Suppose scientific racism is correct. How will you react? How will society?

[Duke Leto]

Ah good, another fucking degenerate bag of human excrement to add to my Ignore List.

Been loathesome, ApostateAbe, rot in Hell.

I hope you can see this, because I’m doing it as hard as I can!

 

[repoman]

For the sake of argument, if there really were significant differences in average IQ between races, the answer in my mind would be simple: intervention. Supporters of "scientific racism" often discount the Flynn Effect as the cause of racial differences that are found, but I wouldn't be too sure. The human brain is highly malleable, and the abstract reasoning that IQ tests look at has clearly been going up as we expose children in each generation to more and more abstract concepts. If there were some innate racial differences that gave certain races a leg up in developing those abstract reasoning skills, I think the gap could be closed by a focused intervention training racially disadvantaged groups in abstract reasoning skills from an early age.

For the sake of argument of course. I've yet to see a study that properly controls for all confounding factors when comparing the IQ of racial groups.

I think that this will have to be answered by looking at specific genetics related to intelligence and then looking at frequencies in populations.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Your initial hypothesis, if accepted, still doesn't impact my view. It only impacts those who see groups first and foremost, and only after that do they see individuals. Progressives are the most prone to this of any group, but liberals and conservatives also fall for it.

So suppose there were group tendencies, and these tendencies can be plotted on a bell curve. That still means nothing about the individual. Even if it means any given individual is more likely to have certain characteristics, it doesn't mean that individual WILL have those characteristics.

Racists are in many ways the opposite side of the same coin as the progressive anti-racists. They are just backing the wrong race horse.

You seem to have your own first and foremost groups you consider.

Your initial hypothesis, if accepted, still doesn't impact my view. It only impacts those who see groups first and foremost, and only after that do they see individuals. Progressives are the most prone to this of any group, but liberals and conservatives also fall for it.

So suppose there were group tendencies, and these tendencies can be plotted on a bell curve. That still means nothing about the individual. Even if it means any given individual is more likely to have certain characteristics, it doesn't mean that individual WILL have those characteristics.

Racists are in many ways the opposite side of the same coin as the progressive anti-racists. They are just backing the wrong race horse.

You say you don't see groups first and the first thing you do after saying that is group people.

Think about that. Take your time. Not taking your time is what likely led to the post above.

When a person subscribes to an ideology that sees groups first and foremost, I am not to blame for that.

 

[bilby]

You seem to have your own first and foremost groups you consider.

Your initial hypothesis, if accepted, still doesn't impact my view. It only impacts those who see groups first and foremost, and only after that do they see individuals. Progressives are the most prone to this of any group, but liberals and conservatives also fall for it.

So suppose there were group tendencies, and these tendencies can be plotted on a bell curve. That still means nothing about the individual. Even if it means any given individual is more likely to have certain characteristics, it doesn't mean that individual WILL have those characteristics.

Racists are in many ways the opposite side of the same coin as the progressive anti-racists. They are just backing the wrong race horse.

You say you don't see groups first and the first thing you do after saying that is group people.

Think about that. Take your time. Not taking your time is what likely led to the post above.

When a person subscribes to an ideology that sees groups first and foremost, I am not to blame for that.

You are when that person is you, though.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Though brilliance exists in every race, some of the averages are: whites with 100 IQ, American blacks, Arabs, and Latinos with 85, Pacific Islanders with 90, Northeast Asians with 105, Ashkenazi Jews with 110, and African blacks with 70 (each of these numbers represents the peak of each respective bell curve).

Wouldn't the range of the curves matter more than where the averages lie?

If the curves are all plus or minus 20, then a difference of 5 points between averages isn't something to get het up about.

 

[Unbeatable]

When has this happened?

When in history has saying that one group is inferior to another led to treating the supposed inferior group better? When has a declaration of supremacy led to fairer and more just society?

Excuse me for sullying this sea of pessimism. Pardon my pie-in-the-sky optimism. To think our elected officials might see the potential ramifications of such evidence and try to get in front of it. White Americans will surely expect African Americans to be put in their place. Civil order will break down. All hope is lost.

Dude, every one of your sentences had a "perhaps" or a "maybe". That means that the most you could be inferred to be claiming was that these positive outcomes you describe are possible. It's one thing to say that something positive is possible; it's another topic altogether to evaluate its likelihood. You did the former, which makes Athena's questions either a misguided attempt to pin you down to a claim you never actually made, or an invitation to consider the topic of how likely your hypothetical scenarios are to come to pass. But no, you opted for the defensive melodramatic reaction that makes you look like you actually are on the hook for defending the claim you never made.

 

[untermensche]

What if humans could fly?

What if it started raining diamonds?

Fanciful what-ifs that will never materialize are little but masturbation.

 

[Toni]

For the sake of argument, if there really were significant differences in average IQ between races, the answer in my mind would be simple: intervention. Supporters of "scientific racism" often discount the Flynn Effect as the cause of racial differences that are found, but I wouldn't be too sure. The human brain is highly malleable, and the abstract reasoning that IQ tests look at has clearly been going up as we expose children in each generation to more and more abstract concepts. If there were some innate racial differences that gave certain races a leg up in developing those abstract reasoning skills, I think the gap could be closed by a focused intervention training racially disadvantaged groups in abstract reasoning skills from an early age.

For the sake of argument of course. I've yet to see a study that properly controls for all confounding factors when comparing the IQ of racial groups.

I think that this will have to be answered by looking at specific genetics related to intelligence and then looking at frequencies in populations.

Of course, there will need to be some agreement as to what constitutes intelligence and whether it can be accurately quantified and if it can be accurately quantified, what the best methods for so quantifying intelligence and then how to collect and organize data.

 

[ApostateAbe]

For the sake of argument, if there really were significant differences in average IQ between races, the answer in my mind would be simple: intervention. Supporters of "scientific racism" often discount the Flynn Effect as the cause of racial differences that are found, but I wouldn't be too sure. The human brain is highly malleable, and the abstract reasoning that IQ tests look at has clearly been going up as we expose children in each generation to more and more abstract concepts. If there were some innate racial differences that gave certain races a leg up in developing those abstract reasoning skills, I think the gap could be closed by a focused intervention training racially disadvantaged groups in abstract reasoning skills from an early age.

For the sake of argument of course. I've yet to see a study that properly controls for all confounding factors when comparing the IQ of racial groups.

That is respectable. The Flynn effect really was a significant environmental effect, but the downer is that it did not close the race gaps, as the environmental effect (probably educational systems that train students to score progressively better on tests) affected all races roughly equally, and we would expect other interventions to have similar effects. In another thread, I suggested going to the source of the gap: genetic engineering. The genes for intelligence will be fully identified within a few decades (after the first large-scale survey of genes and intelligence with N on the order of a hundred thousand people), and many liberals will remain in denial about the science, but I suggest independents and open-minded liberals seize the science and use it as an opportunity to finally close the racial gaps in intelligence. I realize of course that you do not yet accept the existence of genetic racial gaps in intelligence.

 

[Axulus]

Scientific racism, among other things, is the belief that races of people differ in average intelligence largely because of genetic differences. And I believe it. It is not an easy belief to accept. Not just because of the universal taboo against it in the western world, as though it is the distillation of all that is evil, backward and stupid. But also because of a fear of a persisting global problem that will only get far worse with time. It means races will never be equal. They will always be at odds in economics and politics. Further, when most people finally accept this reality, it seems highly likely that the consequences for society will be little more than awful. For a lover of science, it is easy to get wrapped up in the idyllic belief that: if only everyone would accept the accurate science, we would all better solve problems and live better happier richer lives. With scientific racism, the opposite is plausible: accurate knowledge may be highly disruptive and destructive. It won't happen with a lot of scientific racists arguing endlessly on the Internet, but it will happen when the genes for intelligence variations are identified and found to vary in frequency among races. Rhetoric can no longer dismiss or spin the significance of such a scientific discovery, and most people will finally be convinced.

I won't ask you to fully accept my perspective. I will put aside all the arguments about whether or not it is correct. Accept this idea temporarily only for the purpose of a thought experiment: hypothetically, it will be proved with genetic mapping that races of people have the average intelligence scores they do mostly because of genetic differences. Though brilliance exists in every race, some of the averages are: whites with 100 IQ, American blacks, Arabs, and Latinos with 85, Pacific Islanders with 90, Northeast Asians with 105, Ashkenazi Jews with 110, and African blacks with 70 (each of these numbers represents the peak of each respective bell curve). Further, hypothetically, it will be proved that these genetic intelligence variations mostly cause the differences in wealth among races. So, two questions:

(1) How would this hypothetical science change your general perspective of politics and society? Would this be a good reason in your opinion to HATE those members of races with lower intelligence? Would you drastically change your politics? Would you join racist organizations? How would you react?

Unless someone hates or is bigoted towards people of lower intelligence or groups of people who have lower intelligence, it is completely irrational to hate individuals of a race that is lower than average intelligence among humans as a whole.

If verified to a degree of scientific confidence, my politics would change to where I would be less concerned about the achievement gap, economic disparities, and crime conviction rate, but more concerned with aiding all individuals with having enough to cover the basic necessities of life and making sure that everyone has a good shot to achieve their potential. What really concerns liberals is the first three items in my list. As a result, even entertaining the idea is blasphemy worthy of hellfire amongst some. However, I follow the evidence wherever it leads. While I think there is a reasonable possibility it is true, I am not nearly as convinced by the current state of the evidence as you are. If the genetic evidence is forthcoming like you believe, I will change my views once that evidence is presented.

(2) Would you expect society in general to become more divided along race lines? Would there be greater racial hatred? Xenophobia? Wars? Jim Crow laws? Racial police brutality? Race riots? Lynchings? Genocides? What would be your fears?

Yes, racial tensions will increase - too many humans are pathologically stupid, racist, bigoted, and unable to be convinced via evidential and rational means. Which is why the left is so dead set against the possibility. The current state of evidence is weak, but I can easily imagine them changing their position to the truth of the matter being far too dangerous to discuss, so there must be a social taboo against discussing such dangerous ideas.

 

[tupac chopra]

Further, hypothetically, it will be proved that these genetic intelligence variations mostly cause the differences in wealth among races.

So white people might have more wealth because they do better in IQ tests, which they themselves designed?

Maybe white people are just more sociopathic?

Do you find it just a tad funny that you, a white person, are proposing or implying that white people might have so much wealth because they do IQ tests well

 

[Axulus]

Further, hypothetically, it will be proved that these genetic intelligence variations mostly cause the differences in wealth among races.

So white people might have more wealth because they do better in IQ tests, which they themselves designed?

Maybe white people are just more sociopathic?

Do you find it just a tad funny that you, a white person, are proposing or implying that white people might have so much wealth because they do IQ tests well

You are confusing the test for the attributes being measured. Your whole response falls victim to this mistake.

Furthermore, white people who do poorly on the test obtain less wealth and income thoughout their lives on average, so you compound one mistake with yet another false premise.

 

[tupac chopra]

So white people might have more wealth because they do better in IQ tests, which they themselves designed?

Maybe white people are just more sociopathic?

Do you find it just a tad funny that you, a white person, are proposing or implying that white people might have so much wealth because they do IQ tests well

You are confusing the test for the attributes being measured. Your whole response falls victim to this mistake.

Furthermore, white people who do poorly on the test obtain less wealth and income thoughout their lives on average, so you compound one mistake with yet another false premise.

I think my post went over your head

 

[arkirk]

Because it's the result of socioeconomic factors, not racial factors. Once you control properly for the socioeconomic factors race drops out as a predictor of how well a student will do.

so I checked out the book at the library that was unafraid to present the theory: The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray. The book made the case very elegantly that intelligent scores matter, they are genetically heritable, and they are responsible for the economic differences between classes and races.

Intelligence certainly is heritable. That doesn't mean there are substantial racial differences, though.

What exactly is being plotted on the bell curve? These IQ or other tests are really only a measure of the likelihood of the person being tested producing and EXPECTED ANSWER. These tests are always seeking conformity of thought patterns in the person being tested with the thought patterns of the person or persons giving the test. So in reality you are plotting how well the tester's perception of the "correct" answer is delivered to the tester. The bell curve is only a plot of the degree of conformity of the tested person's answer set with that expected by the tester. There can be many reasons for high and low scores on these tests that are not in the least related to the intellectual capacity of the person being scored. Tests can determine if a person can be expected to work in a certain manner understood by the testers and often related to employment or what might be called aptitude. Again, these bell curves indicate the degree of commonality of education of those taking the test with those giving the tests. In the end, these tests just turn out to be wish lists the testers put together hoping for a big win. The person taking the test is expected to be very desirous of receiving a high score. They are all dependent on the individual's development of the skills that are tested and do not measure skills the testers regard as unimportant. Sometimes seemingly "stupid" people make surprisingly profound observations.

The tests rely on successful regimentation of the test takers. We discover what a person's capability is when he/she actually accomplishes something. You can only test a person's ability to perform any kind of work or thinking if he/she desires to perform that work or thinking....sometimes it is a matter of exposure or non exposure more than comprehension capability. We will be seeing different test levels between black and white and asian people that are actually expressions of training or lack of training in addition to the differences in cultures. There really is no reason to expect something like scientific racism to be "correct" unless you are a "scientist" who also happens to be a racist. Shockley was an example of that.

 

[Canard DuJour]

No. It's not the sort of thing I would bother going out of my way to talk about. I don't even really understand why this is a hobby horse of yours. I understand the HBD guys-- they're basically white separatists. They look at the world, and everything they see is an omen of the disaster that they think society is heading for as a result of the social progress of the 20th century. They see the high-average-IQ races as competition and the low-average-IQ races as parasites. Race is a crucial component of their identities, and a lens through which they see everything. So it makes sense that they just can't avoid talking about it.

The lens through which I see everything is much different. It's a combination of moral/existential nihilism, incompatibilism, psychological egoism, philosophical pessimism, and transhumanism. These are the views which put me in an awkward social position, since they're woven so deeply into my worldview that it's difficult for me to talk for long about anything without saying something which contradicts someone's deeply held tribally-reinforced myths.

Scientific racism has no such personal relevance for me. It's just statistical trivia. Intra-group differences are still much greater than inter-group differences. It's only the tribalists and other intellectually dishonest/lazy sorts who are inclined to make an issue of inter-group differences.

Thanks. I will explain why this is my hobby horse. Years ago, I read Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. I loved the book, because it had the first unified plausible explanation I had seen for why there are economic inequalities among races: biological diversity that can be domesticated and transferred along a horizontal stretch of a latitude (from East Asia to Europe), but not along vertical stretches of a longitude (Africa, Polynesia and the Americas). Nobody needed to wonder why I was interested in this book--it was expected merely of someone who liked to make theoretical sense of anything. Though I loved it, the theory had holes. For example, how would it explain persisting modern racial inequalities in school achievement? It is data that Diamond completely ignores. Diamond introduced his theory as an alternative to the racist theory, and he did it with the odd claim that "races" are biologically meaningless, but I knew from my knowledge of the theory of evolution that populations within a species can and do diverge in their genetic frequencies, so why not humans? Would not "races" correspond to "breeds" or "subspecies" in other species? My interest in the racist explanation was ignited by the oppressive taboo against it--where there is a zealous squad of firefighters, there is fire--so I checked out the book at the library that was unafraid to present the theory: The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray. The book made the case very elegantly that intelligent scores matter, they are genetically heritable, and they are responsible for the economic differences between classes and races. The authors cited Rushton, who wrote Race, Evolution and Behavior, which provides a likewise-elegant explanatory biological theory for the data. All the data made sense to me for the first time. I can explain now the inequalities among human races, with a theory that actually makes maximal unified probable sense. Bill Nye said, "When you are in love, you want to tell the world," after he changed his opinion about the science of genetically-modified foods, and that is my reaction with respect to the science of race (though Nye very much disagrees with me on the matter of the science of race).

Which sounds like a simple case of confirmation bias. There's plenty of science suggesting that Rushton et al's conclusions are unwarranted. Not that they're necessarily wrong, but that they haven't disproven other explanations (even ignoring rather a lot of sloppy data collation and cherry picking).

 

[Canard DuJour]

For the sake of argument, if there really were significant differences in average IQ between races, the answer in my mind would be simple: intervention. Supporters of "scientific racism" often discount the Flynn Effect as the cause of racial differences that are found, but I wouldn't be too sure. The human brain is highly malleable, and the abstract reasoning that IQ tests look at has clearly been going up as we expose children in each generation to more and more abstract concepts. If there were some innate racial differences that gave certain races a leg up in developing those abstract reasoning skills, I think the gap could be closed by a focused intervention training racially disadvantaged groups in abstract reasoning skills from an early age.

For the sake of argument of course. I've yet to see a study that properly controls for all confounding factors when comparing the IQ of racial groups.

That is respectable. The Flynn effect really was a significant environmental effect, but the downer is that it did not close the race gaps, as the environmental effect (probably educational systems that train students to score progressively better on tests) affected all races roughly equally, and we would expect other interventions to have similar effects.

Then you apparently don't get it. The relevant gap is temporal. All groups have improved IQ scores by more than the initial inter-group differences over way too short a time for innate genetic intelligence to have evolved. If a difference bigger than inter-group difference is almost certainly environmental/cultural, it's at least likely that the initial differences were. Certainly, no group's score was bound by innate genetic intelligence.

In another thread, I suggested going to the source of the gap: genetic engineering. The genes for intelligence will be fully identified within a few decades (after the first large-scale survey of genes and intelligence with N on the order of a hundred thousand people), and many liberals will remain in denial about the science, but I suggest independents and open-minded liberals seize the science and use it as an opportunity to finally close the racial gaps in intelligence. I realize of course that you do not yet accept the existence of genetic racial gaps in intelligence.

What people don't accept are arguments which assume their conclusions.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So imagine if something that has been thoroughly debunked for several decades was actually true and not entirely debunked...

 

[Nice Squirrel]

So for those who believe that "scientific racism" is correct

(1) How did this hypothetical science change your general perspective of politics and society? Is this a good reason in your opinion to HATE those members of races with lower intelligence? Did you drastically change your politics? Have you joined racist organizations? How have you reacted?

(2) What are your fears?

 

[Nexus]

To answer the op, if it were proven through genetic mapping etc, I expect full blown denial akin to young earth creationists denial of evolution. Just look at some of the responses in this thread to you even asking the question. I think some of the questions you asked were silly like would you start hating the lesser races. That assumes a particularly onerous mindset if hatred is a response to inferiority. I would expect most people that become convinced to adopt a more patronizing "put them in their place gently" attitude.

 

[Canard DuJour]

More on the Flynn effect :

Flynn shows what happens when we recognize that I.Q. is not a freestanding number but a value attached to a specific time and a specific test. When an I.Q. test is created, it is calibrated or “normed” so that the test-takers in the fiftieth percentile — those exactly at the median — are assigned a score of 100. But since I.Q.s are always rising, the only way to keep that hundred-point benchmark is periodically to make the tests more difficult — to “renorm” them. The original WISC was normed in the late nineteen-forties. It was then renormed in the early nineteen-seventies, as the WISC-R; renormed a third time in the late eighties, as the WISC III; and renormed again a few years ago, as the WISC IV—with each version just a little harder than its predecessor. The notion that anyone “has” an I.Q. of a certain number, then, is meaningless unless you know which WISC he took, and when he took it, since there’s a substantial difference between getting a 130 on the WISC IV and getting a 130 on the much easier WISC.

(...)

Flynn brings a similar precision to the question of whether Asians have a genetic advantage in I.Q., a possibility that has led to great excitement among I.Q. fundamentalists in recent years. Data showing that the Japanese had higher I.Q.s than people of European descent, for example, prompted the British psychometrician and eugenicist Richard Lynn to concoct an elaborate evolutionary explanation involving the Himalayas, really cold weather, premodern hunting practices, brain size, and specialized vowel sounds. The fact that the I.Q.s of Chinese-Americans also seemed to be elevated has led I.Q. fundamentalists to posit the existence of an international I.Q. pyramid, with Asians at the top, European whites next, and Hispanics and blacks at the bottom.

Here was a question tailor-made for James Flynn’s accounting skills. He looked first at Lynn’s data, and realized that the comparison was skewed. Lynn was comparing American I.Q. estimates based on a representative sample of schoolchildren with Japanese estimates based on an upper-income, heavily urban sample. Recalculated, the Japanese average came in not at 106.6 but at 99.2. Then Flynn turned his attention to the Chinese-American estimates. They turned out to be based on a 1975 study in San Francisco’s Chinatown using something called the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test. But the Lorge-Thorndike test was normed in the nineteen-fifties. For children in the nineteen-seventies, it would have been a piece of cake. When the Chinese-American scores were reassessed using up-to-date intelligence metrics, Flynn found, they came in at 97 verbal and 100 nonverbal. Chinese-Americans had slightly lower I.Q.s than white Americans.

The Asian-American success story had suddenly been turned on its head. The numbers now suggested, Flynn said, that they had succeeded not because of their higher I.Q.s. but despite their lower I.Q.s. Asians were overachievers. In a nifty piece of statistical analysis, Flynn then worked out just how great that overachievement was. Among whites, virtually everyone who joins the ranks of the managerial, professional, and technical occupations has an I.Q. of 97 or above. Among Chinese-Americans, that threshold is 90. A Chinese-American with an I.Q. of 90, it would appear, does as much with it as a white American with an I.Q. of 97.

(...)

Two weeks ago, Flynn came to Manhattan to debate Charles Murray at a forum sponsored by the Manhattan Institute. Their subject was the black-white I.Q. gap in America. During the twenty-five years after the Second World War, that gap closed considerably. The I.Q.s of white Americans rose, as part of the general worldwide Flynn effect, but the I.Q.s of black Americans rose faster. Then, for about a period of twenty-five years, that trend stalled—and the question was why.

Murray showed a series of PowerPoint slides, each representing different statistical formulations of the I.Q. gap. He appeared to be pessimistic that the racial difference would narrow in the future. “By the nineteen-seventies, you had gotten most of the juice out of the environment that you were going to get,” he said. That gap, he seemed to think, reflected some inherent difference between the races. “Starting in the nineteen-seventies, to put it very crudely, you had a higher proportion of black kids being born to really dumb mothers,” he said. When the debate’s moderator, Jane Waldfogel, informed him that the most recent data showed that the race gap had begun to close again, Murray seemed unimpressed, as if the possibility that blacks could ever make further progress was inconceivable.

Flynn took a different approach. The black-white gap, he pointed out, differs dramatically by age. He noted that the tests we have for measuring the cognitive functioning of infants, though admittedly crude, show the races to be almost the same. By age four, the average black I.Q. is 95.4—only four and a half points behind the average white I.Q. Then the real gap emerges: from age four through twenty-four, blacks lose six-tenths of a point a year, until their scores settle at 83.4.

That steady decline, Flynn said, did not resemble the usual pattern of genetic influence. Instead, it was exactly what you would expect, given the disparate cognitive environments that whites and blacks encounter as they grow older. Black children are more likely to be raised in single-parent homes than are white children—and single-parent homes are less cognitively complex than two-parent homes. The average I.Q. of first-grade students in schools that blacks attend is 95, which means that “kids who want to be above average don’t have to aim as high.” There were possibly adverse differences between black teen-age culture and white teen-age culture, and an enormous number of young black men are in jail—which is hardly the kind of environment in which someone would learn to put on scientific spectacles.

Flynn then talked about what we’ve learned from studies of adoption and mixed-race children — and that evidence didn’t fit a genetic model, either. If I.Q. is innate, it shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s a mixed-race child’s mother or father who is black. But it does: children with a white mother and a black father have an eight-point I.Q. advantage over those with a black mother and a white father. And it shouldn’t make much of a difference where a mixed-race child is born. But, again, it does: the children fathered by black American G.I.s in postwar Germany and brought up by their German mothers have the same I.Q.s as the children of white American G.I.s and German mothers. The difference, in that case, was not the fact of the children’s blackness, as a fundamentalist would say. It was the fact of their Germanness — of their being brought up in a different culture, under different circumstances. (...) The lesson to be drawn from black and white differences was the same as the lesson from the Netherlands years ago: I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person’s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in.