[oneeyedpigeon]

"If it is factually true it's disingenuous to label him as a racist."

Not true. Something can be factually true but uninteresting or of no consequence; pushing that 'truth' forward as something that other should acknowledge betrays an agenda beyond just 'the search for truth'. (Note that this is not a judgement on ESR per se, just a comment on your specific point)

[ageofwant]

But it is interesting and of consequence. Especially as it highlights how truth ever becomes the slave of fashion. If it it is demonstrably true that race and IQ is linked then stating that as a fact does not make one a racist.

[eli_gottlieb]

"g is 85% heritable" does not actually mean, imply, or even give strong evidence for the likelihood that "racially-linked genes cause the racially-correlated outcome differences in IQ tests." A trait that's 85% heritable is actually a complicated mix of many different biological factors, whose various causal powers (abilities to cause a specific outcome if interfered-with) we simply don't know, except that 15% of them don't seem to pass from parent to child in twin-studies (and I would certainly hope that separated-twin studies were actually done at all, because that's Genetic Causality 101 stuff).

Thus, if someone wants to claim that "black people have lower IQs because they are black", they need to dissolve the concept of race entirely and not only find much broader evidence than studies on African Americans who are, after all, something like half "white", but in fact just cut to the fucking chase and locate the relevant genes.

But of course, if you located the genes and alleles that make some ethnic groups smarter or stupider, you could invent a gene therapy that would make everyone as smart as the smartest ethnic groups, or at least understand what sort of trade-offs are involved in genetic treatments of that sort (ie: Africans often carry a gene that helps them resist malaria but can cause sickle-cell anemia if you get two copies of the recessive allele). If you located the genes and alleles, then within 10 +/- 5 years (depending on how quickly your treatment gets funded) we could eliminate all genetically-caused racial gaps in intelligence.

This, of course, would greatly displease the racists, who don't actually want people to get smarter; they want to justify a peculiar social hierarchy. This is why you always see certain people waving their hands at "racial IQ gaps" and "heritability" but not funding research into intelligence-enhancing gene therapies.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I'm not sure what you mean by "fashion" in this context.

Let's say that some kind of link between race and intelligence were proved and universally acknowledged, what possible positive outcome could entail?

[eli_gottlieb]

>Let's say that some kind of link between race and intelligence were proved and universally acknowledged, what possible positive outcome could entail?

Intelligence enhancement would become a cheap, simple, universally-available gene therapy, since we would have found that it only relies on a few alleles of a tiny number of genes, so simple that it can differ significantly between ethnic groups that can still interbreed, rather than being a complex, many-gene feature that evolved chiefly among the species as a whole.