HBD isn’t predictive; it’s a null hypothesis. The predictive claim is the inverse: that there aren’t substantial ability differences between racial groups. Unfortunately you do have to mention race because that’s the claim that people are making; obviously the group of MIT students has a different mean IQ from the general population. So differences in outcome are because of different starting conditions, racism, or culture.
In particular, a belief in ~HBD means that, when black kids don’t get into Harvard at population-representational rates, the system is unfair SOMEWHERE. Maybe it’s a problem with lousy schools, maybe there’s racism in college admissions, maybe it’s generational poverty. But, as a society that values fairness, we have a duty to figure out what’s going wrong and try to fix it.
With ~HBD, the system is unfair and we have a duty to fix it. With HBD, the way things are might be fair and something like affirmative action might actually be unjust. That doesn’t mean they necessarily are fair—just because groups can be different doesn’t preclude racism—just that they aren’t automatically unfair.
With ~HBD, the system is unfair and we have a duty to fix it. With HBD, the way things are might be fair and something like affirmative action might actually be unjust.
Why do we have a duty to fix a broken system which we didn’t create, but no duty to fix genetic issues which produce the same problems?
That’s an odd question to ask, when you’re the one who excluded anything to do with eugenics as an implication of HBD...
I would say we have duties to fix the broken system in both cases, but the way to fix it is very different in each case, and so anyone interested in fixing it must care deeply about whether HBD is true. Personally, I really hope that once embryo editing becomes a reality, the government will simply subsidize it for everyone who wants it. It’ll be expensive, but the positive externalities will pay for it countless times over, it can be justified economically on narrow individual difference grounds even more easily than on group ‘fixing broken system’ grounds so HBD’s truth is unnecessary, subsidization resolves all the social and political issues, and is the ethical thing to do: no one deserves to be born broken because their parents were too broke or short-sighted to arrange for IVF and editing.
(I assume this is not a controversial position on a transhumanist forum...)
HBD isn’t predictive; it’s a null hypothesis. The predictive claim is the inverse: that there aren’t substantial ability differences between racial groups. Unfortunately you do have to mention race because that’s the claim that people are making; obviously the group of MIT students has a different mean IQ from the general population. So differences in outcome are because of different starting conditions, racism, or culture.
In particular, a belief in ~HBD means that, when black kids don’t get into Harvard at population-representational rates, the system is unfair SOMEWHERE. Maybe it’s a problem with lousy schools, maybe there’s racism in college admissions, maybe it’s generational poverty. But, as a society that values fairness, we have a duty to figure out what’s going wrong and try to fix it.
With ~HBD, the system is unfair and we have a duty to fix it. With HBD, the way things are might be fair and something like affirmative action might actually be unjust. That doesn’t mean they necessarily are fair—just because groups can be different doesn’t preclude racism—just that they aren’t automatically unfair.
Why do we have a duty to fix a broken system which we didn’t create, but no duty to fix genetic issues which produce the same problems?
That’s an odd question to ask, when you’re the one who excluded anything to do with eugenics as an implication of HBD...
I would say we have duties to fix the broken system in both cases, but the way to fix it is very different in each case, and so anyone interested in fixing it must care deeply about whether HBD is true. Personally, I really hope that once embryo editing becomes a reality, the government will simply subsidize it for everyone who wants it. It’ll be expensive, but the positive externalities will pay for it countless times over, it can be justified economically on narrow individual difference grounds even more easily than on group ‘fixing broken system’ grounds so HBD’s truth is unnecessary, subsidization resolves all the social and political issues, and is the ethical thing to do: no one deserves to be born broken because their parents were too broke or short-sighted to arrange for IVF and editing.
(I assume this is not a controversial position on a transhumanist forum...)