Eugine_Nier comments on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 October 2007 09:50PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 20 August 2013 04:59:09AM 2 points [-]

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 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.

Comment author: Epiphany 20 August 2013 06:00:05AM *  -2 points [-]

When you're deciding what to replace X with in the following statement, it most certainly does 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?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 August 2013 01:29:47AM 1 point [-]

Conversely, I can't think of any applications for which tying IQ to race is useful. Would you name three examples?

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.

Comment author: Epiphany 21 August 2013 04:30:17AM -2 points [-]

Well, seeing an unknown man approaching you at night

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.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 August 2013 01:14:04PM 0 points [-]

Well, seeing an unknown man approaching you at night, granted this is more about criminality than IQ but the correlation is the same.

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.

Also thinking about whether affirmative action and the desperate impact doctrine are reasonable ideas.

I can't recall anyone on LW advocating those, so you might be attacking a straw man.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 August 2013 03:27:16AM -2 points [-]

Also thinking about whether affirmative action and the desperate impact doctrine are reasonable ideas.

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.

Comment author: Juno_Watt 23 August 2013 01:36:08PM 0 points [-]

Nobody has yet shown that racial-group data is more correlated with important things than individual data.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 24 August 2013 10:40:30PM 2 points [-]

What do you mean by "individual data"?

Also, how is this relevant to my point?

Comment author: Fronken 23 August 2013 04:40:18PM *  4 points [-]

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.

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?