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Morendil comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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I guess I'm missing the humanitarian aspect; facts don't exist in a vacuum and the "question of fact" we're considering has already cut reality into an absurd slice of state space. Given the world we live in, I would like to see some solidarity with a discriminated group before we dive into answering an ill-posed question willy-nilly.
It seems to me that there are so many foundational questions we'd need to consider first.
What is intelligence? Who gets to define intelligence? Could we possibly measure intelligence in an accurate non-culturally-skewed way? If we could define intelligence, what would its dimension be (i.e., how many parameters would we need to specify it)?
Should the multi-dimensional measure of intelligence be assigned according to a person's peak potential, or their average potential? If measures of peak potential verses range of potential vary independently from person to person, how would we compare two people? In general, how do we compare two multi-dimensional distributions that don't have the same shape?
What is the value of asking about the result due to genetics in particular given that it is practically impossible to separate genetic and environmental effects? Consider:
(i) without the effects of cultural selection maintaining the different populations, genetic meanings of 'black' and 'white' would quickly become meaningless
(ii) even if someone imagined they were controlling for genetics by looking at cross-racial adoptions, a lot of cultural selection has already occurred in the biological mother's choice of partner and with environmental effects during gestation (there is already a large health gap between mothers of each race, and if the child was given up for adoption, the care during gestation may be an influencing factor)
(iii) Genetics is a result of environmental selection anyway, and it might be non-sensical to compare distributions that are not in equilibrium.
Given that the question is so complex and ill-posed you have to ask why the question is being asked. What exactly would be irrational about not wanting to glibly admit (socially) if one group has a higher IQ than another group, if it was possible to know it? Is it irrational to not want to entertain a racist agenda? Is it irrational to find it quite troubling that someone you're talking to would want to discuss the issue of whether one race is inferior to another race, for any reason? I understand that we can't avoid 'truth' just because it is troubling, but what kind of 'truth' are we pursuing here? I don't think we're qualified to answer this last set of questions. We're reductionists, and need to keep in mind that some issues are so complex there's no way to currently address them without being greedy.
We're qualified to inquire into any topic that seems worthy of curiosity.
There seems to be much convergent evidence that people who self-identify as "black" tend to test more poorly on some standard measures of cognitive ability than do people who self-identify as "white", and I don't think acknowledging that makes someone racist.
I'm in violent agreement with you that a) self-identification as a member of some ethnic group is a cultural phenomenon, not obviously related to any "natural kinds" or empirical clusters, b) standard measures of cognitive ability are a very poor proxy for what we may generally think of as "competencies", whereby individual humans contribute value to the world, c) it's unclear even if the 'genetic' claim were established as fact what influence it should have on social policies.
If we think about a) clearly enough we might be able to dissolve the confusing term "race" and that seems perhaps a worthy goal. If we think about b) clearly we might be able to dissolve the confusing term "intelligence" and its cortege of mysterious questions, and if we think about c) clearly enough the mysterious questions of ethics.
Isn't that what this site has been about all along?
Thank you for helping to frame this. I believe I can clarify my position now as the following: I'm afraid it is unethical to dive into the relationship between (a) and (b) if we can gauge in advance we are going to be unsuccessful (culturally, politically, real-world-wise) with (c). Let's stick with working on (a), (b) and (c) in the abstract before we dive into a real-world example for which even our discussion will have immediate personal and socio-political consequences.
(Or let's work on (c) first. This is what I mean by facts not existing in a vacuum.)
Yes, it does, by definition. If you disagree, define racism in a way such that someone who believes different races have different distributions of attributes is not racist.
The problem is we have two meanings of "racist". One is "a person who believes the distribution of traits differs among races". The other is, roughly, "a person who hates members of other races". Most people believe these are equivalent.
I agree with what you mean, but I'm not sure the demarcation line between the two is very sharp, especially for non-nerds who don't overthink the issue.
Our brains store information as rough summaries, and don't always separate the value judgement from the characteristics. I'm not sure that there's a big difference between the mental representations for "X has such-and-such negative characteristic" and "I don't like X".
I'll pass on playing definitional games. What are we arguing about?
The first is a singularly useless definition satisfied by everyone. Everyone believes that the distribution of skin color differs between black people and white people.
I'd propose a third definition: "someone who treats different people differently based on their race."
Suggested alternate that captures what I think Phil means by the first definition "a person who believes the distribution of traits differs among races in a way that matters in some deep sense." That doesn't make it much more precise but I think it captures what he is trying to say in terms of your objection.
I think this makes the first definition a singularly useful one, because people who think about it and try to be consistent must either find some way in which skin color is a qualitatively different kind of property than every other property people have, or they must admit they are racists.
It's useful as a polemical tool, not useful in describing the ordinary meaning of the word, that describes actual clusters of common characteristics observed out in the world. I'm uninterested in using definitions constructed for polemical purposes instead of describing empirically observed clusters.