wedrifid comments on Don't Get Offended - LessWrong

32 Post author: katydee 07 March 2013 02:11AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 19 March 2013 03:56:06AM *  1 point [-]

Ok, I'm confused. Under what scenario is it at all plausible for individual IQ differences but not racial IQ differences to be genetic?

Circumstances which look arbitrarily contrived and absurd upon examination but should be acknowledged as at least technically possible. ie. The distributions of IQ within each race are miraculously identical because contrary to expectations the universe really is Fair regarding this one complex trait (but not others).

Comment author: GloriaSidorum 19 March 2013 04:52:26AM -1 points [-]

Or one where the differences are small, or trivial. I don't think this is "miraculous" or "implausible". Before the invention of agriculture, about seven to twelve thousand years ago, I'm not sure what pressures there could have been on Europeans to develop higher intelligence than Africans, so in contrast to physical differences, many of which have well-established links to specific climates, intellectual genetic differences would probably be attributable to genetic drift and >~10,000 years of natural selection. To be clear, my position isn't that I have good evidence for this, merely that I don't know and I don't assign this scenario as low a prior probability as you seem to.