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gwern comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Looking at the totality of facts without letting my wishes color my judgment.
Believing in "stereotype threat" as the main reason for the black/white IQ gap is like believing in Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God.
Anyway, I'm going to try to avoid getting into the details of the debate, but this little snippet is worthy of note.
In my earlier comment, I talked about genetics "play[ing] a significant role" When you respond with evidence that "genetics are not the whole story," you are not contradicting me in the slightest.
Instead you are attacking a strawman. Why would a person who ordinarily thinks intelligently and logically make such a glaring error? Respectfully, I submit to you that it's because your thinking is muddled on this issue.
The problem is that people today are afraid to believe that genetics play a significant role in the black/white IQ gap. As Eliezer would say, it's not like going to school wearing black -- it's like going to school wearing a clown costume. It's like being an atheist back in the day.
In what sense, exactly? Some of his arguments look logical, like the ontological argument, and others like the argument from design look empirical (and falsified by evolution).
Stereotype threat, on the other hand, looks entirely empirical, should be measurable, and can be argued against by pointing to a meta-analysis showing publication bias (I checked just now, and a full paper does not seem to have been published nor is it listed on one of the authors' homepages which otherwise lists all his work; this nonpublication is ironic if the original meta-analysis was correct...)
In the sense that to accept the argument, one needs to allow wishful thinking to overcome basic rationality.
I did not even think of stereotype threat as a possible hypothesis until I read about it, at which point I thought it sounded pretty implausible for the thirty seconds it took me to reach the study results. Your model of the psychology of stereotype threat believers is just plain wrong as a matter of fact.
I'm not sure what your point is here, but if you want to discuss it further (with me), feel free to comment on my blog post.
Which one?
http://fortaleza84.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/the-race-and-iq-question/