The question was:
“115. How would you describe your opinion of the idea of “human biodiversity”, as you understand the term? No Wiki page available, but essentially it is the belief that there are important genetic differences between human populations and that therefore ideas generally considered racist, such as different races having different average intelligence or personality traits, are in fact scientifically justified”.
No matter how we clusterize people into races, unless it’s some kind of a good randomization procedure I think the probability of their average traits being exactly equal is really small. I’m much less sure it’s scientifically justified to say so as I don’t know much about the state of research there.
I maybe kind of missed the “important” word there. Still...
No matter how we clusterize people into races, unless it’s some kind of a good randomization procedure I think the probability of their average traits being exactly equal is really small.
Scientific debates are never about whether two groups are “exactly equal”. The notion that the question is about whether something is “exactly equal” ignores the core about what the debate is about.
Important is indeed an important word in the sentence.
When trying to understand writing, don’t go for the strawman. Try to understand what could be meant. What differences in beliefs in the question about? It’s not a hard question if you look at it with genuine interest of understanding it.
When trying to understand writing, don’t go for the strawman. Try to understand what could be meant.
I try to, but here I could be overcompensating from sometimes “going too deep” with questions like that. If the question was “Do you believe interpopulational genetic differences in mental abilities or character traits are large enough to be a factor in policy making”, I’d answer “No” and maybe even “Hell no, for a multinational population”. But that seems like a very different question.
I don’t think “ignoring the context” is well described as going deep. Part of critical reading is to think about why someone writes what they write instead just trying to focus on the literal meaning of words. It’s rather only engaging with the surface.
It’s ignoring the context that can be described as not going deep enough. My other usual algorithm “if the question seems easy, look for a deeper meaning” is not without its faults either. Btw, what the context of a single question that asks me to describe my opinion of something as I understand the term actually is?
Alright, I got it, I fail critical reading forever. Yet. Growth mindset. What was the real meaning?
People in our society differ in how they think about genetic differences. There are people who think that race matters a great deal and other you think it doesn’t matter. It’s useful to have a metric that distinguishes those people.
If you have that metric you can ask interesting questions such as whether people who are well calibrated are more likely to score high on that metric.
It’s interesting whether the metric changes from year to year.
That means the question tries to point at a property that people disagree about. In this case it’s whether genetic differences are important. The question doesn’t define “important” but there are various right wing people such as neoreocons and red-pill-folks who identify with the term “human biodiversity”. The question doesn’t try to ask for a specific well-defined belief but points to that cluster of beliefs. It’s the same way that the feminism question doesn’t point to a well-defined belief. You don’t need a well-defined belief to get valuable information from a poll.
The question made it into the the survey because I complained about the usage of tribal labels such as liberal/conversative where people have to pick one choice as a way to measure political beliefs. I argued that focusing on agreement on issues is more meaningful and provides better data.
There are people who think that race matters a great deal and other you think it doesn’t matter. It’s useful to have a metric that distinguishes those people.
What about people who think that neither of these positions is defensible? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t go wrong by calling them metacontrarians.
Sure, I would still bet they’re going to be statistically significant if we get millions of people into the dataset. They may also have some important consequences in real life (a higher resistance to a specific disease may be important for a person with some usually small probability. A population of million that is more resistant to the disease than it could be is about million times that important). It just shouldn’t influence policies much. Though it can make a difference in healthcare… well, no. It actually can influence some policies and economic results for countries with different populations. Lactose tolerance may have effects on agriculture and the export structure, especially long term. The question singles out intelligence and personality traits for no apparent reasons but controversy, being hard to measure and being on the spiritual side of dualism. And probably being more involved in our ideas of human worthiness than height is.
I am not sure what are you arguing. The fact that there are important genetic differences between populations at the medical level is uncontroversial. The controversial issue is whether these differences, as some people put it, “stop at the neck”.
the question singles out intelligence and personality traits for no apparent reasons but controversy
Nope, there are apparent reasons. Intelligence of the populations is massively, hugely important, much more so than lactose intolerance or propensity for exotic diseases. See e.g. this or this.
Not really arguing anything. I’m asking if there is a rational non-meta reason to believe they do “stop at the neck” even if we throw away all the IQ/nations data.
Thanks for the reason I’ve missed. Are personal traits as important?
I’m asking if there is a rational non-meta reason to believe they do “stop at the neck” even if we throw away all the IQ/nations data.
Of course there are. The standard argument is that the history of human evolution suggests that increased intelligence and favorable personality traits were strongly selected for, and traits which are strongly selected tend to reach fixation rather quickly.
But then the difference in intelligence would be almost completely shared + nonshared environment. And twin studies suggest it’s very inheritable. It also seems to be a polygenic trait, so there can be quite a lot of new mutations there that haven’t yet reached fixation even if it’s strongly selected for.
I’m asking if there is a rational non-meta reason to believe they do “stop at the neck”
Not to my knowledge.
Are personal traits as important?
That is a more controversial subject. They are clearly less important than intelligence, but things like time preference (what kind of trade-offs do you make between a smaller reward now and a bigger reward later) or, say, propensity for violence got to be at least somewhat important.
The question was: “115. How would you describe your opinion of the idea of “human biodiversity”, as you understand the term? No Wiki page available, but essentially it is the belief that there are important genetic differences between human populations and that therefore ideas generally considered racist, such as different races having different average intelligence or personality traits, are in fact scientifically justified”.
No matter how we clusterize people into races, unless it’s some kind of a good randomization procedure I think the probability of their average traits being exactly equal is really small. I’m much less sure it’s scientifically justified to say so as I don’t know much about the state of research there.
I maybe kind of missed the “important” word there. Still...
Scientific debates are never about whether two groups are “exactly equal”. The notion that the question is about whether something is “exactly equal” ignores the core about what the debate is about.
Important is indeed an important word in the sentence.
When trying to understand writing, don’t go for the strawman. Try to understand what could be meant. What differences in beliefs in the question about? It’s not a hard question if you look at it with genuine interest of understanding it.
I try to, but here I could be overcompensating from sometimes “going too deep” with questions like that. If the question was “Do you believe interpopulational genetic differences in mental abilities or character traits are large enough to be a factor in policy making”, I’d answer “No” and maybe even “Hell no, for a multinational population”. But that seems like a very different question.
I don’t think “ignoring the context” is well described as going deep. Part of critical reading is to think about why someone writes what they write instead just trying to focus on the literal meaning of words. It’s rather only engaging with the surface.
It’s ignoring the context that can be described as not going deep enough. My other usual algorithm “if the question seems easy, look for a deeper meaning” is not without its faults either. Btw, what the context of a single question that asks me to describe my opinion of something as I understand the term actually is?
Alright, I got it, I fail critical reading forever. Yet. Growth mindset. What was the real meaning?
People in our society differ in how they think about genetic differences. There are people who think that race matters a great deal and other you think it doesn’t matter. It’s useful to have a metric that distinguishes those people.
If you have that metric you can ask interesting questions such as whether people who are well calibrated are more likely to score high on that metric. It’s interesting whether the metric changes from year to year.
That means the question tries to point at a property that people disagree about. In this case it’s whether genetic differences are important. The question doesn’t define “important” but there are various right wing people such as neoreocons and red-pill-folks who identify with the term “human biodiversity”. The question doesn’t try to ask for a specific well-defined belief but points to that cluster of beliefs. It’s the same way that the feminism question doesn’t point to a well-defined belief. You don’t need a well-defined belief to get valuable information from a poll.
The question made it into the the survey because I complained about the usage of tribal labels such as liberal/conversative where people have to pick one choice as a way to measure political beliefs. I argued that focusing on agreement on issues is more meaningful and provides better data.
What about people who think that neither of these positions is defensible? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t go wrong by calling them metacontrarians.
That why you don’t ask for a “yes”/”no” answer.
Thank you for the explaination.
Sorry, I’m still not getting it. Doesn’t matter.
There is the unstated but implied “differences which are significant and have important consequences in real life”.
Sure, I would still bet they’re going to be statistically significant if we get millions of people into the dataset. They may also have some important consequences in real life (a higher resistance to a specific disease may be important for a person with some usually small probability. A population of million that is more resistant to the disease than it could be is about million times that important). It just shouldn’t influence policies much. Though it can make a difference in healthcare… well, no. It actually can influence some policies and economic results for countries with different populations. Lactose tolerance may have effects on agriculture and the export structure, especially long term. The question singles out intelligence and personality traits for no apparent reasons but controversy, being hard to measure and being on the spiritual side of dualism. And probably being more involved in our ideas of human worthiness than height is.
I am not sure what are you arguing. The fact that there are important genetic differences between populations at the medical level is uncontroversial. The controversial issue is whether these differences, as some people put it, “stop at the neck”.
Nope, there are apparent reasons. Intelligence of the populations is massively, hugely important, much more so than lactose intolerance or propensity for exotic diseases. See e.g. this or this.
Not really arguing anything. I’m asking if there is a rational non-meta reason to believe they do “stop at the neck” even if we throw away all the IQ/nations data.
Thanks for the reason I’ve missed. Are personal traits as important?
Of course there are. The standard argument is that the history of human evolution suggests that increased intelligence and favorable personality traits were strongly selected for, and traits which are strongly selected tend to reach fixation rather quickly.
But then the difference in intelligence would be almost completely shared + nonshared environment. And twin studies suggest it’s very inheritable. It also seems to be a polygenic trait, so there can be quite a lot of new mutations there that haven’t yet reached fixation even if it’s strongly selected for.
Not to my knowledge.
That is a more controversial subject. They are clearly less important than intelligence, but things like time preference (what kind of trade-offs do you make between a smaller reward now and a bigger reward later) or, say, propensity for violence got to be at least somewhat important.