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Eugine_Nier comments on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? - Less Wrong
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Did you stop to make distinction between me being influenced by motivated cognition and alternate explanations like:
Me seeing significant flaws in data that would otherwise support your conclusion. Part of this may be that I've spent a significant amount of time reading about IQ and giftedness and I have learned that there are a lot of pitfalls to doing IQ related research.
Me simply being unaware of relevant data. (This might be the case in the event that the people who supplied my data were influenced by motivated cognition or confirmation bias.)
You seeing motivated cognition in my words because of being influenced by motivated cognition yourself?
There is an alternate explanation for those which does not have the same issues that IQ tests and studies have: The effects of slavery and prejudice. We are certain that slavery and prejudice has influenced them, and that it has existed for a long time. To know this, one must only look at the KKK or investigate the history of black enslavement. Imagine a third world country. Imagine that an equal proportion of those inhabitants are removed and used as slaves. Imagine an equal proportion of them dying. Imagine that they're freed, but all of them - not some but all - are freed into a situation of extreme poverty where they don't even own a home or have the ability to read. Many still aren't being taught to read. Consider also that even though there have been advances in medicine, poverty means you can't afford health insurance or medical treatments. Don't think that disability and chronic illness are uncommon - they're not. Not even in America. They're probably especially common for the poor. Don't think that severe worker abuse ended with slavery, either - do some research on sweatshops in America sometime. Now take into account the effects of stress, and the human element - how those effects can compound into things like mental illnesses and drug addictions. Would you predict that the majority of these people who started out with literally nothing and without even the education to read would manage to avoid pitfalls like disability, mental illness, drug addiction and sweatshops and carve an opportunity to excel out of poverty and ignorance over the course of 150 years? I would not expect that. I would expect most of them to have fared poorly.
I don't see a good way to tell the difference between a low IQ score due to actually being less intelligent versus a low IQ score due to nurture-related reasons such as the following:
If you want to attribute the IQ scores to race, not poverty or circumstances, then there needs to be a good way to distinguish between nurture and nature as a cause for low IQ scores. Do you have one?
If it's true I want to believe it. However, it's hard to believe it exists without a citation. Do you have one?
I respect you more for being able to say something that supports my view better than it does yours. +1 karma for that. I still think the number is 25%, however I do not view this as a key point in our disagreement, so I will leave it at that.
You appear to have taken that statement as an argument regarding what to believe. It was not. I deliberately put that part after the section where I was discussing deciding what to believe, and put it under "if one wants to behave rationally".
If your point is that it's not clear to what extent the difference in intelligence is due to nature or nurture, I agree but would like to point out that for many applications it doesn't matter.
"X have a lower IQ on average."
You can choose "People of African descent" or you can choose "People from poor backgrounds" or "People with serious health conditions" or "People with drug addictions" or any number of other things.
When attempting to determine how best to help a school in a black ghetto that is failing, and you're choosing between spending money on remedial courses or on a school nutrition program, you will most certainly benefit from having this knowledge.
Conversely, I can't think of any applications for which tying IQ to race is useful. Would you name three examples?
Also, I'm still interested in seeing the source that you believe is an accurate prior regarding race and IQ. Do you happen to have that information available?
The Bell Curve book is a standard source. Otherwise a quick look at Wikipedia provides this:
Ok thanks. However, I am aware that "most published research is wrong" (PLOS Medicine) and know that there are factors that need to be controlled for in studies on race and IQ (in the second numbered list). Do you also claim that these factors were controlled for, that the key study or studies have been replicated, and that this is quality data that generally avoids research pitfalls? That's what I am looking for.
Yes, I've read Ioannidis. However you're using this quote here as a rather blatant aid to your confirmation bias. There have been many, many studies which all show the same thing. These are findings which have been confirmed, re-confirmed, and confirmed once again.
Precisely because these results are so controversial they have been the subject of very thorough checking, vetting, and multiple attempts to debunk them. The results survived all this. What, do you think that for the last 50 years no one really tried to find holes in the studies showing racial IQ differences? Many highly qualified people tried. The results still stand.
I think everyone should consider that published research findings are likely to be wrong each time they are seeking research findings. If you agree that we should be skeptical about research findings, why do you think that asking questions about whether the research controlled for multiple factors, was replicated etc. should be taken as evidence of confirmation bias? Maybe you disagree that we should be skeptical about research findings?
Every single one? I would find that hard to believe for any topic, especially one as politically charged and controversial as this one, where both sides have a motive to bias research in their particular direction. If that is true, I would find it surprising. Assuming you were referring to the results of a meta-analysis, would you point to that meta-analysis please?
Are you saying that studies used for "The Bell Curve" did take into account the factors I mentioned, were replicated and / or may contain a meta-analysis that states that all the studies that could be found had similar findings?
If you aren't specific about what measures were taken to ensure quality in the information you're providing, I have no way to make the distinction between a matter of opinion and a matter of fact when you claim things like "The results survived all this." Please be specific about what particular quality features the data in The Bell Curve provides.
I started checking out this book because of your high praise and was surprised to find this:
On page 270, The Bell Curve clearly states: "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved"
Can you explain why you seem to be disagreeing with me, when both myself and The Bell Curve agree that we don't have a good way to tell whether IQ differences are nature or nurture? (Note: In addition to that, my view is also influenced by skepticism about research in general and an understanding that although IQ tests are correlated with various things, they have some limitations.)
Sigh.
I don't believe you're listening and really have no inclination to play the "yes, but" game. Neither do I feel the need to prove anything to you.
You can believe whatever you want to believe, it's just that such an attitude looks strange here.
That is not my attitude. I have been asking you for research. Did you see what I discovered about "The Bell Curve"? What do you say about that?
Did you read the two paragraphs following your quoted sentence? It seems to me that they more or less settle the matter, and resolve your grayness regarding environment and genetics.
What I suspect is going on is that Epiphany is statistically innumerate (as suggested by her rather hilarious statement about 25% of Africans being above average), but doesn't want to loose status by admitting she doesn't understand the arguments.
Both of the citations I was given by you guys said clearly that they were uncertain about the connection between race and IQ. That is the reason I don't agree - because even your citations do not agree. I assume those are the best citations you have, so that your citations do not agree with you makes your belief look very bad indeed.
Also, by arguing that the reason I don't agree is because I am statistically innumerate and that the reason I don't agree is because I'm too inept to understand, you have made an ad hominem fallacy. Attacking the person does zilch to support your argument.
I can't believe I just saw an ad hominem attack on LessWrong. That is the the most obvious behavior that one avoids if one wants to have a rational debate.
That there are population level differences in IQ is not controversial (except in the sense that evolution is controversial because more than 30% of Americans don't believe in it).
That IQ is a useful proxy for general intelligence and a useful tool in determining life outcomes is not controversial.
That IQ is heritable is not controversial.
That the differences are genetic is controversial but the data does seem to suggest that much of the difference is indeed genetic and another portion is biological (pre-natal care, early nutrition).
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/the-facts-that-need-to-be-explained/
Every objection you've listed so far has been addressed in exhaustive detail in the above link.
You might be in a situation where you need to decide how to allocate money to help a black school or a white school. If white people have higher IQs, and if money is worse at improving the performance of students who do poorly because of IQ than it is at improving the performance of students who do poorly for other reasons, then you should allocate the money to the white school.
You might be in a situation where you need to hire a white person or a black person and have no information about their IQs, but you would prefer an employee with a higher IQ. You then should hire the white person.
Of course, this is exactly why using IQ this way is a bad idea.
How often do you know someone's race but nothing else whatsoever about them?
What?
It's an additional piece of information and allows you to do more of an update. If black people, on the average, have lower IQs than white people, then (for instance) black people with college degrees are still likely to have lower IQs than white people with college degrees, even if college raises the likely IQ for both groups. It is also possible to have traits such that given those traits race is no predictor at all, but those would be balanced out--if race is no predictor of IQ among people with PhDs, it must be a stronger predictor for people without PhDs than it is for the general populace.
Not necessarily. You haven't accounted for differences in variance between the two groups.
To make a very rough analogy: it seems widely believed that there is greater variance in intelligence among men than among women; surely such differences are imaginable among racial groups. (For one thing, there's more genetic variation among Africans than among other human populations — which makes sense, given that all other human populations descended from small subsets of Africans.)
Nor for selection effects on who gets to go to college — for instance, there seem to be a lot of pretty dopey people who have unusual bonuses to their chances to get into college on account of their parents being wealthy.
Nor for socioeconomic differences in general, which are substantial between whites and blacks in America. To make another very rough analogy: If two people reach the same measurement of achievement, but one has to overcome greater obstacles to get there, we would often take this as an indicator that that person had greater ability: a runner who runs a five-minute mile while carrying ten pounds of lead weights is a better runner than one who makes the same achievement carrying no weight.
Yes I have--see the next comment. If blacks with college degrees don't have lower IQs than whites with college degrees, and blacks in general have lower IQ, then blacks without college degrees must have even lower IQs so that the average is still lower IQ.
Furthermore, taking other factors into consideration can result in worse discrimination. Consider the trait that most obviously makes up for the difference--actually taking an IQ test. Blacks may have lower IQ than whites, but blacks who take an IQ test and score X don't have lower IQ than whites who score X at all. But if I were to hire people based on the trait "scoring X on an IQ test", and X is at the high end, I may end up hiring a lot more whites than blacks--a small difference in IQ translates to a large difference in the number of people at the tail end of the distribution. If people with IQ 145 are 10 times as common as people with IQ 150 and the black curve is only shifted by 5 points, and I want to hire people with IQ 150, I may end up hiring whites to blacks at a 10 to 1 ratio compared to the proportion of blacks who apply.
Why would IQ matter more than academic and job performance?
If the results of the racial IQ studies are true, then that is very important because it disproves the doctrine of ethnic cognitive equality. Many people, especially in America, have this idea that all ethnic groups must have exactly equal average cognitive ability, and that if one or more ethnic groups perform below average on a test of aptitude, that is taken as strong evidence that the test is invalid and racially biased and thus cannot be used.
For this reason, many aptitude tests are severely restricted in their use since they are considered racist. This in turn would have a negative economic impact if these tests are actually valid, since employers and colleges are forced to use other, less effective means to vet candidates.
Actually, the legal rationale for restricting the use of such tests in certain kinds of hiring is not that they're invalid. If you proved to the courts that they were "valid," meaning an accurate reflection of crystallized intelligence/abstract reasoning/g/whatever, this would not undermine the central legal argument against them, which is that they produce disparate impacts on protected classes.
There is the "business necessity" defense to disparate impact accusations. If the courts were to accept that IQ tests correctly reflect g/intelligence that defense will be much more applicable.
I'm pretty sure the courts have allowed that IQ-like tests are acceptable in many situations for many types of employment. It's not a hypothetical. I guess I'm saying the question of the "validity of the tests" is a red herring, even if it's an ideological hot potato. I think the main debate these days is not at all about the validity of the tests, it's a debate over business necessity versus disparate impact.
I am not aware of that "main debate". In the US, at least, political climate makes it impossible to discuss race issues in public. The courts, of course, have to decide these issues, but that hardly constitutes debate.
Fair enough. For "main debate" please read "pertinent legal question."
Well then, we've come to stating that the pertinent legal question is whether the use of IQ tests in hiring falls under "business necessity". I don't know of any answer to that other than "it depends".
Though the issue of whether a job really requires high IQ is an interesting one...
Race issues are discussed constantly in the U.S. — often, but not always, under guises such as "immigration" or "the War on Drugs" or "failing schools".
However, certain views are broadly discredited, for instance those which attribute or imply differences in the moral value of people's lives on the basis of their race.
Which is still ridiculous. It's been known for generations that IQ has a positive impact on basically every job, which should imply that the default is to assume business necessity for IQ tests.
Even if this were true, it would not follow that there is no countervailing incentive to remove barriers to employment for disadvantaged classes of people. Is it not possible that society has an interest in broad employment, especially among people disadvantaged by such tests? Two thoughts:
1) IQ tests have a history of being used deliberately to weed out applicants of certain races. This was not an incidental effect: it was the entire purpose of the test, much like literacy tests for voting. The odds of them being used this way again, were changes made in the law, seem extremely high.
2) It is interesting that LW sees so many rational arguments for policies that would give more resources to whites or Asians, especially white or Asian males with high test scores who may not have gone to college. While these arguments are phrased as both logical and obvious, LW rarely (ever?) entertains the easily constructed, similarly phrased arguments that would push resources away from LW's typical membership. For example: "It's been known for generations that physical strength has a positive impact statistically on outcomes in basically every sort of violent encounter, so as a default, in a world where couples and families could be attacked, people should assume a necessity for bigger, more muscular men as romantic partners." Or how's this: "It's been known for generations that religious identification with the in-group eases working relationships and obviates friction over expressions of belief, so employers should as a default prefer employees share their religions."
Of course it has. But the issue is that the society isn't going to come out and say that -- it will deliberately distort the map and make claims that are not true in reality.
The argument being made isn't "50% of people are below median intelligence, we still need to and can productively employ them", the argument is "we will pretend that all groups of people are exactly equally smart and if you say otherwise we'll sue your ass into the ground".
Nope, not true since Mr.Colt made an equalizer :-) But I'll agree that firearms training and ownership can be a reasonable plus in looking for a romantic partner. Well, unless his name is Pistorius...
Very possible. I would take the Steve Sailer approach here, of acknowledging underlying differences and making the best of the situation. Let's step away from race and just talk about tracking in schools- by the time someone is 12, we have a pretty good guess what their eventual social strata / broad kind of career will be.
In countries like Germany, they respond to this with different high schools- someone who will be a technician can go to a technical school, and someone who will be an engineer can go to an academic school. Both get work suited for their intellectual ability and interests, and so the first isn't drowning and the second isn't bored. (Relevant here is the finding that getting rid of shop classes increases the high school dropout rate in America- turns out that for an easily identifiable group of students, the primary benefit they get out of high school is a place to practice basic handyman skills!)
In the US, we get lunacy like "whether or not someone takes the first optional math class is a very strong predictor of whether or not they go to college. Let's make that class mandatory for graduating high school!" which makes everyone involved worse off, as the students not pointed at college now find it more difficult to graduate high school.
I'm not sure this would see significant disagreement here on LW. The main response I would give is yes, but the preference is miscalibrated. Ceteris paribus, a stronger partner is likely to be better (assuming they aren't prone to domestic violence), but my reflective preferences would give a weight to athleticism that's orders of magnitude lower than the weight my attraction heuristics give athleticism. This mismatch seems to be because those heuristics were tuned in an era when the chance of being the victim (or beneficiary!) of violent crime was orders of magnitude higher than they currently are.
To refer back to the OP, why is the relevant disadvantaged class "black people" rather than "people with low IQ" or even "people unqualified for the job"?
That's actually an interesting argument. I wouldn't mind seeing it expanded, if you happen to have real numbers lying around.
Though some obvious confounders do come to mind: in a really diverse religious environment (like, for example, the Silicon Valley tech scene), you're giving up quite a bit in talent if you recruit only from your co-religionists. And if you weight it less heavily, I'd be very surprised if the response looked linear: I wouldn't expect a workplace that's (say) 50% Christian with the rest split between atheists, Hindus, and Buddhists to be that much more harmonious than one with equal numbers of all of the above plus the odd Wiccan or Discordian. It might actually be worse under some circumstances, although this is rank speculation.
Yes, and what is the justification for the disparate impact doctrine?
And for that matter what is the justification for declaring certain classes "protected"?
Are you asking rhetorically?
The American legal justification for the disparate impact doctrine, and for declaring race a protected category, is the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the legislative justification for that was a history of massive mistreatment of individuals based on skin color.
I gather from the thrust of arguments in this thread that you may be strongly opposed to government protection of racial minorities in the United States, and that you may not believe that racial bigotry is--or possibly even was--a problem that needed legal redress. It is worthwhile to note that the legal basis for these doctrines is well established and, through the wonders of litigation, much studied and highly nuanced. That does not speak to any philosophical objections you have but, frankly, no philosophical objections you make have any bearing on the legal justification.
Um, the legal basis is the act of Congress. That's all, you don't need studies and nuances. Whatever Congress says and the President signs is the law of the land. Unless SCOTUS objects, of course.
This is a somewhat fundamentalist view of the law, and I am guessing many federal judges at all levels, and regulatory bodies of technical experts, would add something to your definition. I agree with you that the statutory basis for these court rulings is very clear.
But it's also pretty clear that the doctrine of disparate impact, which is what he asked about, has been clarified and nuanced through litigation of those statutes. My point was that over many decades, the courts have not overturned this doctrine due to any philosophical objections of litigants.
Yes, of course, though it has nothing to do with legal basis -- it's interpretation of the law which is what the court system does all the time.
Courts do not do that. A philosophical objection is not a legal objection -- a court can overturn a law only by deciding that it is unconstitutional.
But I am unsure what is the point that you are making. Is it that both politically and legally the Civil Rights Act is untouchable in the US? Sure, but that's pretty obvious...
Sorry, I meant the two questions in different senses, I should have made that clearer.
The Civil Rights Acts didn't specify disparate impact as opposed to disparate treatment.
I understand the motivation, but I don't think the ever increasing (and rather arbitrary) list of protected groups is a workable approach. Not to mention the "some groups are more equal than others" problem implicit in having a specific list of "protected groups".
If you look at the history of law, philosophical arguments end up influencing legal arguments all the time.
I absolutely agree. It is conceivable that in the future, arguments could change the courts' regard for this doctrine. But it is unlikely. The law has been in place for fifty years, and the doctrine has seen a ton of challenges in court.
So? Far older legal doctrines have been overturned by courts.
Well, seeing an unknown man approaching you at night, granted this is more about criminality than IQ but the correlation is the same.
Also thinking about whether affirmative action and the desperate impact doctrine are reasonable ideas.
Actually, it is far more prudent to avoid a stranger approaching me at night, regardless of his race - depending on the environment I am in.
If he is approaching from a dark alley, I will head away from him, whatever his race. If he approaches me at a party full of friends, I will speak to him.
The crime statistics are not so incredibly different for blacks and whites that you can simply trust all of the whites.
Once you specify where I am, who I am with, what kind of body language the man is using, how big he is, and what he is wearing, further specifying what race he is wouldn't matter that much.
I can't recall anyone on LW advocating those, so you might be attacking a straw man.
That's because they rarely come up. In any case my point is that these doctrines are in place in the USA and the false belief that race is uncorrelated with anything important.
Nobody has yet shown that racial-group data is more correlated with important things than individual data.
What do you mean by "individual data"?
Also, how is this relevant to my point?
Is that true? Depending on the "where I am" part?
There's only so much you can tell about someone from "what kind of body language the man is using, how big he is, and what he is wearing", after all. In the right racially-segregated society, could it provide valuable additional data?