Comment by homogeneous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by homogeneous | Hacker News Reader

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It's also telling that "genetically inherited IQ" always happens to appear in discussions about "race", as if our crude racial classifications represent semantically meaningful genetic variations as it relates to general intelligence.

Whatever role genetics play in IQ are most certainly not manifested in the concentration of melanin in one's skin or the coarseness of one's hair or the color of one's eyes or the size of one's nose or any of the other crude heuristics we use to group people up as "races".

Still, even with a racial component to genetic IQ, we know that "tech" is not some enlightened trade where only high IQ employees are considered, outside of the elite firms like Google, Apple etc you're going to find a glut of pretty average programmers and plenty of idiots to boot.

"Whatever role genetics play in IQ are most certainly not manifested in the concentration of melanin in one's skin or the coarseness of one's hair or the color of one's eyes or the size of one's nose or any of the other crude heuristics we use to group people up as "races"."

You are making the case that intraracial facial structures all resemble each other, but internally how people are connected (brain structure) does not follow the same pattern. Some how over thousands of years of almost complete seperation, people managed to genetically grow different facial strucutres but stayed completely the same on the inside? The whole tenant of evolution is that great effective genes are passed on and reflected in offspring. By arguing that there is no genetic difference you are arguing that IQ cannot be passed on and that different environments did not select for and need different levels of IQ. If you are arguing that, then you are denying evolution as a theory.

> You are making the case that intraracial facial structures all resemble each other

No, my point is precisely the opposite. I'm making the case that facial structures are a crude approximation for genetic classification because it's not true that all "black" people have a dark skin complexion, not all "black" people have thick kinky hair, there is genetic diversity within the "black" community because the definition of "black" is fluid and based on an amalgamation of regional, political, cultural and apparent (as in apparent to the naked eye) genetic factors.

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