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OrphanWilde comments on Suppose HBD is True - Less Wrong
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All true. But all the same is true if HBD -isn't- true. It doesn't matter if some of the group differences are genetic in origin, given that others are not, we can still resolve those.
Assume HBD isn't true, and measured intelligence differences are purely the product of cultural and nutritional and parasite load differences. Now assume HBD is true, and measured intelligence differences are the result of the above and also genetics. Do the implications here change?
And here I disagree: Regardless of whether or not HBD is true, we should still be taking steps to increase intelligence, for example by iodine supplement distribution, and reducing parasite loads. The steps we should take don't depend on HBD being true or false.
Those can be resolved but they will not make nearly as large a difference as currently expected, where current ideologies hold that all of that 3-190x per capita difference is due to environmental conditions, history, and racism. HBD implies that, just as with individual differences and the systematic failure of welfare and education randomized experiments to 'close the gap', we can expect this futility to occur on a country-level basis at some level of development. Countries like China (maybe) and North Korea (definitely) will be predicted to escape their current poverty levels with appropriate interventions... and countries like Subsaharan Africa to possibly not escape. (Which countries can be made more concrete in a HBD context by taking Piffer's country/group-level polygenic scores and looking at the residuals of a GDP/score regression for the countries which most over and underperform; the former can be predicted to not grow substantially, and the latter can be predicted to grow substantially.)
Remember how heritability works. If environments improve, genetics will explain more and more of variance. It's Liebig's barrel. Shared-environment in the USA is very small.
Yes, because those environmental factors are causally downstream and cannot be improved without the locals. As development aid has discovered again and again, you cannot force improvements on a country. Pakistan, for example, is so dysfunctional and clannish that iodization and polio programs have had serious trouble making any headway.
Yes, they do! These causal models are fundamentally different. If genetics is a major limiting factor, iodine and all other environmental factors are not going to help past a certain level of development. (You can feed some Americans or New Zealanders iodine supplements, but it won't give them +10 IQ points even though they are probably somewhat deficient). If genetics is the major limiting factor, then at a certain point, you are basically polishing a turd and this can either be accepted or more radical interventions must be considered.
...that its population is significantly inbred to the degree of having much higher child mortality due to congenial defects.
They're also causally upstream, given that intelligence is the problem. Meaning the problem is one of bootstrapping. This doesn't actually change any implications.
The environmental factors will help -to- that level of development, however, and given that that level of development has not been achieved, they're still the corrective measures necessary.
If genetics isn't a limiting factor, correcting the environmental factors will improve things. If genetics is a limiting factor, correcting the environmental factors will still improve things. Given that there's a factor we have no control over, and given factors that we might be able to control although it's a very difficult problem, the factor that we have no control over doesn't matter with respect to the solutions.
Yes, it does, if you cannot bootstrap in the first place because you cannot implement the measures because of a population with low intelligence, high discounting, high crime and corruption rates etc.
You're equivocating and it is not the case that regardless of genetics, all environmental interventions are equally profitable a priori. If genetics is a limiting factor on intelligence and other traits, then an environmental intervention - if you can manage it in the first place - will be restricted to its proximate effects and will not have the huge spillovers which led to the Great Divergence. If a population is at its genetic limit already and you successfully implement, say, iodization, the benefits will be limited to the immediate effects of reducing goiters and low energy, but you will not get the spillovers to homicide, the spillovers to greater education, the spillovers to higher income, the spillovers to lower discount rates and higher capital formation, etc. The cost-benefits for iodization are based on these benefits, not merely eliminating goiters! Likewise, if you cure malaria and a population is at the limit, you'll reduce how many people die of malaria and that'll be it. Maybe that much lower impact will still be worth it, but given how close to the edge a lot of interventions already are... It is not the case that all environmental interventions are always profitable and should always be done.
To be fair, that's not entirely Pakistanis' fault. Is paranoia about Communist fluoridation plots more or less dysfunctional than paranoia about CIA vaccination plots? Does it make a difference that only the latter has a grain of truth to it?
Less.
Fluoridation of drinking water has never been shown to be safe or effective in randomized trials and you could never get approval from the FDA today to use it. The claimed benefits are pretty small in both health and monetary terms and would be wiped out by even a fraction of an IQ point loss; the expected benefit is quite small and so conspiracy theorists incorrectly killing fluoridation would not cause much regret.
Polio vaccines on the other hand have been shown to be safe & effective, and even if the CIA were using the polio program to kill dozens of Pakistanis each year (rather than 1 known inconclusive case), that still would be less than the number of polio vaccinators who have been assassinated and the hundreds of polio cases annually which will continue indefinitely and prevent the permanent eradication of polio. In this case, the regret from the conspiracy theories about polio vaccination is real.
Less, because in the former case your kids could have a few more cavities and in the latter case your kids could grow up dumb and/or crippled.
It matters a lot wrt how much money to spend on fighting parasites.
If the world were in danger of spending more than the optimal amount of money doing so, sure. In the world we live in, not so much.
I disagree. The developed world should prioritise fighting existential risks over fighting parasites.