Ok, define “overtly”. What about saying that race is correlated with intelligence, propensity to commit violent crime, and a bunch of other important stuff?
That such things are often left hanging probably squicks out a lot of people. Being able to say that certain races are statistically more violent and less intelligent than others has historically been correlated with lynch mobs and skewed priorities when making arrests. Recurse a few levels, and what you’re really saying is “After the Renaissance, Europeans took over the world and its resources, and the resource distribution has been slow to change since”. African American’s tend to be descended from slaves who were treated poorly before and after emancipation, while the San Francisco Bay area still has all that money from the Gold Rush. Of course there are going to be statistical differences, given those starting points.
[edit: What I’m saying, I think, is that naked statistics on these topics is not new, and in the past, were used as excuses for things that were physically and emotionally harmful. To simply state them pattern-matches to nineteenth century style racism/sexism/etc, against which the underclass rebelled after sufficient abuse.]
Recurse a few levels, and what you’re really saying is “After the Renaissance, Europeans took over the world and its resources, and the resource distribution has been slow to change since”.
Remind me again, why do Han Chinese have higher IQ than Europeans?
There is an unfortunate American tendency to treat all issues of race in the purely white-and-black context.
The world is much more diverse than that. Most people are brown.
What you’ve said is reasonable (and I’ve read your link before). I’ve also read that issues such as poor nutrition during pregnancy can have heritable effects lasting for several generations (so by this model, even if all the impoverished people in the world were suddenly given all the best resources, one wouldn’t expect to see significant intelligence/behavior improvements until their great-great-grandchildren or so). The suggestion of environmental influences was more an argument against genetic explanations as a curiosity stopper (as you said, there is no reason that there should be a singular mechanism of effect for the observed disparities).
In the context of this thread, though, I was replying to the question of whether simply pointing out the statistics might be seen as overt racism by outsiders. “Blacks are over all less intelligent and more prone to violent crime as compared to whites and Asians” sounds very much like what the educated nineteenth century racists said, the same way “I like eugenics” sounds like “I like genocide” to someone who could reasonably expect to be victimized by policies based on those ideas.
(Similarly, “Blacks are less likely to be employed compared to whites, all things equal” and “blacks are disproportionately likely to be targeted by police” sound like naive progressivism, but they are also true statements.)
I’ve also read that issues such as poor nutrition during pregnancy can have heritable effects lasting for several generations (so by this model, even if all the impoverished people in the world were suddenly given all the best resources, one wouldn’t expect to see significant intelligence/behavior improvements until their great-great-grandchildren or so).
For a bayesian who thinks about whether to hire a black person or a white one, it’s irrelevant whether intelligence difference are due to parents being poor and haven’t eaten enough food during pregnance or whether they are due to genetic differences.
As far as I understand the social justice movement they would approve of both justifications because both are essentially that the person gets judged by their background and get’s treated as a member of an underclass.
I can’t remember someone on lesswrong making a claim as strong as claiming that black should be stopped from procreating by eugenic measures. You find people who argue that overpopulation and African getting children is the central problem of humanity at the moment but nobody is making the argument directly.
Nutrition is discussed in the link as a possible explanation.
In the context of this thread, though, I was replying to the question of whether simply pointing out the statistics might be seen as overt racism by outsiders. “Blacks are over all less intelligent and more prone to violent crime as compared to whites and Asians” sounds very much like what the educated nineteenth century racists said, the same way “I like eugenics” sounds like “I like genocide” to someone who could reasonably expect to be victimized by policies based on those ideas.
I think it’s less a curiosity stopper and more a controversy stopper? The idea being that if there’s an environmental cause of something bad AND a genetic cause, we can more easily and with less controversy start with addressing the environmental cause and still do a lot of good.
Being able to say that certain races are statistically more violent and less intelligent than others has historically been correlated with lynch mobs and skewed priorities when making arrests.
But that’s qualitatively different from the way a lot of people who are religious are wrong. Religious people are often wrong on many factual questions.
On Lesswrong I would see no case where religious views should get forbidden because they are dangerous and religious people do awful things.
Ok, define “overtly”. What about saying that race is correlated with intelligence, propensity to commit violent crime, and a bunch of other important stuff?
That such things are often left hanging probably squicks out a lot of people. Being able to say that certain races are statistically more violent and less intelligent than others has historically been correlated with lynch mobs and skewed priorities when making arrests. Recurse a few levels, and what you’re really saying is “After the Renaissance, Europeans took over the world and its resources, and the resource distribution has been slow to change since”. African American’s tend to be descended from slaves who were treated poorly before and after emancipation, while the San Francisco Bay area still has all that money from the Gold Rush. Of course there are going to be statistical differences, given those starting points.
[edit: What I’m saying, I think, is that naked statistics on these topics is not new, and in the past, were used as excuses for things that were physically and emotionally harmful. To simply state them pattern-matches to nineteenth century style racism/sexism/etc, against which the underclass rebelled after sufficient abuse.]
Remind me again, why do Han Chinese have higher IQ than Europeans?
There is an unfortunate American tendency to treat all issues of race in the purely white-and-black context.
The world is much more diverse than that. Most people are brown.
.
Exposure to lead affects intelligence and criminality
More on the subject
Its very unfortunate that lead and lead are homographs, makes it hard to Google information on the subject.
What you’ve said is reasonable (and I’ve read your link before). I’ve also read that issues such as poor nutrition during pregnancy can have heritable effects lasting for several generations (so by this model, even if all the impoverished people in the world were suddenly given all the best resources, one wouldn’t expect to see significant intelligence/behavior improvements until their great-great-grandchildren or so). The suggestion of environmental influences was more an argument against genetic explanations as a curiosity stopper (as you said, there is no reason that there should be a singular mechanism of effect for the observed disparities).
In the context of this thread, though, I was replying to the question of whether simply pointing out the statistics might be seen as overt racism by outsiders. “Blacks are over all less intelligent and more prone to violent crime as compared to whites and Asians” sounds very much like what the educated nineteenth century racists said, the same way “I like eugenics” sounds like “I like genocide” to someone who could reasonably expect to be victimized by policies based on those ideas.
(Similarly, “Blacks are less likely to be employed compared to whites, all things equal” and “blacks are disproportionately likely to be targeted by police” sound like naive progressivism, but they are also true statements.)
For a bayesian who thinks about whether to hire a black person or a white one, it’s irrelevant whether intelligence difference are due to parents being poor and haven’t eaten enough food during pregnance or whether they are due to genetic differences.
As far as I understand the social justice movement they would approve of both justifications because both are essentially that the person gets judged by their background and get’s treated as a member of an underclass.
I can’t remember someone on lesswrong making a claim as strong as claiming that black should be stopped from procreating by eugenic measures. You find people who argue that overpopulation and African getting children is the central problem of humanity at the moment but nobody is making the argument directly.
Nutrition is discussed in the link as a possible explanation.
Fair enough.
test
I think it’s less a curiosity stopper and more a controversy stopper? The idea being that if there’s an environmental cause of something bad AND a genetic cause, we can more easily and with less controversy start with addressing the environmental cause and still do a lot of good.
But that’s qualitatively different from the way a lot of people who are religious are wrong. Religious people are often wrong on many factual questions.
On Lesswrong I would see no case where religious views should get forbidden because they are dangerous and religious people do awful things.