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Brillyant comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong
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In regard to social issues, such as the murder rate by race you cited earlier, I'm not compelled to believe blacks are genetically wired to behave poorly and kill more often. Rather, as I've said, I believe there has been an extreme set of circumstances in the U.S. that have led to lots of problems.
As I've said—and as you've said by saying culture can be persistent through generations—I am who I am, in part, because of who my parents and family are. Of course, genetically. But there is more than this. Partly because of material wealth, partly because of availability of education and the opportunity to learn marketable skills, partly because of access to social and professional networks—Simply, there was a deficit created by slavery that takes a while to even out. Slavery wasn't that long ago.
And again, even apart from slavery, there has been, and continues to be discrimination against African Americans in the U.S. Both legally through segregation and just plain old racism (implicit and explicit).
If we compare it to a 100 meter race, it's not as if this was just a simple 20 meter head start for whites because of slavery; it's also that hurdles have been placed every 10 meters in the African American lane through segregation and discrimination.
This is my view, yes. See above.
I cited this earlier.
Imagine something like this type of discrimination is happening at all sorts of levels in the U.S.—Blacks are just less likely to be successful in a professional capacity simply because they discriminated against because are black, and apart from any consideration of actual merit.
So, it takes 15 resumes (instead of 10) to get a callback. Then the black candidate is 33% less likely to score an actual interview from that callback. Then 33% less likely to get to the second interview; 33% less likely to get to the 3rd and final interview.
Then they're employed... How much less likely is it a black person receives a promotion? How much less do they make on average?
Edit: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you discount the idea slavery, segregation and discrimination has had ill effects for African Americans in the U.S. up to the present day...Why is that?
It's not hard to find people whose ancestors 150 years ago were poor, uneducated, lacking skills and access to social networks... I think you're just describing an average peasant. And yet, there are different outcomes.
As I mentioned in my post upthread, I agree it's a factor. I just don't think it's the sole factor or even the most important factor.
Ongoing segregation and discrimination against blacks in America since slavery doesn't seem to be making it into your math here. Why? It's significant and should be considered.
And it's not hard to imagine how "peasants" might do well when compared to former slaves...(1) being poor and being a slave are very different (2) It's much tougher to segregate and discriminate when everybody looks basically the same. It's easy when their skin color is different.
Do tell: What is the most important factor? Why?
I don't see any ongoing segregation (though, interestingly enough, some Black movements nowadays are trying to revive it, in some places even successfully).
I've mentioned Jews upthread -- they were very consistently discriminated against until after the WW2. Did they have similar outcomes?
On the other hand you have SubSaharan Africa which is doing pretty badly by pretty much any criterion. That includes countries which were colonies only for a very very short period (such as Ethiopia, which is also mostly Christian and the former Emperor of which traced a direct lineage line to King Solomon and Queen of Sheba).
Genetics, in particular IQ. Why? IQ is really really important.
Not backed by the gov't through the present day but, as you mentioned, since WW2 and certainly long after slavery ended.
But discrimination based on race is still very common. I cited the study showing resumes with black sounding names receive significantly fewer callbacks than resumes with white sounding names...
You've not mentioned this study in your replies—Is this sort of discrimination not consequential in your view?
As a bit of a thought experiment, can you imagine a scenario in a society where a high IQ group of people was discriminated against to the extent where they couldn't overcome the discrimination, despite their advanced higher IQ?
How would the circumstances be different than what blacks have faced in the U.S.? How would they be similar?
I don't know about the study, I have a generic suspicion of social sciences studies, especially ones which come to highly convenient conclusions, and hey! they happen to have a what's politely called "replication crisis". I am not interested enough to go read the study and figure out if it's valid, but on my general priors, I believe that people with black names will get less callbacks. However it seems to me that people with names like Pham Ng or Li Xiu Ying will also get less callbacks. People certainly have a bias towards those-like-me, but it's not specifically anti-black, it's against anyone who looks/feels/smells different.
Sure.
Um, the IQ would be different? It's not a mystical inner quality that no one can fathom. It's measurable and on the scale of large groups of people the estimates gets pretty accurate.
On the clearly visible level there would be very obvious discrimination -- quotas on admissions to universities, for examples. These discriminated-against people would be barred from reaching high positions, but at the level they would be allowed to reach they would be considered very valuable. Even if, for example, such people could not make it into management, managers would try to hire as many of them as possible because they are productive and solve problems.
As to similarities, I was about to write that the discriminated-against will never rise to the highest positions in the society, but oh look! there is that Barack Hussain fellow...
It's debatable whether or not it's specifically anti-black. Or anti-some-other-group. At any rate, a bias against those-not-like-me would be sufficient in this case to cause blacks a significant deficit in opportunity for employment in a historically majority white nation.
As usual, I phrased my comment poorly. Let me try a different tack...
You are saying black Americans have a genetic deficit in the form of lower average IQ. Because IQ is heritable and very important toward social "success", this is a (or even the?) major factor in why they lag behind in certain social metrics (avg. income/wealth, crime rates, etc.) in American society.
I'm saying slavery/segregation/discrimination has created a very significant deficit for blacks to overcome in America, to the extent that we would expect to see something like we see in terms of the disparity in avg. income/wealth, crime rates, etc. I'd hypothesize slavery/segregation/discrimination has been consequential to the extent that even if blacks had a higher average IQ than whites, they would still be in a similar situation. (i.e. the discrimination is that bad and that significant.)
Plainly, advanced IQ (or other genetic advantages) aren't enough to overcome significant discrimination in all cases. The disadvantages can be too steep in a given society.
I'd propose a good portion of the U.S. is a bit more racist than I think you are taking into consideration. And this may have caused a deeper deficit for blacks than you are appreciating.
Things can change. Slowly.
Citation required. What is strange about this is that when you go looking, you don't see good studies that track people through generations and show that this is in fact the case.
This idea "slavery is the cause" seems not to be an actual active idea but only functions as a thought terminating cliche.
It could have been slavery so it was.
It reminds me of religious apologists talking about the problem of evil, and how it 'could' be caused by man's sin (causing human evil) and possibly by Satan's sin (causing natural evil), which is required if we are to have free will. There is zero, I mean zero, interest in exploring just how 'sin' causes all the various forms of evil. How does sin cause our flawed DNA which allows cancer? <crickets> Etc.
The idea that slavery/segregation/discrimination has created a very significant deficit for blacks seems beyond dispute in my view. The words "very significant" could be disputed based on how we defined them, but that's a technicality. I'm honestly shocked to hear this idea challenged...
I've cited this study.
It's stated that "African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed and they earn nearly 25 percent less when they are employed." The study itself shows significant discrimination based on race in the beginning stages of the hiring process.
Lumifer seemed to accept the basic premise, but was nonetheless skeptical and too uninterested to look into the study. I'd be interested to know what you think.
Regardless, it is evidence that employers discriminate against blacks. And employment is tied to income...and wealth...and opportunity. And that is passed on generation after generation.
Again, it seems indisputable to me that slavery has an effect. Segregation and discrimination, too. I honestly don't understand how it couldn't. The only question that is left is in regard to the significance of the effect. And if there are other factors. I'd love to hear some of your evidence for other factors.
And as for this...
I strongly disagree. People being enslaved based on race for hundreds of years, segregated for a hundred more, and then discriminated against until the present day, and that leading to some problems within that race has zero, and I mean zero, to do with the concocted, magical-causal "explanations" of religion.
How about this...
Man A is freed from slavery at 40 with no skills, no education, no family and no professional or network.
Also at 40, man B has a small fortune, an education, is skilled in a trade, has a large family, a good reputation, and a wide network of business and social contacts.
Assuming the offspring of each man—A1 and B1—has identical DNA, which offspring has the highest probability of graduating from an elite university?
Which—A1 or B1—will be more likely to have a successful career?
Which will pass on the largest inheritance to A2 and B2?
Why?
And what do you expect to change in subsequent generations?
(One thing that could change are laws eliminating discrimination...)
This is about as weak as an argument can possibly get.
Again this is not evidence.
Does not demonstrate irrational discrimination. They did not consider the possibility that a person's race actually gives you useful information about them.
Consider the following example:
I have looked at the study before it is well known.
IQ is known to be highly heritable and highly correlated with many measures of success. As are other psychological dimensions such as the Big 5. Source: any psychology textbook.
Perhaps you have heard the saying "rags to riches to rags in three generations". When I look at my family tree I see this happening many times.
Where I live a lot of the local whites are descended from prisoners who were slaves. They do not form an underclass in any way shape or form. In fact it is high status to have convict ancestry.
Or consider Jews, against whom there was massive discrimination until very recently. They have been very successful.
Will it? I agree that it will cause some harm, but I'm not sure about "significant". Note that race-based discrimination is explicitly illegal and agencies such as EEOC do prosecute. Moreover, EEOC uses the concept of "disparate impact" which basically means that if you statistically discriminate regardless of your intent, you are in trouble.
Also, did a bias against those-not-like-me cause employment problems for, say, the Chinese? Why not?
I am saying people with African ancestry (regardless of their citizenship) belong to a gene pool which has average IQ lower than that of people with European ancestry. Lest you think that the whites are the pinnacle of evolution, the European gene pool has lower average IQ than, say, Han Chinese.
I don't know if "deficit" is a useful word -- there is no natural baseline and the fact that the IQ scale has the average IQ of Europeans as the "norm" (100) is just a historical accident. I think it's more correct to just say that different gene pools have different IQ distributions.
There are two separable questions here. The first one is do you agree that people with African ancestry have lower average IQ (by about one standard deviation) than people with European ancestry? That question has nothing to do with slavery and segregation. If you do not, we hit a major disagreement right here and there's not much point in discussing why contemporary black Americans have different outcomes than whites or Asians. If you do, we can move on to the second question: what is the relative role of various factors which determine the current state of the black Americans?
I might suggest the following approach. If you agree that the average IQ of blacks is lower, then let's estimate the effect of that on social outcomes. It might be that this cause will explain a great deal of what we observe. If so, there's no need to bring in the history of slavery and segregation as a major factor because there wouldn't be much left to explain.
Ashkenazi Jews have higher average IQ than whites and were segregated and discrimated against. Are they in a similar situation? Were they in a similar situation at the time when the segregation was just ending?
Besides, you're forgetting that one can just go and measure IQ. There is a lot of data on the average IQ of racial groups in the US. Hint: American blacks do not have higher IQ.
Yes, but we're not talking about "all cases". We are talking about the very specific case of the United States of America.
Um, things have changed. Already.
I'd submit it's a matter of definition.
Great point. I didn't know this. I'll have to do more reading. Generally though, I'd concede anti-discrimination laws have an impact.
Well, the Chinese weren't enslaved. And it's my experience there is not nearly as much racism against Asians as against blacks in America, but that is just my anecdotal experience.
I've looked into this only briefly, and I'll take your word for it.
It makes sense to me to separate this into two questions like you propose. As I said, I'll defer to your research and knowledge on the first point (and suspend my skepticism in the process), and move to your second question.
As to that second question—what is the relative role of various factors which determine the current state of the black Americans—I'm interested to know what you think, given your view that people with African ancestry have lower IQs...
...You've stated it's complex, but roughly, what percentage of contemporary social outcomes experienced by blacks in America are a result of genetic differences ("nature"), and what percentage are a result of environmental factors (nurture)? Of that percentage that you deem to be the result of environmental factors, what portion is a result of slavery/segregation/discrimination? Again, just looking for a rough sketch from your mind here, as I recognize you have stated it's complex and difficult to parse.
Also, I'm wondering how the idea people with African ancestry have lower average IQ than people with European ancestry informs your politics?
Well, you can probably go about it in the following way. IQ is and was a controversial concept. One of the lines of attack against it was that it is meaningless, that the number coming out of the IQ test does not correspond to anything in real life. This is often expressed as "IQ measures the skill of taking IQ tests".
To deal with this objection people ran a number of studies. Typically you take a set of young people and either give them a proper IQ test or rely on another test which is a decent IQ proxy -- usually the SAT in the US or one of the tests that the military gives to all its drafted or enlisted men. After that you follow that set of people and collect their life outcomes, from income to criminal records. Once you've done that you can see whether the measured IQ actually correlates to life outcomes. And yes, it does.
I don't have links to actual studies handy, but you can easily google them up, and you can take a look at a not-fully-rigorous description of the various tiers of IQ and what do they mean in real-life terms.
Basically what these studies give you is the cost of an IQ point, cost in terms of a lot of things -- income, chance to end up in prison, longevity (high-IQ people are noticeably healthier), etc.
Given this, you can calculate the expected outcomes for the US black population. If their average IQ is 10-15 points lower, you can translate this into expected income (lower than the US mean), expected chance of a criminal conviction (higher than the US mean) and other things you're interested in. Once you've done that, you can compare your expected values with ones empirically observed. Any remaining gap will be due to something other than the IQ differential.
On a macro level it does not. There are smart people, there are stupid people, and the correlation to some outwardly visible feature like the colour of the skin doesn't matter much. I am not a white nationalist, I do not think the Europeans should re-colonise Africa for the natives' own good, etc.
On a micro level it does. For example, I find affirmative action counter-productive. For another example, I don't believe the claims that inner-city schools (read: black) lag behind suburban schools (read: not black) because of lack of funding or because of surrounding poverty. Throwing money at the problem will achieve nothing.
As an example of how such discrimination can be rational and indeed reasonable...
You have a resume. It provides some noisy data about someone. Including that person's race. Let's trim it down. You have an IQ test result and the person's race. Let's say that two candidates has the same IQ in the test, but one came from a group known to have a significantly lower IQ on average.
If we assume that an IQ test result has any measurement noise - and they do - then the Bayesian conclusion is the candidate from the group with higher average IQ is likely to actually have a higher IQ.
Now resumes constitute very noisy data. People often even lie in their resumes. There are large differences between groups in the US. The dispute is about the reasons for the differences not whether they exist.
A study would need to overcome these effects to demonstrate irrational discrimination. They would need to show that e.g. there was consistent out-performance for the group discriminated against post recruitment.
The two kinds of discrimination -- (1) because I prefer people-like-me, and (2) because I have informative priors about groups -- can perfectly well co-exist.
You and Lumifer have two different theories to explain the difference in murder rate. The rational way to resolve this dispute is to look at areas where the two theories make different predictions and see which set of predictions is correct. This is more or less what Lumifer has been doing in this thread. You have been coming up with incresingly flimsy rationalizations to avoid coming to the obvious conclusions. Furthermore, the only prediction you've made using your theory, the continued existence of "racist attitudes" against blacks, is something Lumifer's theory also predicts.