Ritalin comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: eggman 19 February 2014 12:57PM

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Comment author: Ritalin 22 February 2014 01:32:21PM *  4 points [-]

As it turns out, I'm a green-eyed, pale-skinned but tan-capable Arab from North Africa. I've got several uncles that look downright East Asian (round face, slanted eyes, pale-skinned), and another side of my family looks south-asian, and another looks downright black, and we have blue-eys blondes, an the traits skip generations and branches, and I find the whole notion of "race" to be laughably vague.

If, like in the US, you put a bunch of Scandinavians, Southwest Africans, and East Asians right next to each other, without miscegenation between their descendants, and with a very distinct social stratification between them, I can see how words like "Hispanic" might sound like they might be meaningful, but in lands like Brazil or Morocco where everyone got mixed with everyone and you got a kaleidoscope of phenotypes popping up in the most unexpected places, the "lines" start looking decidedly more blurry, and, in particular, no-one expects phenotype to be in any way correlated with personality traits, or intelligence, or competence.

And let us not get started on the whole notion of "Ashkenazi" from a genetic standpoint; in fact, the very result that they get the highest IQ results makes me place my bet on a nurture rather than nature cause for the discrepancy. I'm willing to bet actual money on this outcome.

Comment author: bramflakes 22 February 2014 02:54:17PM 4 points [-]

Fair enough. I would still contest that the "nurture" component of these outcomes is smaller than is commonly suggested (Ashkenazim in particular) and that I too would bet money on it.

(Also I'm sorry if I came off as rude before)

Comment author: Ritalin 22 February 2014 03:22:51PM *  2 points [-]

You didn't, as far as I am concerned.

(How would we go about making such bets official?)

Comment author: bramflakes 22 February 2014 03:41:33PM 2 points [-]

I don't know how exactly to translate two difference subjective probabilities to a bet structure, but before that we ought to agree on what exactly we're disagreeing over and what the correct answer would look like to determine who wins.

I think that this would necessarily have to be a long-term thing - maybe the scientific consensus X years from now?