UNPC comments on Shut Up and Divide? - Less Wrong

60 Post author: Wei_Dai 09 February 2010 08:09PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (258)
Tags: morality

Comments (258)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment deleted 11 February 2010 09:56:51PM [-]
Comment author: denisbider 11 February 2010 11:11:58PM 5 points [-]

I find Flynn and Nisbett's position unconvincing. Asians are obviously different and were heavily discriminated against, yet have integrated in America regardless, and now have comparable or better outcomes. There must be a more substantial reason why Africans haven't done the same, and the most plausible reason so far for me is genetics.

Pretty much the one major argument against genetics is that people just don't want this to be the case, because it's one of the least hopeful explanations. But this is bias. Once you eliminate it, it becomes strikingly evident what the most likely explanation is.

Comment deleted 11 February 2010 11:19:48PM *  [-]
Comment author: denisbider 11 February 2010 11:34:21PM *  5 points [-]

Good points. But then why don't African Americans perform much better when adopted and raised by non-African parents? If it's about parent pressure, then an African American kid adopted by Asian parents should perform at about Asian level. Why do they not?

Comment deleted 11 February 2010 11:41:49PM [-]
Comment author: denisbider 11 February 2010 11:54:27PM 3 points [-]

They do in some of the handful of transracial adoption studies, and don't in others. Rushton and Jensen et al hype the Minnesota study, because it's the one that supports their case, and note data quality problems with the other studies. Nisbett and Flynn do the reverse. But very little work is done in this area (yes, because of PC issues with funding bodies), so the data is still too thin to be very confident either way.

Agreed. More data would be nice.

I am open to a different explanation, it's just that the genetic one seems most compatible with what I do know at this time.

Seeing a prosperous and competent country arising out of Africa would surely be nice. I would prefer living in a universe like that. It's just that I don't see it happening - regardless of the aid - at this time.

Comment author: thomblake 11 February 2010 10:01:08PM 0 points [-]

phenotypic differences in IQ between groups are not caused by direct genetic effects on IQ ('direct' because of indirect effects like genetic effects on skin color which elicits discrimination, etc).

This in itself does not use the mal-formed concept of "race". I have no problem with assessing genetic influences on intelligence.

Famously anti-racist psychologists like James Flynn and Richard Nisbett disagree, and make claims about race and intelligence fairly frequently ... Are they misusing words?

No, they're privileging the hypothesis

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit