Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
Post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
Post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Pardon my ignorance, but all the "intellect realism" theories seem like they can be charitably paraphrased as group X:

has a different mean IQ than the general population and/or
has a different standard deviation for IQ and/or
has a significantly skewed distribution from the normal curve

I've seen claimed IQ means in the 80s for black Americans. Observationally, American public life includes many black people for whom I find it implausible that they aren't pretty smart - eg Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice.

If I assume no difference in std dev or skew in intelligence distribution, it seems to me that I observe too many intelligent black folks for the mean to be in the 80s. Moreover, adding an assumption that std dev is lower doesn't help - now the successful black folk are explained, but I don't observe enough extreme low IQ folk.

That's why I conclude some error exists in the assumption of an 80s mean IQ.

eg Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice.

Clarence Thomas is widely considered one of the worst Supreme Court justices in memory, and is famously uninvolved, going years without a question; he has also written harshly about how he feels affirmative action cheapened his degrees. Colin Powell's parents are both Jamaican immigrants, similar to Malcolm Gladwell or Barack Obama whose father was African, highlighting how select and successful African immigrants are. Condoleezza Rice, amusingly enough, is almost as white as Obama is (which given the la... (read more)

0ChristianKl10y

Observing three people isn't observing many people. Blacks like those people aren't in the majority. Most blacks are less successful than most whites.

5Vaniver10y

Why would we have to assume the IQs for groups, when we could just go out and give people tests?

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