[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?

So what your saying is that if it's not safe for your daughter to wait in a certain neighborhood that doesn't qualify as the neighborhoods residents having worse "character" for your and/or Prismatic's definition of "character"?

Sam0345 asks:

Would you also arrange for your daughter to wait for you on Martin Luther King Boulevard?

Sam0345 is making the assumption that I am white. This happens to be correct (at least, as far as most people are concerned since sometime in the mid-20th century), but I don't think there was anything in my analysis to justify that assumption.

Thus we can assume that Sam0345 thinks my putative daughter is white. The problem is, while it may be unsafe for my putative white daughter to wait on the corner of MLK Blvd, there are also majority-white neighb... (read more)

-2lessdazed15y

P(H|e)=P(H)P(e|H)/P(e), P(e|H)/P(e) ~ 1 ETA: what this means is that assuming I wouldn't arrange for my daughter to wait for me on MLK blvd., that doesn't mean MLK blvd. is worse than other places unless I would arrange for my daughter to wait for me at those places. So I am criticizing the form of the argument. Above, Konkvistador at least phrases it properly. My problem with sam0345's post is that he seems to sacrifice clarity for offensiveness. This is unlike normal arguments over political correctness, in which all sides agree some tradeoff between positive values of communicating clearly, being correct, not making people feel offended, etc. is appropriate. My problem with the above post is that it sacrifices accuracy for offensiveness, as if that were a positive value, rather than, say, a worthless thing, which might be the typical extreme anti-PC position.

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[SEQ RERUN] Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?

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[SEQ RERUN] Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK?

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