Oscar_Cunningham comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong
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For a moment there, I feared you'd speak of genetics and eugenics, but then
if you mean something as prosai as dietetics, I can totally get behind that; I find it easy to believe that crappy food induces cranky mood (and that, in the US, crappy cheap food is remarkably deleterious).
Is this not acknowledged? Nay, is this not common knowledge?
Putting the full blame on them is as absurd as fully absolving them. What insane political climate do you live in, that you'd have to settle for either fallacy?
I remain unconvinced that this is exactly the case, and, even though I can accept its provisional validity, with many caveats and reservations, I'm pretty sure the actual reality is more interesting than "blacks and latinos are born dumber, White-Jews and White-Asian nerds are born smarter, and White-Christians are born a little bit smarter than average".
Assuming this particular piece of knowledge matters, what are we supposed to do about it? Be more forgiving of teachers' inability to enable black students to reach some average standard? Allocate Jewish and Asian kids less resources and demand that they meet higher standards? Should we treat kids differently, segregating them by race or by IQ? What practical use do we even have for scientific racism?
For someone who claims an IQ of 168 you asked, frankly speaking, a stupid question.
The question he literally asked may well be stupid, but I think it's charitable to interpret it as asking what practical use we have for scientific racism that wouldn't violate some ethical injunctions. Likewise, if someone asked how to kill all the fleas on a cat I'd assume they mean that the cat must remain alive and in good health (example taken from here).
It would be a long stretch.
In any case, I would have normally let it slide if not for a particular sentence in a {grand}parent post...
I never shied away from those; they tend to be useful.
Not this kind -- ones to which a variety of answers become apparent after spending a minute thinking about it...