[SEQ RERUN] Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?

MinibearRex

Today's post, Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? was originally published on 26 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People act as though it is perfectly fine and normal for individuals to have differing levels of intelligence, but that it is absolutely horrible for one racial group to be more intelligent than another. Why should the two be considered any differently?

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was No One Knows What Science Doesn't Know, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? was originally published on 26 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

People act as though it is perfectly fine and normal for individuals to have differing levels of intelligence, but that it is absolutely horrible for one racial group to be more intelligent than another. Why should the two be considered any differently?

I can't even imagine what sort of hell would break loose in my Politics class if I were to profess a belief merely in the possibility of measurable differences in intelligence between races. Any logic would be ignored, immediately branded as justification for a bigoted agenda. Politics truly is the mindkiller.

Sure you can, just call them blondes or gingers, instead of that other explosive thing. You can reveal the truth at the end of the discussion.

5TheOtherDave15y

If I wanted to raise this possibility for discussion, I would likely leave "race" out of the discussion. I'd probably start out by raising the possibility of measurable differences in intelligence among individuals; if that were successful I'd move on to the notion that there might be other shared differential characteristics among high-intelligence and low-intelligence communities; if that were successful I'd move on to the question of what those other characteristics might be... for example, age, or childhood nutritional regimens, or geographic region of birth, or various other things. If, instead of doing that, somebody starts out by privileging a hypothesis that "race" correlates with intelligence for some particular definition of "race" and framing the conversation in those terms, I'd want to know what leads them to privilege that hypothesis before I was willing to invest much in that discussion, in much the same way that if someone starts out by privileging a hypothesis that the Old Testament God created the world in seven days I'd be inclined to reject their conversational framing.

8NancyLebovitz15y

Is there any research on whether people can achieve evidence-based prejudice, or if (as I'm inclined to suspect) they overshoot and overestimate the effects of differences?

19

[SEQ RERUN] Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?

19

19

19

[SEQ RERUN] Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?

19

19