But then this doesn't help explain the original observation, which is that people, for some odd reason, think that adding race makes it worse somehow.
There is a standard answer to how "adding race makes it worse", which this article doesn't address at all. In simple and blunt terms, the standard answer runs as follows:
It's bad that some people are dumb. However, given that there are dumb people, it's okay to treat them like they're dumb.
It's bad to treat smart people like they're dumb.
If race-based differences in intelligence exist, then people will treat even the smart people in a dumber-on-average race as though they were dumb. This is bad because of point 2 above, at least.
But, if only individual differences in intelligence exist*, then people will only treat dumb individuals as dumb. This is okay because of point 1 above.
Therefore, "adding race makes it worse".
* It's not at all clear that this is a coherent hypothesis.
It's bad to treat smart people like they're dumb.
This will happen anyway, in fact it will happen more often if relevant information is discarded. The difference is that the victims will no longer be correlated with race. Thus we are still left with the question of why adding race makes it worse.
Edit: Another way to express what I'm trying to say is that your argument, if it works, shows we should avoid using any data that's correlated but not perfectly correlated with intelligence, e.g., test scores, grades, job performance, pretty much anything really.
Today's post, Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? was originally published on 26 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
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