The only thing I would be quick to add to your statements (which I think I have heard Steve say in the past):
-1- The genetic make up of those with dark skin is incredible diverse, often having much more common genetic material with a non-black than with another black. Thus even if IQ has an inherited aspect to it. We DO hav…
The only thing I would be quick to add to your statements (which I think I have heard Steve say in the past):
-1- The genetic make up of those with dark skin is incredible diverse, often having much more common genetic material with a non-black than with another black. Thus even if IQ has an inherited aspect to it. We DO have scientific evidence that this would be very unlikely to coorelate with skin color, since GENES themselves don't coorelate with skin color.
-2- Whatever intelligence is, it seems to have a very very complex relationship with our genes. we have looked hard for any connections between brain function and genes and we mostly have come up empty handed. There are connections between many brain disfunctions and specific genes, but when it comes to brain function, there seem to not be strong connections (not considering race, just genes in general.) So we have a second piece of scientific evidence that IQ very unlikely to connect to race.
Still I agree with you. I don't think CAS as trying to make any claim on this.
There's some new stuff out by behavioral geneticist Paige Harden exploring the links and limits to genetic explanations for intelligence. Freddie DeBoer's book, The Cult of Smart, also delves into this quite a bit (and argues persuasively that race is irrelevant). My sense is that the unsatisfying reality is that we just simply don't have this all figured out yet -- the field is in its infancy and, like everything, is politicized. Whatever the truth is, I believe strongly in disentangling people's quality of life from any measure (valid or invalid) of intelligence, talent or ability. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/disentangling-race-from-intelligence-and-genetics
To be honest, I was looking forward to Freddie's essay, and I came away quite disappointed. It has logical problem after problem, and is largely a muddled mess semantically.
He shoots down strawmen rather than trying to honestly address the hard issues. He mixes scientific assertions with morality assertions in ways that do not serve clear thinking.
Example. He makes two statements at the beginning. One is pretty scientific and falsifiable:
FdB> "Genetics play a substantial role in essentially all human outcomes, including what we define as "intelligence" or academic ability."
The other is a mess.
FdB> "Bigoted ideas about fundamental intellectual inequalities between demographic groups are wrong."
Is that an assertion about morality or about factual science? Which ideas on the subject fall under "bigoted" and which do not? What does "fundamental" mean in this context?
I sometimes like to "steelman" an argument - rather than rephrase it to an easily dismissed misimputation (strawmanning), rephrase it to make the best case. I cannot even steelman the above assertion, because I honestly don't know what he's trying to say.
FdB> "Black people aren't less intelligent than white, women aren't bad at science, Asian people do not have natural facility for math, etc."
This sounds like a profession of faith, not an attempt at clear meaningful statements. Let's try to state something more precise tho.
Here would be some actual falsifiable hypotheses which *might* underlie his assertion:
(1) "self-identified Americans of all racial and ethnic groups show the same average IQ at the group level when properly tested"
(2) "statistics about trained scientists show that women and men are equally successful in all fields of science"
(3) "as a population group, Asian-Americans have the same mathematics scores as any other racial or ethnic group"
I don't think that's what he's driving it. I think he may be trying to imply something about genetics, while trying to avoid using the word. Perhaps more like:
(1) "differing IQ results between American population groups have 0% genetic influence"
(2) "human females have genetically equal interest and ability to do science, so they would be equally represented in all sciences absent the effects of culture"
(3) "Asian-Americans' higher average math scores are completely due to cultural factors, with no genetic contribution."
But maybe not. Maybe he means:
(1) IQ varies within each racial/ethnic group, and the ranges highly overlap
(2) There are many good female scientists so it's a good option for interested young women
(3) If we all studied as hard as Asian students do, every group would achieve the same results
Overall, again I ask, is this meant to be a scientifically testable assertion, or a statement of political orthodoxy? The framing is much more suitable for the latter.
Alas, this kind of ambiguous and misleading framing just keeps occurring in Freddy's essay. I don't find much intellectual coherence to it; it's not as much that I dispute something so much as it's stated so clumsily that one often cannot even know whether they agree or disagree. Some of the above possible interpretations I would agree with, some I would not - based on my assessment of the cumulative evidence. But which did he mean?
My overall impression is that he's trying (1) to use science based arguments to defend genetics as very important to human traits (including intelligence) and also (2) to use morality based arguments and emotional terminology to distance himself from any population level issues. Thus the uneven tone. In discussing science based propositions, one can dispute their truth using evidence; one does not use labels like "bigoted" as scientific evidence for or against a hypothesis - that's injecting overt emotional and subjective biases which are the bane of real science. If one can prove a scientific hypothesis wrong, there is no need to impute evil motives to the hypothesizer - evidence over emotional manipulation.
Good questions that, alas, only Freddie can answer. He goes into more detail in his book if you're interested in digging deeper but his substack is paywalled (and he's not as inclined to engage with readers as our friend Steve QJ though sometimes he does).
I wish we could all just set the genetic aspect aside as not very relevant. I suspect that nobody frequenting Steve's substack has ever made, and will not be making, any argument which depends on IQ being substantially dependent on genetics.
I think the real discussions we need to have would be just as valid whether general intelligence was 0% genetic and 100% environmental, or vice versa, or something in between. That might be a valid science question for specialists to explore (even within the same race, or example using twin studies), but for our discussions, it's a distracting side track, yielding more heat than illumination.
Roughly about as often as they give birth to an equivalently less intelligent than average child? Assuming that "average intelligence" means somewhere close to the center of a reasonably normal distribution ("bell curve").
Could you say more about where you are going with that, what point you are exploring?
Thanks PGBR:
The only thing I would be quick to add to your statements (which I think I have heard Steve say in the past):
-1- The genetic make up of those with dark skin is incredible diverse, often having much more common genetic material with a non-black than with another black. Thus even if IQ has an inherited aspect to it. We DO have scientific evidence that this would be very unlikely to coorelate with skin color, since GENES themselves don't coorelate with skin color.
-2- Whatever intelligence is, it seems to have a very very complex relationship with our genes. we have looked hard for any connections between brain function and genes and we mostly have come up empty handed. There are connections between many brain disfunctions and specific genes, but when it comes to brain function, there seem to not be strong connections (not considering race, just genes in general.) So we have a second piece of scientific evidence that IQ very unlikely to connect to race.
Still I agree with you. I don't think CAS as trying to make any claim on this.
A beautiful summary of two of my main points about race, genetics and IQ. Thanks Dan.
+1
There's some new stuff out by behavioral geneticist Paige Harden exploring the links and limits to genetic explanations for intelligence. Freddie DeBoer's book, The Cult of Smart, also delves into this quite a bit (and argues persuasively that race is irrelevant). My sense is that the unsatisfying reality is that we just simply don't have this all figured out yet -- the field is in its infancy and, like everything, is politicized. Whatever the truth is, I believe strongly in disentangling people's quality of life from any measure (valid or invalid) of intelligence, talent or ability. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/disentangling-race-from-intelligence-and-genetics
To be honest, I was looking forward to Freddie's essay, and I came away quite disappointed. It has logical problem after problem, and is largely a muddled mess semantically.
He shoots down strawmen rather than trying to honestly address the hard issues. He mixes scientific assertions with morality assertions in ways that do not serve clear thinking.
Example. He makes two statements at the beginning. One is pretty scientific and falsifiable:
FdB> "Genetics play a substantial role in essentially all human outcomes, including what we define as "intelligence" or academic ability."
The other is a mess.
FdB> "Bigoted ideas about fundamental intellectual inequalities between demographic groups are wrong."
Is that an assertion about morality or about factual science? Which ideas on the subject fall under "bigoted" and which do not? What does "fundamental" mean in this context?
I sometimes like to "steelman" an argument - rather than rephrase it to an easily dismissed misimputation (strawmanning), rephrase it to make the best case. I cannot even steelman the above assertion, because I honestly don't know what he's trying to say.
FdB> "Black people aren't less intelligent than white, women aren't bad at science, Asian people do not have natural facility for math, etc."
This sounds like a profession of faith, not an attempt at clear meaningful statements. Let's try to state something more precise tho.
Here would be some actual falsifiable hypotheses which *might* underlie his assertion:
(1) "self-identified Americans of all racial and ethnic groups show the same average IQ at the group level when properly tested"
(2) "statistics about trained scientists show that women and men are equally successful in all fields of science"
(3) "as a population group, Asian-Americans have the same mathematics scores as any other racial or ethnic group"
I don't think that's what he's driving it. I think he may be trying to imply something about genetics, while trying to avoid using the word. Perhaps more like:
(1) "differing IQ results between American population groups have 0% genetic influence"
(2) "human females have genetically equal interest and ability to do science, so they would be equally represented in all sciences absent the effects of culture"
(3) "Asian-Americans' higher average math scores are completely due to cultural factors, with no genetic contribution."
But maybe not. Maybe he means:
(1) IQ varies within each racial/ethnic group, and the ranges highly overlap
(2) There are many good female scientists so it's a good option for interested young women
(3) If we all studied as hard as Asian students do, every group would achieve the same results
Overall, again I ask, is this meant to be a scientifically testable assertion, or a statement of political orthodoxy? The framing is much more suitable for the latter.
Alas, this kind of ambiguous and misleading framing just keeps occurring in Freddy's essay. I don't find much intellectual coherence to it; it's not as much that I dispute something so much as it's stated so clumsily that one often cannot even know whether they agree or disagree. Some of the above possible interpretations I would agree with, some I would not - based on my assessment of the cumulative evidence. But which did he mean?
My overall impression is that he's trying (1) to use science based arguments to defend genetics as very important to human traits (including intelligence) and also (2) to use morality based arguments and emotional terminology to distance himself from any population level issues. Thus the uneven tone. In discussing science based propositions, one can dispute their truth using evidence; one does not use labels like "bigoted" as scientific evidence for or against a hypothesis - that's injecting overt emotional and subjective biases which are the bane of real science. If one can prove a scientific hypothesis wrong, there is no need to impute evil motives to the hypothesizer - evidence over emotional manipulation.
Good questions that, alas, only Freddie can answer. He goes into more detail in his book if you're interested in digging deeper but his substack is paywalled (and he's not as inclined to engage with readers as our friend Steve QJ though sometimes he does).
I wish we could all just set the genetic aspect aside as not very relevant. I suspect that nobody frequenting Steve's substack has ever made, and will not be making, any argument which depends on IQ being substantially dependent on genetics.
I think the real discussions we need to have would be just as valid whether general intelligence was 0% genetic and 100% environmental, or vice versa, or something in between. That might be a valid science question for specialists to explore (even within the same race, or example using twin studies), but for our discussions, it's a distracting side track, yielding more heat than illumination.
How often does a pair of average-intelligence parents give birth to a very intelligent child?
Roughly about as often as they give birth to an equivalently less intelligent than average child? Assuming that "average intelligence" means somewhere close to the center of a reasonably normal distribution ("bell curve").
Could you say more about where you are going with that, what point you are exploring?