My impression is that we aren’t terribly good yet at understanding how traits which involve many genes play out, whether political correctness is involved or not.
Very true. I think most HBD proponents are somewhat overconfident of their conclusions (though most of them seem more likely than not). But what I think he was getting at is that we would have great difficulty acknowledging if it was so and that any scientist that wanted to study this is in a very rough spot.
Unlike say promotion of the concept of human caused climate change which has the support of at least the educated classes, it may be impossible for our society to assimilate such information. It seems more likely that they would rather discredit genetics as a whole or perhaps psychometry or claim the scientists are faking this information because of nefarious motives. This suggest there exists a set of scientific knowledge that our society is unwilling or incapable of assimilating and using in a manner one would expect from a sane civilization.
We don’t know what we don’t know, we do know we simply refuse to know some things. How strong might our refusal be for some elements of the set? What if we end up killing our civilization because of such a failure? Or just waste lives?
I don’t know if you could get away with studying the sort of thing you’re describing if you framed it as “people who are good at IQ tests” or “people who have notable achievements”, rather than aiming directly at ethnic/racial differences. After all, the genes and environment are expressed in individuals.
It’s conceivable but unlikely that the human race is at risk because that one question isn’t addressed.
It’s conceivable but unlikely that the human race is at risk because that one question isn’t addressed.
I think I didn’t do a good job of writing the previous post. I was trying to say that regardless what the truth is on that one question (and I am uncertain on it, more so than a few months ago), it demonstrates there are questions we as a society can’t deal with.
I wasn’t saying that not understanding the genetic basis of intelligence is a civilization killer (I didn’t mention species extinction, though that is possible as well), which in itself is plausible if various people warning about dysgenics are correct, but that future such questions may be.
I argued that since reality is entangled and our ideology has no consistent relationship with reality we will keep hitting on more and more questions of this kind (ones that our society can’t assimilate) and that knowing the answer to some such questions may turn out to be important for future survival.
A good hypothetical example is a very good theory on the sociology of groups or ethics that makes usable testable predictions, perhaps providing a new perspective on politics, religion and ideology or challenging our interpretation of history. It would be directly relevant to FAI yet it would make some predictions that people will refuse to believe because of tribal affiliation or because it is emotionally too straining.
I argued that since reality is entangled and our ideology has no consistent relationship with reality...
I think this statement is too strong. Our ideology doesn’t have a 100% consistent relationship with reality, true, but that’s not the same as 0%.
A good hypothetical example is a very good theory on the sociology of groups or ethics that makes usable testable predictions, perhaps providing a new perspective on politics, religion and ideology...
What, sort of like Hari Seldon’s psychohistory ? Regardless of whether our society can absorb it or not, is such a thing even possible ? It may well be that group behavior is ultimately so chaotic that predicting it with that level of fidelity will always be computationally prohibitive (unless someone builds an Oracle AI, that is). I’m not claiming that this is the case (since I’m not a sociologist), but I do think you’re setting the bar rather high.
That hasn’t stopped us from doing incredible feats of artificial selection using phenotype alone. You can work faster and better the more you understand a system on the genetic level, but it’s hardly necessary.
My impression is that we aren’t terribly good yet at understanding how traits which involve many genes play out, whether political correctness is involved or not.
Very true. I think most HBD proponents are somewhat overconfident of their conclusions (though most of them seem more likely than not). But what I think he was getting at is that we would have great difficulty acknowledging if it was so and that any scientist that wanted to study this is in a very rough spot.
Unlike say promotion of the concept of human caused climate change which has the support of at least the educated classes, it may be impossible for our society to assimilate such information. It seems more likely that they would rather discredit genetics as a whole or perhaps psychometry or claim the scientists are faking this information because of nefarious motives. This suggest there exists a set of scientific knowledge that our society is unwilling or incapable of assimilating and using in a manner one would expect from a sane civilization.
We don’t know what we don’t know, we do know we simply refuse to know some things. How strong might our refusal be for some elements of the set? What if we end up killing our civilization because of such a failure? Or just waste lives?
I don’t know if you could get away with studying the sort of thing you’re describing if you framed it as “people who are good at IQ tests” or “people who have notable achievements”, rather than aiming directly at ethnic/racial differences. After all, the genes and environment are expressed in individuals.
It’s conceivable but unlikely that the human race is at risk because that one question isn’t addressed.
I think I didn’t do a good job of writing the previous post. I was trying to say that regardless what the truth is on that one question (and I am uncertain on it, more so than a few months ago), it demonstrates there are questions we as a society can’t deal with.
I wasn’t saying that not understanding the genetic basis of intelligence is a civilization killer (I didn’t mention species extinction, though that is possible as well), which in itself is plausible if various people warning about dysgenics are correct, but that future such questions may be.
I argued that since reality is entangled and our ideology has no consistent relationship with reality we will keep hitting on more and more questions of this kind (ones that our society can’t assimilate) and that knowing the answer to some such questions may turn out to be important for future survival.
A good hypothetical example is a very good theory on the sociology of groups or ethics that makes usable testable predictions, perhaps providing a new perspective on politics, religion and ideology or challenging our interpretation of history. It would be directly relevant to FAI yet it would make some predictions that people will refuse to believe because of tribal affiliation or because it is emotionally too straining.
Sorry—species extinction was my hallucination.
Dysgenics is an interesting question—what do we need to be adapting to?
I think this statement is too strong. Our ideology doesn’t have a 100% consistent relationship with reality, true, but that’s not the same as 0%.
What, sort of like Hari Seldon’s psychohistory ? Regardless of whether our society can absorb it or not, is such a thing even possible ? It may well be that group behavior is ultimately so chaotic that predicting it with that level of fidelity will always be computationally prohibitive (unless someone builds an Oracle AI, that is). I’m not claiming that this is the case (since I’m not a sociologist), but I do think you’re setting the bar rather high.
That hasn’t stopped us from doing incredible feats of artificial selection using phenotype alone. You can work faster and better the more you understand a system on the genetic level, but it’s hardly necessary.