By and large, I tend to err on the side of respecting the current scientific consensus, and it appears to have been "differences in IQ are attribute to nurture factors mostly" since about the 1930-ies. Besides that, my guess is that people who had a vested interest in the maintenance of a racist, sexist, etc. worldview (namely, rich white men) had more wealth and power at their disposal than those who had the opposite vested interest, which means they have some influence over funding and publication, publicity, acclaim and awarding, etc. If racism were provably right beyond reasonable doubt, I assume they would have made damn sure everyone knew it. If the alternative hypothesis has prevailed in spite of these odds, I would assume that it had a very strong appearance of being provably less wrong.
Of course, if white-rich-men funded and influenced research concluded that these rich white dudes were not the smartest bunch overall, and, say, arab women were instead, and that this racist view prevailed and became the scientific consensus against these controlling interests' ... interests, I would assume it to be true.
In short, if most scientists agree on a paradigm in spite of the fact that it's inconvenient to those scientis' bosses, I believe that that paradigm is more likely to be true.
This is of course assuming that the studies are done rigorously and faithfully, with good experiment design, good analysis of the statistic, intelligent and pertinent drawing of conclusions, etc etc.; that scientists aren't being stupid and aren't screwing with the results. As someone who used to believe what he'd read in Talent Is Overrated, and whose views on nutrition and the science thereof have been badly unsettled by Good Calories, Bad Calories, I can guarantee that I for one wouldn't be able to tell the difference without help.
By and large, I tend to err on the side of respecting the current scientific consensus, and it appears to have been "differences in IQ are attribute to nurture factors mostly" since about the 1930-ies.
And how did you actually gain your view of what the current scientific consensus is? Remember, the popular media hasn't managed to get its head around the fact that IQ even measures anything, when the scientific consensus says it does. If you only read what the New York Times says about IQ, you'd be much more likely to consider hypotheses that ar...
Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it