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whowhowho comments on Don't Get Offended - Less Wrong
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Do you have evidence that it's not genetic? Most of the evidence I've seen for this claim has been laughably bad.
Two typical examples are: attempting to argue that since race as received doesn't correspond 100% precisely with any genetic definition, race is a pure social construct. The other is siting environmental differences that could just as easily be caused by the differences they purport to explain.
The strongest evidence is that a priori there is not reason to expect populations that have historically been geographically separate to have the same distribution of IQ.
As far as specific evidence: Other groups in the US, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, have also been discriminated against but where able to overcome it. The blacks in Africa aren't doing so well either.
Yes, these aren't particularly strong evidence, but neither is the evidence against the gentic hypothesis.
You might as well bow out before busting out the ad homs.
Eugine_Nier never said it was "just" the genes, on the contrary. If you were making the claim that genes are not involved, the onus is on you to show so. Asking for evidence isn't an argument from ignorance. It would be astounding if there were genetic variations leading to endless variations in everything except cognition. The default assumption (even with no cognition-specific data) is "everything is affected by genetics". The degree may well be lower than individual variations, it would still shift the mean and lead to an overall difference between groups.
I have heard the term "heritable" used to mean something like: "Parental life outcomes are strong predictors of child life outcomes, and both outcomes will likely be similar." At that level of abstraction, heritability is a true phenomena. But that says nothing about mechanism. The two obvious candidates are:
Eugine seems to be rejecting environment, so I'm not sure what he thinks is the causal mechanism for heritability, if not genetics or similar unalterable in-born traits.
I'm not rejecting environmental causes, I'm objecting to whowhowho's claim that genetic causes aren't even worth discussing.