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: bramflakes 22 February 2014 12:44:40PM *  8 points [-]

The increase in knowledge doesn't even seem worth the sacrifice; we're talking about differences in average IQ between 95, 105, 110, 115. For one such as I, who's got an IQ of 168, this degree of difference seems unimpressive, and, frankly, worth ignoring/not worth knowing.

Come now, you know how normal distributions work. Small differences in means cause over-representation at the extreme ends of the scale. From your IQ I can predict a ~30-40% chance of you being Ashkenazi, despite them being a global minority, just because of a "slightly" higher mean of 110. This is an important thing.

(EDIT: This calculation uses sd=15, which may or may not be a baseless assumption)

Plus, maybe there's a reverse-"Level above mine" effect going on here. The difference between someone at 90 and someone at 110 might not seem big to you, but it might just be your provincialism talking.

(Agreed about the immigration rationalization though)

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?