[mise_en_place]

Most people are not ready to have an honest discussion about the correlation between race and IQ. It sadly gets muddied by various political ministrations. But it seems like a genuine effect that should be studied more. If we truly want equality of opportunity, we must understand what is causing certain races to be on the left side of the normal distribution. Is it nutrition? Social status? Lack of parenting? A combination of these?

Bostrom's only crime there was hoping for an honest, curious, and intellectual discussion.

[sandspar]

The truth is that intelligence is largely genetic. Nobody knows how to handle the society-wide and global-wide implications of that.

[cauch]

But these honest conversations are occurring.

For example, scientists have honestly looked up the "biology" or "DNA" hypothesis. But this hypothesis is not very strong:

- why a "color-of-the-skin" would be linked to IQ when a "color-of-the-eye" would not?

(and also: why some people are so interested in IQ and color-of-the-skin but are not interested as soon as the genetic factor is something less "visible to the eye"?)

- how could there be IQ disparity based on skin color when the human DNA is so strongly mixed that between two white men and one black man, one of the white can easily be genetically closer to the black than the other white? There is no "DNA of Black Men" group: the DNA of black men is as diverse as the one of the white men and mixes totally with the one of the white men.

- why black men placed on different social situations are scored so differently on IQ when they have very similar DNA (same family or even twins separated at birth)

- why white men placed on different social situations are scored so differently on IQ? If you use white men as a way to predict IQ based on sociological factors, you get a formula that also predict black IQ, so science would say that color-of-the-skin is not the relevant factor here.

There are works about IQ and skin colors for ages now, and the discourse seems to always go backwards with people saying "sure, but let's forget that we know it does not make more sense and try again". This is those people who stop the honest, curious and intellectual discussion.

And I'm pretty sure the first reaction to this would be "it's all lies", because instead of an honest, curious and intellectual discussion, a lot of people who want to have this discussion are in fact more interested of pushing for one particular answer. For different reasons, but I think one of these reasons is the same as why the EA movement was popular despite being so flawed: those people want to think of themselves as very deep and very smart, they want to see "counter intuitive and repugnant" things and stroke their ego by explaining how smart they are for not finding it counter intuitive or repugnant. The problem is that they sometimes just take things that are counter intuitive and incorrect, and they force them into "look at me, I'm smart, it's counter intuitive and yet I dare to consider it".

It's basically what the Bostrom says: he says himself that he is attracted by the idea black people have lower IQ because it is the rebel thing to do. But being the rebel thing to do does not mean that it is scientifically correct or scientifically smart (it can sometimes be, and sometimes not be, you have the same odds throwing a coin). Saying "women are biologically less apt to choose their leaders and therefore it makes sense they don't have the right to vote" or "the position of stars in the sky is affecting our lives based on in which months people were born" are both as "counter intuitive" and "repugnant" as the Black IQ discussion.

Also, it's a bit strange, because in the case of the Black IQ question, the hypothesis of "I see black men failing more often, so I guess they are not as smart", is not counter intuitive at all. It is people who have considered this hypothesis and realised it's simplistic and the truth is more complicated who went further than the basic intuition.

[skissane]

> - why a "color-of-the-skin" would be linked to IQ when a "color-of-the-eye" would not?

To try to steel-man the argument: there is no reason to think, at a long-term global level, there would be any correlation between genes for any particular physical appearance traits and genes for intelligence

However, at the level of a specific nation, during a specific period in its history: that nation may be composed of a small number of major descent groups. It is plausible that group A may have higher frequency of "high IQ genes" than group B, and groups A and B may also differ in their frequency of physical appearance traits genes. And, some of those physical traits may have a marked difference in distribution between A and B, and others a less marked difference. So, in that limited context, a positive correlation between heritable IQ and some-but-not-other physical appearance traits might emerge; however, as we broaden the context, both spatially and temporally, we'd expect that correlation to weaken and then dissipate.

Note I only said "It is plausible that", I'm not saying this is actually true in any particular case. I'm just saying that even if your conclusion is correct, this line of argument you are using to make it is somewhat of a straw-man.

> why some people are so interested in IQ and color-of-the-skin but are not interested as soon as the genetic factor is something less "visible to the eye"?

Because "race/ethnicity" (descent group) and "color-of-the-skin" are not the same thing. Two people from distant parts of the world can have a similar shade of skin but have much more remote shared ancestry. A person will often be genetically much closer to a person from the same country with a markedly different skin shade than they are to someone with a similar skin shade on the other side of the globe. In certain spatiotemporally limited contexts (some countries during some periods of their history), color-of-skin can be a somewhat of a proxy for descent group, to the point that one becomes a metonym for the other, in broader contexts that breaks down.

Also, the claim that descent groups have different distributions of high intelligence genes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skin colour. For example, it is sometimes claimed (I make no comment on whether it is true) that Askhenazi Jews in Central/Eastern Europe had higher IQ genes than their non-Jewish neighbours did: there was no significant difference in skin colour between the two groups.

[cauch]

> However, at the level of a specific nation, during a specific period in its history: that nation may be composed of a small number of major descent groups. ... and groups A and B may also differ in their frequency of physical appearance traits genes.

That's exactly my argument. Isn't it funny that people interested in the Black IQ question just consider that the only physical appearance worth studying is the color of the skin? Cluster of people with specific genes are super common. It is why your "get my ancestor from my DNA" test is able to tell you that you are X% spanish and Y% danish. But strangely, these people are wondering if a huge group of "black skin" mixing over a full continent and a huge group of "white skin" mixing over a full continent, somehow, is the only main pertinent cluster to separate IQ.

> Because "race/ethnicity" (descent group) and "color-of-the-skin" are not the same thing.

Isn't that exactly my point?

> In certain spatiotemporally limited contexts (some countries during some periods of their history), color-of-skin can be a somewhat of a proxy for descent group, to the point that one becomes a metonym for the other, in broader contexts that breaks down.

My point is that the people interested in the Black IQ question consider that color-of-skin is the best proxy, to the point that they don't even consider that there should be other proxy.

If indeed they were just "asking a scientific question", why are they always asking "what about the skin-color-cluster" and never asking "what about the hair-color-cluster"?

In reality, the reason is simpler: color-of-skin is a clear and popular ingroup / outgroup separator. Some people see black skin people, and they say "they are not like us", and it is a catalyser for the idea that color-of-skin is a good proxy: they like to think that they are different from them, especially if this difference rationalizes their opinions of them or justifies some of their biased conclusions (such as ultimate attribution error between ingroup and outgroup).

> Also, the claim that descent groups have different distributions of high intelligence genes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with skin colour ... Askhenazi Jews ...

That is correct. If the Black IQ question would had only one half of the arguments given in the case of the Akhenazi IQ question, I would give then the benefit of the doubt. I give the benefit of the doubt for the Ashkhenazi IQ question because there are way better arguments: a mechanism that explains why this group is a cluster, parallel factors such as specific genetic diseases, a non naive clustering such as "they look different, so their genes are different", a non naive clustering such as "let's put population thousands of kilometers apart in the same cluster, but suddenly draw the line even for neighboring population", ...

It still smells pretty fishy: why focusing on intelligence and not plenty of other stuffs? And "intelligence" is not even a "core component", it's an emergent property made of hundreds of characteristic: being able to do geometry and being able to do logic is as different as being able to digest milk and being able to run fast. Each of the component have their own advantages and disadvantages in plenty of very specific situations, it is just unrealistic that all the components have been favorised in one cluster and all have been disfavorised in another cluster. Even basic questions are just impossible to answer: is doing something that returns a benefice in the short-term smarter than doing something that returns a bigger benefice in the long-term (surely, whatever your answer is, you can change the factor between the two returns to find a situation where you don't agree with your answer anymore). So, I would give credit to a study that say "this cluster has better capacity for X", with X pretty limited, not obviously hierarchical and not so simplistic as a term like "intelligent".

But again, strangely, people interested in the Black IQ question are not really interested in the Askhenazi IQ question, and they scream at the "cancel of the science" when people consider rightly the Black IQ question to be pseudoscience, but don't care about how the Askhenazi IQ question is treated (unless they can instrumentalise it for their own purpose).

[skissane]

> Isn't it funny that people interested in the Black IQ question just consider that the only physical appearance worth studying is the color of the skin?

"Black" isn't a proper descent group, it is a term applied to everyone from American Descendants of Slavery to Indigenous Australians to Melanesians to umpteen different distantly related groups in Africa (a continent with massive internal genetic diversity). There is no meaningful question to ask about "Black IQ"

> In reality, the reason is simpler: color-of-skin is a clear and popular ingroup / outgroup separator. Some people see black skin people, and they say "they are not like us", and it is a catalyser for the idea that color-of-skin is a good proxy: they like to think that they are different from them, especially if this difference rationalizes their opinions of them or justifies some of their biased conclusions (such as ultimate attribution error between ingroup and outgroup).

Is that actually what happened though? Imagine a parallel universe which is uncannily like this one, except for the fact that Europeans and Africans happened to have largely similar skin colours (it doesn't matter whether we suppose they be equally dark or equally pale or equally blue-green). Would that have resulted in European-Americans treating African-American descendants of slaves equally? Or would they have still been oppressed about as much, and if some other physically visible marker could have been found to distinguish them, discrimination would have been based on that instead?

> But again, strangely, people interested in the Black IQ question are not really interested in the Askhenazi IQ question

I think human genetic diversity and the heritability of intelligence is an interesting topic–albeit one about which our knowledge is (at least at present) greatly outweighed by our ignorance. But my impression is a lot of people want to approach that topic primarily through the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country: a lens which adds more heat than light, and as someone who has lived their whole life on the other side of the planet, looks like just excessively focusing on just one question and ignoring a hundred others like it

[cauch]

> There is no meaningful question to ask about "Black IQ"

Yep, exactly my point.

> Is that actually what happened though?

I'm not saying that you can only consider a group as a outgroup if they have different skin color. What I'm saying is that foreigners (whatever skin color they have) are considered as a outgroup, and then, people associate easy characteristics of these outgroup as "being foreigner". This is for example why black-skin people who live in white-skin-dominated countries for generations are still strongly associated as being "foreigner" even if they are less foreigner than the white-skin person who was born 500 kilometers away and grew up in a totally different culture.

And this is why people are so interested in Black IQ, not because they are interested in science, but because they are interested in easy ways to confirm or rationalize their prejudice on people they associate with their outgroup.

> I think human genetic diversity and the heritability of intelligence is an interesting topic

It is. But it is very very strange that people who, according to them, are just "interested in the subject" are focalising in the most useless and stupid approach of it. I cannot find the quote, I think it was from Gould, saying that genetic of intelligence is an interesting topic but people who are approaching it with this particular aspect are not contributing anything to science.

> But my impression is a lot of people want to approach that topic primarily through the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country

Yes, I agree with that: what you call "the lens of contemporary and historical inter-group dynamics within one specific country" is what I call "confirming or rationalizing their prejudice on people they associate with their outgroup".

[skissane]

> What I'm saying is that foreigners (whatever skin color they have) are considered as a outgroup, and then, people associate easy characteristics of these outgroup as "being foreigner". This is for example why black-skin people who live in white-skin-dominated countries for generations are still strongly associated as being "foreigner" even if they are less foreigner than the white-skin person who was born 500 kilometers away and grew up in a totally different culture.

I'm not sure it actually works that way though. My impression as an outsider observer: many people from southern India have skin as dark as many African-Americans do, but if they immigrate to the US, while it wouldn't be true to say that none of them ever experience any discrimination and prejudice, on the whole it is at a significantly lower level than what African-Americans experience. A lot of the problems the African-American community experiences are arguably due to history (slavery, Jim Crow, etc) rather than skin colour in itself, which is why many immigrants with equally dark skin don't experience the same degree of difficulties, and find a much smoother path to integration with the American mainstream.