing 15 point or 1 SD difference between the intelligence test scores of African Americans and White Americans, though it might have narrowed slightly in the then recent years. The difference was largest on those tests, verbal or non-verbal, that best represented the general intelligence factor (g). Controlled studies of the way the tests were formulated and administered had shown that this did not contribute substantially to the difference. Attempts to devise tests that would minimize disadvantages of this kind had been unsuccessful.”
I (we?) would have to think long and hard
It’s never too early to start thinking long and hard.
there should be a debate on whether the general public should be trusted with this truth
Oh, boy. And who would you like to place in charge of deciding what general public can be “trusted with” and what it cannot?
It’s a lot of stuff and I have a lot of work and a limited amount of energy which I would rather not spend debating something that I anticipate to be false. It can definitely be too early to think long and hard, but if you want to save time, you could unbury what the rulers and intellectuals of the eras in which racism was the paradigm, and analyze them from an ethical point of view. I’ll be waiting.
I dunno about the placing-in-charge part, but I would assume it would be “whoever finds out first”. Remember the matter with publicizing research on self-modifying AI? Remember when Einstein sent that one letter about a hypothetical city-flattening bomb? Why the concept of the Bayesian Conspiracy could seem like a remotely good idea? “What can be destroyed by the truth, should be” is a very nice motto as a self-discipline, but don’t be a stupid Principles Zealot about it. There are times when it is good and wise to shut up and keep the truth to yourself.
I would go even further and say that, if you want to discuss the implications of assuming racism is right, you would do well to do it in a place other than the public website of Lesswrong, if you care at all about not hindering MIRI and the the Future of Humanity Institute from saving humanity from being paperclip-maximized.
As you know, racism is extremely unpopular for reasons ranging from the blindingly simple (the “lesser” races these studies suggest would constitute the larger part of humanity, who aren’t keen on being categorized as, by and large, the stupider groups, for instance). to more convoluted causes, such as being associated with very monstrous assholes, who, from these assumptions, did monstrous things.
In the case of the USA, for instance, there was a concerted effort to breed an entire group of people into human cattle. In the case of Germany, there was an effort of extermination: the Nazi was a populist party, and Jews were assumed to be a “smarter and richer elite” (there is still talk today about Jewish people having inherently higher IQs). Now imagine what a populist movement would do with the widespread knowledge (assuming, of course, that it is true) that a racial minority is smarter and richer than the rest, and that they will keep getting smarter and richer than the rest, like a Real Life version of the pigs from Animal Farm. Do you think they would grudgingly accept this inevitable fate, or do you think they would go Khmer Rouge on the “smartasses”?
The Khmer Rouge enjoyed broad popular support of the poor, uneducated peasant masses of village Khmers, who were envious towards “those city guys”, which wasn’t helped by the fact that a lot of city-dwellers were ethnically Chinese, and were overrepresented in the rich classes. But soon it turned out that Khmer Rouge in general, and the dictator Pol Pot in particular, didn’t make any distinction between two populations. Their motto was “To keep you is no benefit; to destroy you is no loss,” and they cheerfully applied it to anyone. Pol Pot’s regime led to the death of around 2 million people [≈ population of Kosovo, nation] out of a population of 8 million. It’s estimated that as many as 4 million died as a whole.
Of course, in the same way that we could hope that our current “rich and bright” would be enlightened enough not to repeat the monstrosities of their racist predecessors, were they to become racist again, we could also hope that our current “poor and stupid” would not be stupid enough (it’s just fifteen miserly IQ points after all) to repeat some of their predecessors’ horrible acts. We could hope. Are you ready for the consequences, if your hopes are misplaced?
Remember when Einstein sent that one letter about a hypothetical city-flattening bomb?
You mean the Einstein–Szilárd letter? That was a rather unique situation, historically; the experiments laying the groundwork had been performed only a year previously, a world war was imminent, and enormous weapons potential was there to be taken by any government with the requisite technical and scientific resources. It’s also worth mentioning that the physics behind nuclear weapons is rather simple, undergraduate-level stuff by modern standards; the real challenge is in materials and engineering, which, far more than the basic theory, is what made getting a head start so important back in 1939.
I don’t have an informed opinion on the race-and-IQ issue, nor do I care to pursue one. But whatever the raw data says, it describes a condition that we’re already dealing with. There are plausible ways of placing some of the possible results on the spectrum of information hazards, but no direct way to turn them into megadeaths without a lot of unpredictable social intermediaries.
An interesting approach. So, would you rather be right or be a non-racist?
Can you link to some generally accepted studies which show that IQ does NOT differ between large population groups?
I’ve only skimmed the Wikipedia article, but how about this?
I would rather be right; I can only hope that racism is wrong. If it were right, I (we?) would have to think long and hard about how precisely it is right, what the implications should be, and what I (we?) should do about it. Among others, there should be a debate on whether the general public should be trusted with this truth; what do you think they would do with it?
Assuming they would accept it, I can easily see the members of the groups branded as “better” looking down on the rest with condescendence and contempt, resentful feelings of entitlement from those of the “better” group that are “worse” than many members of the “worse” groups, and so on and so forth.
The Bell Curve suggests that intelligence (synergetically with wealth and power) is concentrating among an elite, a slowly-emerging “master race”, if you will. Let’s have a thought experiment, and assume this is true: should measures be taken against that?
The most obvious measure that comes to mind is to discourage making children among the “poor and stupid”, and encourage it among the “bright and rich”, so that eventually both wealth and intelligence even out from the top. However, it’s not very hard to imagine this measure being extremely unpopular, and not just because of pattern-matching with the Nazis and other previous eugenic movements.
It would also require lots of secondary adjustments (the poor and stupid would need an extra-large pension to compensate for the lack of children to support them in their old age, for example).
So, yeah, it’s no laughing matter, and most certainly not something to be treated lightly.
Try not skimming but reading. For example, to quote from your own link: “There was a long-standing 15 point or 1 SD difference between the intelligence test scores of African Americans and White Americans, though it might have narrowed slightly in the then recent years. The difference was largest on those tests, verbal or non-verbal, that best represented the general intelligence factor (g). Controlled studies of the way the tests were formulated and administered had shown that this did not contribute substantially to the difference. Attempts to devise tests that would minimize disadvantages of this kind had been unsuccessful.”
It’s never too early to start thinking long and hard.
Oh, boy. And who would you like to place in charge of deciding what general public can be “trusted with” and what it cannot?
It’s a lot of stuff and I have a lot of work and a limited amount of energy which I would rather not spend debating something that I anticipate to be false. It can definitely be too early to think long and hard, but if you want to save time, you could unbury what the rulers and intellectuals of the eras in which racism was the paradigm, and analyze them from an ethical point of view. I’ll be waiting.
I dunno about the placing-in-charge part, but I would assume it would be “whoever finds out first”. Remember the matter with publicizing research on self-modifying AI? Remember when Einstein sent that one letter about a hypothetical city-flattening bomb? Why the concept of the Bayesian Conspiracy could seem like a remotely good idea? “What can be destroyed by the truth, should be” is a very nice motto as a self-discipline, but don’t be a stupid Principles Zealot about it. There are times when it is good and wise to shut up and keep the truth to yourself.
I would go even further and say that, if you want to discuss the implications of assuming racism is right, you would do well to do it in a place other than the public website of Lesswrong, if you care at all about not hindering MIRI and the the Future of Humanity Institute from saving humanity from being paperclip-maximized.
As you know, racism is extremely unpopular for reasons ranging from the blindingly simple (the “lesser” races these studies suggest would constitute the larger part of humanity, who aren’t keen on being categorized as, by and large, the stupider groups, for instance). to more convoluted causes, such as being associated with very monstrous assholes, who, from these assumptions, did monstrous things.
In the case of the USA, for instance, there was a concerted effort to breed an entire group of people into human cattle. In the case of Germany, there was an effort of extermination: the Nazi was a populist party, and Jews were assumed to be a “smarter and richer elite” (there is still talk today about Jewish people having inherently higher IQs). Now imagine what a populist movement would do with the widespread knowledge (assuming, of course, that it is true) that a racial minority is smarter and richer than the rest, and that they will keep getting smarter and richer than the rest, like a Real Life version of the pigs from Animal Farm. Do you think they would grudgingly accept this inevitable fate, or do you think they would go Khmer Rouge on the “smartasses”?
The Khmer Rouge enjoyed broad popular support of the poor, uneducated peasant masses of village Khmers, who were envious towards “those city guys”, which wasn’t helped by the fact that a lot of city-dwellers were ethnically Chinese, and were overrepresented in the rich classes. But soon it turned out that Khmer Rouge in general, and the dictator Pol Pot in particular, didn’t make any distinction between two populations. Their motto was “To keep you is no benefit; to destroy you is no loss,” and they cheerfully applied it to anyone. Pol Pot’s regime led to the death of around 2 million people [≈ population of Kosovo, nation] out of a population of 8 million. It’s estimated that as many as 4 million died as a whole.
Of course, in the same way that we could hope that our current “rich and bright” would be enlightened enough not to repeat the monstrosities of their racist predecessors, were they to become racist again, we could also hope that our current “poor and stupid” would not be stupid enough (it’s just fifteen miserly IQ points after all) to repeat some of their predecessors’ horrible acts. We could hope. Are you ready for the consequences, if your hopes are misplaced?
You mean the Einstein–Szilárd letter? That was a rather unique situation, historically; the experiments laying the groundwork had been performed only a year previously, a world war was imminent, and enormous weapons potential was there to be taken by any government with the requisite technical and scientific resources. It’s also worth mentioning that the physics behind nuclear weapons is rather simple, undergraduate-level stuff by modern standards; the real challenge is in materials and engineering, which, far more than the basic theory, is what made getting a head start so important back in 1939.
I don’t have an informed opinion on the race-and-IQ issue, nor do I care to pursue one. But whatever the raw data says, it describes a condition that we’re already dealing with. There are plausible ways of placing some of the possible results on the spectrum of information hazards, but no direct way to turn them into megadeaths without a lot of unpredictable social intermediaries.
Here’s an upvote and a sincere thanks for your moderating and thoughtful intervention.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the above text as my exhibit A to be used for defining the word “mindkilled”.
How so?
You are explicitly refusing to update on the evidence citing some irrelevant emotional scare-mongering.