By and large, I tend to err on the side of respecting the current scientific consensus, and it appears to have been “differences in IQ are attribute to nurture factors mostly” since about the 1930-ies.
And how did you actually gain your view of what the current scientific consensus is? Remember, the popular media hasn’t managed to get its head around the fact that IQ even measures anything, when the scientific consensus says it does. If you only read what the New York Times says about IQ, you’d be much more likely to consider hypotheses that are empirically garbage, like Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. If the press can’t wrap its head around the validity of IQ, how can you even expect it to report faithfully on something that is both predicated on that fact, and ginormously controversial in its own right?
We know that IQ differences aren’t mostly nurture, and that has been quietly accepted by psychometricians for decades.
Also, I believe you’re starting with a false assumption about just how much power “rich white men” actually have in academia. The people that grant funding in these fields aren’t rich white businessmen, they’re mild-mannered scholars with tenure. Remember that this is at the cross-section between sociology and psychology, both of which tend to be populated by people with the cluster of political leanings variously called “leftist”, “liberal”, “progressive” or “socialist”, depending on who you ask. You must have read about the blank-slatist dogma of psychology that still persists in diminished form up to the present day.
(And FYI, the data suggests that rich white men are in 3rd place, behind East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews, and there are probably other ethnic groups that outperform WASPs that we haven’t managed to get good data for yet, the Parsis of India for example.)
EDIT
I’m pleased that you recognize that we’re circling dangerously close to the Noncentral Fallacy when using the term “racist” in these kinds of discussions. It can lead to Denotation/Connotation confusions that just drag down the quality of debate. I appreciate the irony in asking, but it would make things go smoother if we taboo it.
And how did you actually gain your view of what the current scientific consensus is? Remember, the popular media hasn’t managed to get its head around the fact that IQ even measures anything, when the scientific consensus says it does. If you only read what the New York Times says about IQ, you’d be much more likely to consider hypotheses that are empirically garbage, like Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. If the press can’t wrap its head around the validity of IQ, how can you even expect it to report faithfully on something that is both predicated on that fact, and ginormously controversial in its own right?
We know that IQ differences aren’t mostly nurture, and that has been quietly accepted by psychometricians for decades.
Also, I believe you’re starting with a false assumption about just how much power “rich white men” actually have in academia. The people that grant funding in these fields aren’t rich white businessmen, they’re mild-mannered scholars with tenure. Remember that this is at the cross-section between sociology and psychology, both of which tend to be populated by people with the cluster of political leanings variously called “leftist”, “liberal”, “progressive” or “socialist”, depending on who you ask. You must have read about the blank-slatist dogma of psychology that still persists in diminished form up to the present day.
(And FYI, the data suggests that rich white men are in 3rd place, behind East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews, and there are probably other ethnic groups that outperform WASPs that we haven’t managed to get good data for yet, the Parsis of India for example.)
EDIT
I’m pleased that you recognize that we’re circling dangerously close to the Noncentral Fallacy when using the term “racist” in these kinds of discussions. It can lead to Denotation/Connotation confusions that just drag down the quality of debate. I appreciate the irony in asking, but it would make things go smoother if we taboo it.