I left this one a long time without response while I gathered the energy to.
If I then start defending “The racial difference in IQ is genetic” with reference to evidence that there’s not much of interest going on with social network relations, then that is going to seem pointless to you because I am ignoring the real alternative hypothesis of lead poisoning and test bias.
All three are real alternative hypotheses. But what I had in mind was scientific evidence specific enough that would single that one hypothesis out from all possible reasonable hypotheses.
In the mathematical sense of “evidence,” not observing any different social network relations is evidence for black people being less intelligent for genetic reasons (under the assumption that they are, in fact, less intelligent, which itself remains to be shown). But that’s not the kind of evidence that I had in mind.
If someone (not me, because I’m not interested) asks you what scientific evidence do you have for black people being genetically less intelligent, and you have specific evidence to disconfirm the hypotheses that they (even though not you) believe to be the alternative ones (like lead poisoning or test bias), you can bundle that evidence to the evidence you were going to give them, compensating for the fact that each of you have different alternative hypotheses.
In other words, what you’re writing seems to me technically correct, but practically irrelevant (as far as converging to the truth goes).
It sounds to me like you are endorsing the possibility I bought up at first here?
Playing hypothesis whack-a-mole assumes that we have a small number of feasible hypotheses, but maybe really we have an exponential area of unexplored territory.
I left this one a long time without response while I gathered the energy to.
All three are real alternative hypotheses. But what I had in mind was scientific evidence specific enough that would single that one hypothesis out from all possible reasonable hypotheses.
In the mathematical sense of “evidence,” not observing any different social network relations is evidence for black people being less intelligent for genetic reasons (under the assumption that they are, in fact, less intelligent, which itself remains to be shown). But that’s not the kind of evidence that I had in mind.
If someone (not me, because I’m not interested) asks you what scientific evidence do you have for black people being genetically less intelligent, and you have specific evidence to disconfirm the hypotheses that they (even though not you) believe to be the alternative ones (like lead poisoning or test bias), you can bundle that evidence to the evidence you were going to give them, compensating for the fact that each of you have different alternative hypotheses.
In other words, what you’re writing seems to me technically correct, but practically irrelevant (as far as converging to the truth goes).
It sounds to me like you are endorsing the possibility I bought up at first here?