[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?

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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've noticed that even on Lesswrong, there is such a thing as knowledge that it is deemed better not to know. Apparently this is referred to as the basilisk's gaze (I've yet to manage to read anything deemed dangerous here before it was deleted, so I could be wrong in the details of that).

It seems to me that a lot of the "Don't suggest that there are racial differences in IQ" position is actually based on a hidden belief that looking at the possibility of racial differences is gazing at a basilisk.

Suppose you are an employer hiring for a position, using an examination where performance is correlated with intelligence. It is essentially harmless to take the position, "My prior is that whites have higher IQs on average than blacks, so I expect the average score of the white applicants to be higher than the average score of the black applicants."

What the opponents of acknowledging racial differences are worried about is that the employer will also take the step of saying "This particular black applicant scored exceptionally well on the examination, but since I know that blacks in the aggregate have lower IQs, I'm going to treat my prior and the examination as separate bits of knowledge and scale my assessment of the candidate's intelligence downward from what the exam alone would suggest." As opposed to having the prior be swamped by the examination.

This is on top of (legitimately) expecting that the average person won't understand the difference between the layman's concept of "race" and the more scientifically rigorous concepts of "population" and "cohort."

In the wider world, unlike on Lesswrong, openly coming out and saying "Considering this idea is like gazing at a basilisk" would end disasterously. So people go with "This idea is false" instead.

I think it's very hard for people to overcome their priors here even after getting contradictory evidence. Does being a Bayesian and thinking of them only as priors really work on all levels of your mind?

3sam034515y

Observe that in the recent crisis, blacks and hispanics had two or three times higher default rate, even when controlled for income and credit rating. So had bankers applied that policy, they would have been right. A protected minority candidate with the same apparent credit worthiness as a white candidate is far more likely to default. La Griffe du Lion has claimed that the same is true in academic achievement - that blacks with the same IQ and GPA as whites have lower levels of achievement, though I do not recall what evidence he presented for this claim. Herrnstein and Murray on the other hand claimed that controlling for IQ, blacks had similar levels of accomplishment, though I seem to recall they were controlling for IQ and intact family All three claims could be simultaneously true if we suppose that accomplishment reflects IQ and character, and that assessing an IQ indicator alone is not sufficient to swamp one's priors.

9Eugine_Nier15y

The "basilisk" is of a very different character btw. It's more of a game theoretic issue, sort of like how if you can't understand the language the blackmailer is using to try to communicate you can't be blackmailed.

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