brazil84 comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 15 March 2010 06:33:11PM 10 points [-]

What makes you think this is obvious? While racial IQ differences certainly aren't ruled out a priori (Ashkenazi Jews are the quintessential example), Occamian reasoning about the black/white divide doesn't indicate that genetics is part of the best and most parsimonious explanation. There are adequate other factors at work - you can pick up a lot of data from studies on things like stereotype threat, for instance. And the fact that biracial children do better on IQ when the mother is the white parent than when the mother is black seems strong evidence to me that genetics are not the whole story, if they play any part at all.

Comment author: brazil84 16 March 2010 10:36:39AM 0 points [-]

I briefly summarized my position here:

http://fortaleza84.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/the-race-and-iq-question/

I am happy to respond to questions, go into more detail, and respond to arguments if you wish.