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Alsadius comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong
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It seems fairly believable that an oppressed underclass that is intentionally deprived of education and opportunity will, on average, be cruder, less intellectually inclined, have less wealth and status, and more prone to failing at life in various ways due to the lack of a support structure. This is true of any group, whatever their intrinsic nature, simply due to the act of discrimination.
I remember once reading an essay about Jews in(IIRC) Rudyard Kipling's works, where they're portrayed in pretty appalling ways, while all sorts of other groups are portrayed positively. The author came to the conclusion that acting in cowardly and profiteering fashion was a survival tactic created by anti-semitic laws, and that Kipling was probably just conveying the reality of the time. (I'm not enough of an expert to judge the truth of this, but it seemed reasonable)
Sure. Also see the recent follow-ups to the Stanford marshmallow experiment. It sure looks like some of what was once considered to be innate lack of self-restraint may rather be acquired by living in an environment where others are unreliable, promises are broken, etc.
Possibly, but the followup only tells us that, at least in the short term, kids will be less likely to delay gratification from specific individuals who have proven to be untrustworthy (and the protocol of that experiment kind of went for overkill on the "demonstrating untrustworthiness" angle.)
It might be that children become less able to delay gratification if raised in environments where they cannot trust promises from their guidance figures, but the same effect could very easily be caused by rational discounting of the value of promises from individuals who have proven unlikely to deliver on them.
Your argument sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Yet I would advise against reversing stupidity. Just because there is a systematic influence that makes it worse for the opressed people, it does not automatically mean that without that influence all the differences would disappear. Although it is worth trying experimentally.
Agreed, of course. I never claimed that there are no intrinsic group differences - FWIW, I believe that there are, they're just vastly smaller than intrinsic individual differences, and thus should be ignored in nearly all non-statistical circumstances. But group cultural differences are obviously very significant, as are group differences in education, opportunity, and support. We can do a fair bit about those, and we ought to.