[kongojack]

I would like to point out that within this comment you argue quite correctly that averages of groups should not be extrapolated to the entire group. However in most of your argument you propose that companies and societies will extrapolate IQ research to the group and discriminate on those bases.

Now I'm not saying anything about your personal views about the research, but I think in order to fix the cultural and societal discrimination you touch upon we should emphasize exactly the reasoning you expounded about the nuance of averages. We know that there is more differences within groups than between them and I think to deter the effects of discrimination we need to emphasize analysis on the individual level and to have a real and honest discussion about the issues and to make statistical reasoning more prevalent among the general population.

[api]

I wish, but after 40 years on this planet I've come to the conclusion that certain systemic forms of irrationality are incredibly difficult to "educate out" of the population. I suspect that we fall for these things over and over because our central nervous systems just haven't evolved to be very good at certain kinds of reasoning. Maintaining rationality in these areas is effortful and as soon as we slack off we slip back into familiar shortcuts.

I'll be more optimistic about this when I see sales of lottery tickets start dropping dramatically and when stuff like this stops happening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCcwn6bGUtU

Gambling and silly financial schemes are driven by the same sorts of logical fallacies as those I discussed up top.