This question has been asked. There is no scientific evidence the racial group differences in IQ tests (if we want to define intelligence as IQ test results) are genetic.
Saying “no scientific evidence for X” conflates between “we did many experiments that were supposed to show X, and in none of them X was observed” and “we have never tested X properly (maybe we did a few experiments, but now we know they were methodologically flawed, so it’s best to ignore them)”. The former is evidence against X, the latter is not. I believe the situation with IQ is the latter.
As far as I know, the question of racial differences in intelligence has two difficult parts:
First, the concept of intelligence as a single dimension, and the validity of IQ tests.
The entire question would become meaningless if it turned out that there is simply no such thing as intelligence: some people happen to be better at X, other people happen to be better at Y, there is no connection between them; even if one person is better than other in nine different tasks, it does not help us predict whether they will be better at the tenth task. Known as the theory of multiple intelligences. (Although, even if this was the case, we could still talk about racial difference in specific tasks. Perhaps it would be less politically sensitive if it turned out that everyone has an advantage at something. Or maybe not, because people would resent being worse at high-status things, even if they were better at low-status things. Arguably, being better at low-status might even make it worse from certain perspective.)
Assuming that there is a meaningful single dimension of intelligence, the question is how well do the IQ tests measure it. Naively, “many tasks of different kind” should correlate with intelligence, but maybe it also correlates with something else. If there are complicated instructions in English, it disadvantages people for whom English is a second language, and dyslexics. If 20% of questions are about American literature, and 20% are about American history, it disadvantages immigrants, and people who had shitty education. And yes, the early IQ tests had all kinds of such problems, because it took some time to figure this out.
I believe the scientific consensus about this part is that (1) intelligence as a single dimension is a meaningful concept, and (2) while many old IQ tests are highly “culturally loaded”, the current ones are much better.
Second, considering that intelligence is partially inherited and partially influenced by environment (brain injury, parasitic load, childhood malnutrition, sleep deprivation, chronic stress, who knows what else), are we actually talking about the “genetic part of intelligence” or the “manifested intelligence”?
Obviously a person motivated by hysteria would not pay attention to this distinction, and would call both of them “racism”, but these make two very different predictions. If there is a difference between races in manifested intelligence, but not in the genetic part of intelligence—that would mean we have a technical problem that we can fix (e.g. by providing free lunches at school), and then the differences between the races will disappear, yay racial equality! (Yes, I am simplifying it.) On the other hand, if there are differences in the genetic part of intelligence, then we have to accept for a fact that the differences between manifested intelligence will stay here forever (or until we get much better at genetic engineering) and the different outcomes at school and whatever are not evidence of racism.
Here, please correct me if I am wrong, but I think the differences in manifested intelligence exist. But that is the less important of the two questions. More important is, what exactly causes them.
And here, I believe, the best available answer is “we don’t know (everyone is free to follow their priors)”.
A technical problem with proving causality is that you can’t treat race as an independent variable. You cannot e.g. take thousand white babies, randomly genetically engineer half of them to black, give them all for adoption to randomly selected families (preferably literally colorblind families, living in colorblind communities), and then give them IQ tests 20 years later.
The fact that proving causality is difficult doesn’t mean it is impossible, but you would need to be much more careful. Considering that bad actors exist (scientists willing to falsify their research in either direction in the name of ideology), and lot of psychological research does not replicate anyway, maybe our chances to research this properly are close to zero, and thus it simply isn’t worth doing. Maybe.
That is not the same as having evidence that there are no differences. The fact that we have no conclusive proof of differences is a weak evidence against the differences. The fact that different racial groups have different outcomes is a weak evidence in favor of the differences. I am not sure how to compare these two, so I just assume they maybe cancel out and say “I don’t know”. In such situation, it is a tradition among scientists to say “more research is needed”.
There are social consequences for repeatedly raising this possibility, because it’s strong Bayesian evidence the person asking it is dishonest (since they’re just asking questions while ignoring evidence)
Honestly, what evidence are you talking about? (I hope it is not Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, or anything written by S. J. Gould or Nassim Taleb.) Evidence that the existing research sucks? I agree, but that is different from having evidence about the actual differences or a lack thereof.
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A thought experiment:
Imagine that in year 2100, scientists figure out that Black Americans have have an allergy to a certain plant that does not grow in Africa but is a part of diet in USA. The effects of the allergy are mostly difficult to notice, but among other things its regular consumption decreases the IQ of a child by 15 points on average. All you need to do is remove this plant from diet of children up to ten years old.
The scientists will say: “We could have easily figured this out hundred years ago, but in the 21st century there was a strong taboo against exploring the relations between IQ and race.” Assuming you are still alive in 2100, will you say that the taboo was worth it?
(I am not saying this will happen. It’s just an intuition pump for a possible non-racist motivation for science.)
It’s ok for criminalists to investigate whether Jeffrey shot William. That’s not a problem. (Even though it can be if they’re motivated by disliking Jeffrey, but even if that’s the case, that’s not the same as making the statement that some unbiased criminalists shouldn’t investigate him. (Edit: The problem there would be more complicated.))
But if Ordinary Internet Folks start talking about that maybe Jeffrey shot William in the absence of any evidence, they give away that they don’t like Jeffrey, and if the club of Nice People has a rule against disliking Jeffrey, they can throw such people out of the room. That doesn’t imply they’re claiming or implying that it’s wrong to investigate whether Jeffrey is or isn’t the culprit.
I’m agreeing with this, primarily because the discussions around Race and IQ are in the area of both little evidence either way, and it isn’t an impactful question in the first place.
Little evidence either way is traditionally interpreted as: “the absence of strong evidence for their side is strong evidence for our side”.
I support the idea that people who talk about inferiority of others, with little evidence, should shut up, or be kicked out of polite society. But the same should also apply to people who cry “X-ism”, with little evidence, just because they noticed that e.g. French people are underrepresented among Tetris players.
Little evidence either way means little evidence either way. If I see a French person playing Tetris, it is none of my business. If I see a group of ten people playing Tetris and none of them is French, it is also none of my business. Only if I have specific evidence of French people being treated unfairly, then I can comment on French people being treated unfairly.
The way people use the relations between IQ and race is to cop-out of the responsibility for human development in less developed areas. There is no actual practical reason to focus our attention on the relationship between IQ and race. People want to do it because of their own ego. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be productive for society. In fact, it’s a lot more counterproductive in terms of where we are going.
The reason why something lives in your head rent free is mostly a personal one. Of course, individuals are affected by their environment. Some people’s minds are more at the mercy of others.
The way people use the relations between IQ and race is to cop-out of the responsibility for human development in less developed areas. There is no actual practical reason to focus our attention on the relationship between IQ and race. People want to do it because of their own ego. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be productive for society. In fact, it’s a lot more counterproductive in terms of where we are going.
The reason why something lives in your head rent free is mostly a personal one. Of course, individuals are affected by their environment. Some people’s minds are more at the mercy of others.
Honestly, I have to agree with this take. Racial IQ discussions are more or less not worth it to study, even if we don’t fully buy the idea that everyone must be equal. Any plausible answer to the question would mostly change things very little.
Reminds me of: The Phrase “No Evidence” Is A Red Flag For Bad Science Communication
Saying “no scientific evidence for X” conflates between “we did many experiments that were supposed to show X, and in none of them X was observed” and “we have never tested X properly (maybe we did a few experiments, but now we know they were methodologically flawed, so it’s best to ignore them)”. The former is evidence against X, the latter is not. I believe the situation with IQ is the latter.
As far as I know, the question of racial differences in intelligence has two difficult parts:
First, the concept of intelligence as a single dimension, and the validity of IQ tests.
The entire question would become meaningless if it turned out that there is simply no such thing as intelligence: some people happen to be better at X, other people happen to be better at Y, there is no connection between them; even if one person is better than other in nine different tasks, it does not help us predict whether they will be better at the tenth task. Known as the theory of multiple intelligences. (Although, even if this was the case, we could still talk about racial difference in specific tasks. Perhaps it would be less politically sensitive if it turned out that everyone has an advantage at something. Or maybe not, because people would resent being worse at high-status things, even if they were better at low-status things. Arguably, being better at low-status might even make it worse from certain perspective.)
Assuming that there is a meaningful single dimension of intelligence, the question is how well do the IQ tests measure it. Naively, “many tasks of different kind” should correlate with intelligence, but maybe it also correlates with something else. If there are complicated instructions in English, it disadvantages people for whom English is a second language, and dyslexics. If 20% of questions are about American literature, and 20% are about American history, it disadvantages immigrants, and people who had shitty education. And yes, the early IQ tests had all kinds of such problems, because it took some time to figure this out.
I believe the scientific consensus about this part is that (1) intelligence as a single dimension is a meaningful concept, and (2) while many old IQ tests are highly “culturally loaded”, the current ones are much better.
Second, considering that intelligence is partially inherited and partially influenced by environment (brain injury, parasitic load, childhood malnutrition, sleep deprivation, chronic stress, who knows what else), are we actually talking about the “genetic part of intelligence” or the “manifested intelligence”?
Obviously a person motivated by hysteria would not pay attention to this distinction, and would call both of them “racism”, but these make two very different predictions. If there is a difference between races in manifested intelligence, but not in the genetic part of intelligence—that would mean we have a technical problem that we can fix (e.g. by providing free lunches at school), and then the differences between the races will disappear, yay racial equality! (Yes, I am simplifying it.) On the other hand, if there are differences in the genetic part of intelligence, then we have to accept for a fact that the differences between manifested intelligence will stay here forever (or until we get much better at genetic engineering) and the different outcomes at school and whatever are not evidence of racism.
Here, please correct me if I am wrong, but I think the differences in manifested intelligence exist. But that is the less important of the two questions. More important is, what exactly causes them.
And here, I believe, the best available answer is “we don’t know (everyone is free to follow their priors)”.
A technical problem with proving causality is that you can’t treat race as an independent variable. You cannot e.g. take thousand white babies, randomly genetically engineer half of them to black, give them all for adoption to randomly selected families (preferably literally colorblind families, living in colorblind communities), and then give them IQ tests 20 years later.
The fact that proving causality is difficult doesn’t mean it is impossible, but you would need to be much more careful. Considering that bad actors exist (scientists willing to falsify their research in either direction in the name of ideology), and lot of psychological research does not replicate anyway, maybe our chances to research this properly are close to zero, and thus it simply isn’t worth doing. Maybe.
That is not the same as having evidence that there are no differences. The fact that we have no conclusive proof of differences is a weak evidence against the differences. The fact that different racial groups have different outcomes is a weak evidence in favor of the differences. I am not sure how to compare these two, so I just assume they maybe cancel out and say “I don’t know”. In such situation, it is a tradition among scientists to say “more research is needed”.
Honestly, what evidence are you talking about? (I hope it is not Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, or anything written by S. J. Gould or Nassim Taleb.) Evidence that the existing research sucks? I agree, but that is different from having evidence about the actual differences or a lack thereof.
*
A thought experiment:
Imagine that in year 2100, scientists figure out that Black Americans have have an allergy to a certain plant that does not grow in Africa but is a part of diet in USA. The effects of the allergy are mostly difficult to notice, but among other things its regular consumption decreases the IQ of a child by 15 points on average. All you need to do is remove this plant from diet of children up to ten years old.
The scientists will say: “We could have easily figured this out hundred years ago, but in the 21st century there was a strong taboo against exploring the relations between IQ and race.” Assuming you are still alive in 2100, will you say that the taboo was worth it?
(I am not saying this will happen. It’s just an intuition pump for a possible non-racist motivation for science.)
To use an analogy:
It’s ok for criminalists to investigate whether Jeffrey shot William. That’s not a problem. (Even though it can be if they’re motivated by disliking Jeffrey, but even if that’s the case, that’s not the same as making the statement that some unbiased criminalists shouldn’t investigate him. (Edit: The problem there would be more complicated.))
But if Ordinary Internet Folks start talking about that maybe Jeffrey shot William in the absence of any evidence, they give away that they don’t like Jeffrey, and if the club of Nice People has a rule against disliking Jeffrey, they can throw such people out of the room. That doesn’t imply they’re claiming or implying that it’s wrong to investigate whether Jeffrey is or isn’t the culprit.
I’m agreeing with this, primarily because the discussions around Race and IQ are in the area of both little evidence either way, and it isn’t an impactful question in the first place.
Little evidence either way is traditionally interpreted as: “the absence of strong evidence for their side is strong evidence for our side”.
I support the idea that people who talk about inferiority of others, with little evidence, should shut up, or be kicked out of polite society. But the same should also apply to people who cry “X-ism”, with little evidence, just because they noticed that e.g. French people are underrepresented among Tetris players.
Little evidence either way means little evidence either way. If I see a French person playing Tetris, it is none of my business. If I see a group of ten people playing Tetris and none of them is French, it is also none of my business. Only if I have specific evidence of French people being treated unfairly, then I can comment on French people being treated unfairly.
The way people use the relations between IQ and race is to cop-out of the responsibility for human development in less developed areas. There is no actual practical reason to focus our attention on the relationship between IQ and race. People want to do it because of their own ego. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be productive for society. In fact, it’s a lot more counterproductive in terms of where we are going.
The reason why something lives in your head rent free is mostly a personal one. Of course, individuals are affected by their environment. Some people’s minds are more at the mercy of others.
Honestly, I have to agree with this take. Racial IQ discussions are more or less not worth it to study, even if we don’t fully buy the idea that everyone must be equal. Any plausible answer to the question would mostly change things very little.