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Comment by cb18 | Hacker News Reader

So many mysteries of the modern world become quite understandable when you allow yourself the luxury of understanding the relevance of intelligence.

It varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously.

The modern tendency is to feverishly avert one's eyes from this fact, but it must be reckoned with eventually.

I believe we'll all be better off when we can stop the hand wringing of why isn't group X doing activity Y.

The sooner we can get on with building a society that is better for everyone while taking everyone's capabilities into account the better.

Not to say there are strict limits on capabilities, but groups with higher average intelligence are obviously going to win more Physics Nobels.

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You made a trainwreck of this thread by taking it down an ideological flamewar tangent. That breaks the HN guidelines. Please don't do this again.

Blithely pronouncing a radical view to be "scientific consensus" on the most divisive of topics is a form of trolling. I've noticed that users who do this invariably display how far from dispassionate science their interest in this subject really is. There's also some irony in how fixated they are on the topic of intelligence—a quality that somehow never seems to distinguish these threads.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11539519 and marked it off-topic.

Oh look, it's the HBDtards.

As a suggestion - do you know that "18" means "Hitler" in some circles? Like, 1=A (because it's the first letter of the English alphabet), 8=H (the 8th letter). A and H - A for Adolf, H for Hitler. Do you think this is going to make people more likely, or less likely, to support the building of this society you propose?

As if that weren't enough, you're on a hiding to nowhere with this in general, I'm afraid.

Suppose you are right. What then? You'll have to stir up so much shit to prove it that there'll be no profit. Sometimes you have to accept second best in the interests of peace. This is especially true when people are involved. "But but but" - no, shut up. There is no "but". This is how people work, and you're stuck with it.

Or suppose you are wrong. And then everybody is justly ignoring you.

knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously.

This is so untrue, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. The overwhelming consensus by scientists at reputable top universities don't allege this at all. But I'm sure you can find it at fringe or less reputable state universities.

No, the consensus of scientists who actually study this is pretty strong, and supports the parent's post. Jayman has collected a nice sequence of citations on the matter, most of which are peer-reviewed:

https://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#Race-IQ

Much effort has been made to minimize the effect of poverty, stereotyping, and other non-hereditary factors in much of the literature.

Most people downvoting the parent are likely doing so because this research is uncomfortable, not because it is wrong.

That's a horrible list of mostly the race baiting circle jerk (for lack of a better term). Even a cursory glance shows that it lacks several authors who have written papers that dispute this. Coincidence? Probably not.

lacks several authors

Like who? Stephen Jay Gould?

a cursory glance

Maybe you should give it a closer look so you're not resting your worldview on confirmation bias.

"No, the consensus of scientists who actually study this is pretty strong,"

Lots of groups develop their own consensus. That still does not mean it's correct.

The main problem is that they want to find an arbitrary metric and then prove that there is a racial variance to it. I would claim that this is a variant of P-mining[0].

They take the concept of "IQ" within the context of the tests to be a scientifically concrete measure like height or weight (which it isn't) than then search for datasets which supports their racial superiority hypothesis.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

Also, Any list that contains the name "Tatu Vanhanen" should be immediately suspect. He's one of the known "racial IQ" crackpots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellig...

This is a false statement: The overwhelming consensus by scientists at reputable top universities don't allege this at all.

I figured that this is where it came from. These are generally fringe researchers, led by the author herself, Gottfredson.

As was commonly noted at the time... few who signed it were measurement experts. Note the lack of prestigious programs of the signatories. This is the Wall Street Journal fringe. Certainly not the mainstream of top researchers in the field.

Your trying hard, but you seem to have no idea what you are talking about. "This is the Wall Street Journal fringe." It ran in the journal Intelligence signed by their editorial board.

Who are these "non-fringe" you speak of? People who tell you what you want to believe? HuffPo bloggers?

Or are you just blowing hot air, totally ignorant of this field in general, and decided to call some people you've never heard of "fringe"...

"groups with higher average intelligence are obviously going to win more Physics Nobels."

You mean men right? I'm sure there's no bias in that process...

Very interested to know how you believe conflating economic, social, and geographical/geopolitical factors (e.g. clusters of poverty and their effect on upbringings) have all been filtered out of this supposed consensus conclusion.

> [Intelligence] varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously.

Holy fuck. Yeah. I'm calling you out for being a racist fuck. Your "human biodiversity" aka "scientific racism" is a pseudoscience that has no basis at all. All your ideas better explained by economics.

So in conclusion, fuck you.

Please don't, no matter how right you are and how wrong someone else is. I understand the frustration, but it only makes things worse to take discussion to the level of "fuck you", and it flagrantly violates the HN guidelines.

What's more likely, there are people posing as scientists trying legitimize 'racism,' or scientists presenting accurate data are called 'racists' because people don't like their data?

It's likely that an arbitrary metric can vary among groups. This as such is not problematic. The problem with the quoted 'research' is that they are effectively just p-mining data sets and trying to find correlations between IQ and other metrics.

Well, it's well-known that Ashkenazi Jews have above-average intelligence. So it definitely can vary. Why wouldn't it vary by race as well?

Would you make the same comment if someonone claimed that physical ability differs among races? E.g. kenyan runners, sherpas, etc. If no, what makes you absolutely sure that intelectual abilities have zero relation to the race?

Well, it's well-known that Ashkenazi Jews have above-average intelligence. So it definitely can vary.

^[flagged]

I love this response.

[META] Not due to the content of the response, but the fact that dang, who is rightfully vigilant about enforcing standards of civility all over HN (with detachment, warnings, and bans), willfully ignores blatant violations of said standards where ideology aligns.

What did dang say when you emailed him a link to the comment?

The assumption that if you've seen something then we have too is wildly off base.

The problem is that it's hard to argue with racist trolls. Pretty much anything you do plays into their need for attention and an audience.

Still, i upvoted you, and hopefully you won't get banned.

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