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Comment by Quarrelsome | Hacker News Reader

There is bad with the good. The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo. The premise that the differences between them are social as opposed to literal is a much easier way to force the same point (and IMO more correct but I respect I lack the science to be certain). This person lacks tact and the way they view the entire political sphere as just left/right is ultimately of concern. Way too simplistic outlook IMO.

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Yeah. I was willing to give him a fair hearing until he listed a handful of differences between men and women that he ascribes to biology without any factual support.

And therein lies the unconscious bias against which he is railing. To him, there is no question that men and women, on average, are fundamentally different in ways that affects their ability to and interest in work in tech.

I agree with him that folks shame those his viewpoint into silence. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

Here's an article that provides some factual support for the author's viewpoint, with commentary (this was featured on HN a few weeks ago): https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

Having personally experience the effects of different levels of testosterone I find it hard to believe any claim of the differences between men and woman at the population level not at least in part being biological.

There is a long way between claiming there are no biological differences between men and women (of course there are), and the specific claims of differences in the article (which are remarkably specific and tailored to areas of male behaviour the author clearly valorises, e.g. status driven = good, empathy = bad).

I did not get "status driven = good, empathy = bad" from the article.

In his section titled "Men's Higher Drive for Status", the author suggests that status-driven is bad:

"We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

"Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."

And then in a footnote:

"Considering women spend more money than men and that salary represents how much the employees sacrifices (e.g. more hours, stress, and danger), we really need to rethink our stereotypes around power."

There are actually a few studies showing gender differences in infants and monkeys. (males preferentially looking at/interacting with mechanical things, females faces/dolls) From that, you can assume that there are at least some biological differences in behavior between the sexes - and thus differing workplace representation is not necessarily 100% derived from social pressures. And if that's the case, achieving a 50/50 Female/Male split in every profession might not be desirable.

So I must agree with the author on his assertion that men and women are mentally different. I'm not sure that those differences would cause women to be less interested in CS, but it isn't quite as unsupported a position as you'd think.

EDIT: There's also the possibility that IQ variances differ between genders - with males having higher variability - and thus more males at the upper (and lower!) ends of the range. If CS attracts primarily high IQ individuals, that would also result in a gender gap. (this is what I'd assume he meant with the reference to IQ in "Why we're blind") https://sci-hub.cc/10.1016/j.intell.2006.09.003

Jumping from a few studies about infants and monkeys to "...you can assume that there are at least some biological differences in behavior between the sexes - and thus differing workplace representation is not necessarily 100% derived from social pressures." is far, far from enough evidence and extremely hand-wavy to make a scientific argument here.

There isn't really a leap. All I'm saying is that we have evidence for some gender differences that are rooted in biology, and thus we cannot assume that other differences have no biological component. Which is what asserting that 100% of a gender gap is caused by social pressures does.

It's very convenient to hand-wave away the problem as "biological differences". Until we have some direct link between biology and preference for software development I think the wiser course of action is to try to get more women interested in the field. I mean why not? That's not to mention that open discrimination against women in numerous fields is a thing that happened within the lifetimes of people that are still alive today. It seems foolish to think that's all been fixed already.

> I mean why not?

Why not have a broad-based program to appeal to all demographics? Black Americans are also underrepresented. Rural children have less access to certain kinds of resources like magnet STEM schools.

IQ variance might explain part of the difference in nobel prize winners, but is minuscule at average IQ in tech (~90th percentile).

Yet Marie Curie was the first person to receive two prizes. In fact, she was the only person who received two science Nobel prizes for 61 years.

That really doesn't invalidate the statistical argument. She was one person.

A better counter-argument would have been to focus on how historically women have been actively and passively discouraged from entering the sciences at practically every level of education. This more clearly has a causal role with Nobel rates and likely played a large role in the disparity.

> males preferentially looking at/interacting with mechanical things, females faces/dolls

Then why are most politicians male?

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it can be used to support almost any status quo because there's no obvious connecting line between childhood preference for "mechanical things" and STEM career preference later on. In particular, modern software development is highly collaborative and involves no "mechanical" parts at all. It's often closer to prose than mechanical engineering - focused on structure and organization rather than numbers and analysis. Not to mention the plethora of counter-examples in the form of "technical" degrees and careers where women are closer to 50%: http://www.onwie.ca/resources-tools/statistics/canadian-engi...

Because politicians require hyper-competitiveness to reach the top of the political hierarchy. Unfortunately most women would be considered far too agreeable, or conversely gender stereotypes portray females as being out-of-character (bossy) pursuing such cut-throat roles.

Bingo.

I suspect the amount of hatred against the German chancellor Merkel I can hear in casual conversations here in Italy (by males and females equally) is mostly to be attributed to her being perceived as bossy just because she's a woman. An equally bossy man would be normal

Yes.

Another example, I have read research that ADHD might not necessarily be less common in women, just under diagnosed. A little boy running around the classroom and talking to everyone is potentially referred to a doctor for ADHD. A little girl running around the room talking to everyone is considered "social."

"...The mental test applied was the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB),..."

Well, ok, then.

"Males have only a marginal advantage in mean levels of g (less than 7% of a standard deviation) from the ASVAB and AFQT, but substantially greater variance. Among the top 2% AFQT scores, there were almost twice as many males as females. These differences could provide a partial basis for sex differences in intellectual eminence."

Now if we only knew the AFQT scores for, say, computer programmers. Oh, wait, we kinda do (http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab/asvab-and-ai...).

Air Force-wise, Electronic signals intelligence requires a G72, Cyber Systems Operations and Cyber Security requires G64. The ASVAB score is a percentile,

"Thus, an AFQT score of 90 indicates that the examinee scored as well as or better than 90% of the nationally-representative sample of 18 to 23 year old youth. An AFQT score of 50 indicates that the examinee scored as well as or better than 50% of the nationally-representative sample." (http://official-asvab.com/understand_coun.htm)

So being smarter than 65-70% allows you into those jobs.

(I am, by the way, loving Fig. 1. If I'm reading this right, "Auto and shop information" is a better predictor of g than "General science" knowledge.

"Participants were administered the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) which has 10 subtests: science, arithmetic, word knowledge, para- graph comprehension, numerical operations, coding speed, auto and shop information, mathematics knowl- edge, mechanical comprehension, and electronics infor- mation."

Yeah, that's the ASVAB I remember.

"Four of the subtests comprise the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) which includes only the more general, less vocationally-specific tests: arithme- tic, word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, and mathematics knowledge."

Well, at least intelligence, as defined, is less vocationally specific.

Aha! Table 1!

Someone please correct my understanding here if I've missed anything.

The male mean AFQT89 score was 38.7, the female mean was 38.2. The standard deviations were 30.1 and 27.7, respectively. (Wait, what?) The male-female standard deviation ratio was 1.09.

So those are the kinds of numbers we're talking about.

Genuine question: is is possible some selection bias is at play if only people interested in that given career will undergo this testing?

There are all kinds of biases involved, but the ASVAB has been normalized against a (the?) general population of high school students.

I think that the ASVAB was designed as a job-choice tool is more of a problem than that it was designed as a military job-choice tool.

The SAT was shown to be a flawed test in that it is racially, gender, and income-level biased. I'd be interested to look into the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery with a keen eye to bias. I have to say that anything designed by/for the armed services makes me suspicious of bias for obvious reasons. I will see if I can find any studies on this-- would be good to know.

Found something about gender bias on this test:

"However, many widely used standardized test scores - ranging from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and beyond - also reflect substantial differences based on gender. Minority females suffer a double jeopardy as they often score lower than both white females and males of their own racial or ethnic group. Nonetheless, the law regarding both gender issues and combined gender and race issues is largely undeveloped. Only one lawsuit, Sharif v New York State Education Department, " has been brought to challenge any use of a standardized test on the grounds of gender bias. Legal scholars have only recently begun to devote attention to this issue and have focused on Sharif. 2 Virtually no attention has been focused on the particular issues raised in connection with minority girls and women."

This is from a paper published in 2013 in Berkeley's Journal of Gender, Law, and Science. http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

> I was willing to give him a fair hearing until he listed a handful of differences between men and women that he ascribes to biology without any factual support.

You've been punked, Gizmodo journalism at its finest!

Kate Conger withheld the factual support so that to a not-careful reader it looks like the original poster just makes stuff up.

ctrl + f: "Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted."

Note the passive sentence construction. If only she had written truthfully, "I omitted two charts and several hyperlinks"…

I'm missing something, but how are those two statements different. I read the first sentence "gizmodo omitted two charts and hyperlinks" my assumption was the charts and hyperlinks held company data or pointed to company websites. But how does changing the sentence to "I omitted..." Change anything? It did you assume the omission was done by someone outside of gizmodo?

I think he's suggesting that the removed charts and links were the evidence in question, and that the author purposely removed them to make the documents arguments look weaker/less supported.

Have you seen the charts and hyperlinks? I was quite puzzled that they would be left out.

> I was willing to give him a fair hearing until he listed a handful of differences between men and women that he ascribes to biology without any factual support.

That's not exactly true. Jordan Peterson has quite a bit to say about science and the humanities, grounded quite heavily in science. The language is so similar to Peterson's lectures, I'm confident that it was crafted after a shallow dive into his Toronto/Harvard materials.

FWIW, it's not clear if the original writeup includes links to sources backing his claims.

FTA: The text of the post is reproduced in full below, with some minor formatting modifications. Two charts and several hyperlinks are also omitted.

> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo.

Is it taboo? Or is it just taboo in this context?

The premise is also shared by some arguments for trangender rights -- that gender identity is involuntary and biological at least to some degree.

I think anything that tries to brush 50% with a hue that isn't literal biological fact is tenuous and gets people's backs up.

e.g.

> Men are more violent than women.

I mean that's somewhat factual (i.e. considering crime rates) but the very mention of the phrase is tinged with ulterior motive so it becomes taboo. Basically you're better off sticking to literal difference, avoiding sociologically and focusing on differences being social or cultural because then you won't piss off up to 50% of people and people are more likely listen to you.

e.g.

> The way we bring up men and the societal pressures placed upon them makes them more violent than women.

I think less people are gonna be mad about that and then you can use it as a stepping stone to make whatever point this was your platform for. Sure it might actually be less _correct_ then the other way of putting it (I don't know the science precisely enough to judge either way) but that's taboo for ya. Unless you're writing specific science about the biological differences between men and women it doesn't matter that you made the same point differently.

Well it does make a difference when you're talking about the countermeasures that society (or in this case a private company) should adopt to fix the problem. If you claim that the cause for male violence lies solely in the upbringing you might in the best case waste a lot of resources in the worst case cause a lot of psychological suffering so common in all our attempts to "fix" the "wrong" behaviour of kids (left-handed, homosexual, ...).

> The suggestion that men and women ARE different is taboo.

This is the assumption being made by diversity hiring and diversity advocates. That some races/genders have different perspectives and viewpoints than others.

It can quickly follow that some of these viewpoints may make a person more or less fit for certain careers.

The difficulty is whether those differences are biological, social or cultural. Its hard to tease those differences apart with our current tools.

I'll stick with the assumption that its the latter two just because its more convenient and diplomatic. Maybe the genetic data we mine in future generations will give us the real answers but I don't see any advantage in pressing the biological argument until then (as I'm not working directly in that field).

We don't need to wait for genetic data mining, this has been widely studied already.

Differences are visible within the first two days of birth : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Diffe...

and are present in monkeys too : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

I'll let you draw the conclusion.

Yes but to speculate that a baby's desire to look at a face more means they're less able to negotiate their pay is a bit of a leap (as opposed to that being social or cultural). Sure there are literal differences between gender but one still has to ask that if those differences are big enough to make a difference following the YEARS of nurture or not.

I'll wait till the genetic data mining transitions this from speculation to fact thank you very much.

Table 2: Mean percent looking times (and standard deviation) for each stimulus.

                          Face                    Mobile
    Males (n = 44)      45.6 (23.5)             51.9 (23.3)
    Females (n = 58)    49.4 (20.8)             40.6 (25.0)

That's quite a difference to be hanging the nature of society on.

It's perfectly all right to say that there are statistical differences between the average biological man and the average biological woman.

The problem is to then assume a gigantic pile of facts not in evidence (that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever, that they conclusively explain gender disparities in many fields, etc. etc.) and accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being one of those terrible mean lefties who will unperson you for speaking the truth.

Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread.

Blind interviews is a good idea that I think could/should satisfy parties on both sides. I mean it's really putting your ideas to the test. And either way you can take some comfort knowing that, if properly set up, the process will be fair. Now the correlation between a good interview and doing well on the job is another issue altogether.

May or may not be completely relevant, but seems like it's in the ballpark: a couple of months ago, a conference sponsored by GitHub was postponed because the authors of all the (blind) selected papers were male.

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868

Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_...

Yes, I can attest to this too, harkening back to the classical orchestral auditions. This is why every player is put on probation for 6 months to a year. Their colleagues then vote them into the orchestra or they get voted out. This is the part that is about how they actually do their job. Getting voted out is pretty rare, but I have known a few people who have been voted out of top ten orchestras after the probation period. I can't tell you how tragic it is for everyone involved, especially the players who vote them out, because every single player knows how hard it is just to get to the point of sitting in their chair. Players who win auditions are extremely motivated to show up with their music memorized and perfect for every single rehearsal, sectional, and concert. They are on their first date behavior. So if they fail, there is usually a great reason that has to do with showing up unprepared or being rude to colleagues on a regular basis, or playing louder than the section all the time, or in some cases, showing up to work drunk or something ridiculous. But even when people have a substance abuse problem, the orchestra usually tries to help them first. So, perhaps there could be a probation period after tech interviews the same way we have them? (Actually, my friend told me that the Boston-based company, Wayfair, does this. Do any other companies do this? I think it makes sense for both parties. It's a drag when someone has had to relocate and they don't pass through to tenure, but those are the breaks, I guess.)

Except he didn't say that the differences we observe are 100% due to biology. I'm actually pretty shocked at how much of this thread seems to deliberately mischaracterize what he wrote.

Agreed. If anything, he was objecting to begging the question in the other direction. Most of the particulars are examples of nuances that (the author thinks) need to be studied instead of ignored.

> Except he didn't say that the differences we observe are 100% due to biology.

He did, if he didn't intend to he used the wrong language. He had a section called:

> Personality Differences

Where to his credit he did say: "on average" but then he failed to distinguish these differences as cultural or social. Rather he prefixed that part of the article with a section that stated:

> On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed....

I don't know how to read that otherwise. My understanding is that he IS saying that biologically women (on average) are less able to negotiate pay, prefer social work to STEM, etc. Now while those are perfectly fine things to consider stating them as fact is a bit of a leap. You have to prefix your work to make it less assertion and more speculation for people not to assume what I assumed.

You have to consider that Gizmodo has acknowledged having stripped the essay of several hyperlinks, probably lending support to his claims.

This comprehensive recap could be one of them : https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...

Yes but that's still the soft science of sociology and the author of the OP should tread carefully before asserting this as literal fact. It remains a conclusion of incomplete results. Obviously better than complete speculation but still no stronger than the technology used by the culture this OP is rallying against.

It's arguably the culture that the OP is rallying against which relies on the "soft science of sociology" as a theoretical basis.

The OP's point on the other hand finds most of its supporting evidence in evolutionary psychology and biology.

How in the world did you determine that "on average differences" means 100% explanation? Full disclosure, I work in supply chain and statistics is part (maybe most) of what I do so maybe I'm being pedantic.

He did mention that he is not denying diversity is important or that sexism exists. And the biological differences he mentioned are "POSSIBLE non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech".

His entire argument seems to be that we should stop denying biological differences exist too. And a non 50% representation is not conclusive proof of sexism in society.

that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever

From what I've seen it's exactly the opposite; any suggestion that differences might be less than 100% cultural marks you as a hateful racist misogynist. See Charles Murray for example.

Generally, this type of person lasts up until the moment blind interviews become widespread.

It actually is possible that someone might have the intellectual capacity to work at Google without being a progressive leftist.

All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist†, so this isn't a good example. What you instead want to say is that there's limited tolerance for the "diversity viewpoint" that "whites" and Asians are intellectually superior to "blacks".

There's an intellectually coherent argument to be made that our society is intolerant towards inquiries supporting racism. (It's not a good argument, but it will hold together logically).

There are fewer good arguments that people are hyperventilating about what Charles Murray represents.

† You can quibble with the terminology; if you believe "being tarred as a racist is even worse than being oppressed because of your race", you're welcome to replace "racist" with "racial supremacist".

I realize this is getting off topic, but can you explain why you think that, "All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist"? I've read The Bell Curve and listened to a debate where Murray argued in favor of universal basic income. I came away from both thinking that he's been totally misrepresented.

I just reviewed my notes for The Bell Curve to make sure I hadn't mis-remembered the content. Out of 22 chapters, two are on race. One begins with, "The first thing to remember is that the differences among individuals are far greater than the differences between groups." In other words: knowing someone's race tells you nothing about their intelligence.

The chapters on race contain no expression of racial superiority or inferiority, nor any policies favoring discrimination. The only definition of racism that could apply is the view that there are some statistical differences between races, though the book doesn't weigh-in on how much is caused by genes vs environment. It also reiterates that these statistical differences cannot be used to infer anything about individuals.

Supporting racism (in the sense of advocating for racial superiority or discrimination) is deeply unethical, so I'd very much like to know if Murray holds such views.

>"The first thing to remember is that the differences among individuals are far greater than the differences between groups."

All this means is that there is some degree of overlap between the two curves; that not every member of group A is more intelligent than every member of group B. Which is trivially true; even the most virulent racists would agree without hesitation that Clarence Thomas is more intelligent than a mentally disabled white person.

The height differences among Filipinos is greater than the difference in average height between Filipinos and the Dutch. Yet we can still say that on average Dutch people are taller than Filipinos, and understand that the underrepresentation of Filipinos in fields that select for height is not the result of societal oppression.

If you want to reduce white supremacy to basic statistics, you can do that, but as intellectual three-card Monte games go, this isn't a very good one: it's pretty easy to see the trick.

If you believe that, in the aggregate, "white" people are intellectually superior to any other race of people, you're a white supremacist. That's not a value judgement; it's literally what it means to be a white supremacist. I guess you could be a mild, benevolent white supremacist? I can grant you that all white supremacists do not wear hoods and burn crosses?

This is unfair. You want to call people white supremacists based on the literal, objective content of their views, i.e. using the phrase in a narrow, technical sense, while knowing full well that calling someone a white supremacist will rally behind you a whole train of people who are happy to free-associate all sorts of horrible things with the phrase.

You think it's unfair for me to call people who believe in the objective supremacy of one race over another "supremacists", simply because people have very dim opinions of racial supremacists?

It's weird to claim you're simply using a technical term to categorize someone's views, but then choose such a charged phrase. Edit: rethought comment

The term is charged for a reason. If a white supremacist feels bad that they're being compared to Richard Spencer, I think they should do some soul searching.

There's a solid argument to be made that the quiet white supremacists do far more damage than the cartoon characters do.

I just want to make the syllogism you're operating with clear here:

1. If two groups have statistical differences in IQ across the population, then the group with the higher average is superior to the other

2. Person A believes that Group 1 has a higher average IQ than Group 2

3. Therefore, Person A is a Group 1 supremecist

I would want to very strongly and categorically denounce point #1 in this list.

Point #2 is just a matter of scientific observation. I don't have strong opinions on it one way or the other. But point #2 only implies #3 if you believe #1.

I would want to very strongly and categorically denounce point #1 in this list.

Well stated and I fully agree.

Handwaving.

Literally the only reason the topic of "statistical differences in IQ across the population" comes up on this site is as a defense for why there's a microscopic population of African Americans and Latinos in our industry. The reason, the logic goes, is that the supposed racial IQ differences mean that there simply aren't enough African Americans intellectually qualified for the field.

There are plenty of reasons why a cohort of US persons of African descent could have lower recorded IQ scores than US persons of European descent. I'm not the one making the logical leap that the reason is a genetic disposition towards lower intelligence, rather than socioeconomic, environmental, or methodological issues. The white supremacists are the ones saying that†. If you're not, and you're not bringing the topic up unbidden as a defense of the status quo, I'm not saying anything about you.

I'm not interested in pretending that there's a good or rational kind of white supremacist. Several people on this site, and this thread, seem determined to do so. You can, too, and I won't stop you, but "good kind" or "bad kind" I'm going to call them what they are.

† (much to the consternation of some of the best-known people doing the actual science)

Before Scott Alexander started http://slatestarcodex.com/, he wrote this post http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html:

> I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: "If we can apply an emotionally charged word to something, we must judge it exactly the same as a typical instance of that emotionally charged word."

Scott's post is full of examples, many of which I'm sure you'll agree are bad arguments. You are using this tactic with the term "white supremacy". Please note that doing so undermines your position and makes it clear to others that you are not arguing in good faith.

I try to behave such that if someone who held opposite views used the same norms, we wouldn't end up feeling contempt for one another. This means interpreting charitably, trying to understand why people believe what they believe, and avoiding snark and sarcasm. Most importantly, it means not misrepresenting other people's views. Throughout this thread, you have reliably failed at all of these things.

Could you imagine how two tptaceks with opposite views would behave? I'm convinced they would never get beyond name-calling and strawmanning. Both would feel certain in their cause and vindicated by their opponent's behavior. Worst of all, neither's beliefs would get closer to the truth.

Please, for the love of all that is good, be more charitable.

There are clearly people on this thread who think that it's possible to believe in the supremacy of white people over black people without all the ugly baggage of "white supremacy".

I. Don't. Care. I don't care if a white supremacist believes that Asians might be superior to whites. I don't care if a white supremacist thinks anyone who would wear a hood and burn a cross belongs in jail. These things simply don't matter to me.

Like I said: you are free to believe in the "good kind" of white supremacist. I don't differentiate.

'There are clearly people on this thread who think that it's possible to believe in the supremacy of white people over black people without all the ugly baggage of "white supremacy".'

No. There are clearly people on this thread who don't believe that statistical population differences tell us anything about supremacy.

Were we to throw off all the baggage of the entire phrase, the word "supremacy" still has an ordinary meaning in ordinary English. A statement about population differences is plainly not a statement about "authority, power, or status."

The only person in this thread who has argued that population differences imply supremacy is you. Over and over again. This is your word. I don't know how else to tell you that I don't even support your premise.

If you were anyone else, I would already have stopped arguing with you. But you are a person of authority in this space. Your tactics here are dangerous. I'm begging you to consider that.

I don't know whether you're writing normatively about positions you actually hold or descriptively about the positions of others, which makes it very difficult to engage what you're saying directly; everything has to be written through a layer of indirection.

So let me just come out and ask: on the matter of race and intellect, what is it you believe? Can you be specific about those beliefs in the context of American "white", black, and Asian people?

Recall that this entire subthread is the result of your claims about Murray. I am not an expert in the field, so I don't have strong opinions about the competing explanations for group differences in IQ. What I'm fighting against/for isn't any particular claim about intelligence, but rather your framing of one particular claim.†

I do strongly hold the position that a genetic explanation, should one exist, says absolutely nada about policy, "supremacy," how we should treat each other, or really anything else. I also strongly believe that a good faith inquiry into this question (and acceptance of whatever the science reveals) is a pursuit orthogonal to "white supremacy. This is so obvious to me that I feel silly even rebutting it.

Again, I'm not advancing one particular explanation for group differences. I'm opposing your treatment of the implications of one of those possible explanations.

Further, as I stated elsewhere in this thread, the statement "white people are smarter than black people" as a summary of population differences is statistically and biologically illiterate. This way of talking about these issues is unscientific and obfuscatory and it has no place in serious conversations on this topic.

† My personal opinion, as a non-expert, is that the differences are probably explained by a complicated mix of factors, but that genetics likely play some role. If this seems wishy-washy, it's because it is. I'm including this footnote only to avoid the accusation that I'm dodging your question. My opinions here aren't worth much. Frankly, I doubt yours are, either, unless you've got a second career you haven't mentioned in your profile.

I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive me, but I'm still in the dark as to what it is you actually believe. Help me understand the difference you see between observations about population aggregates in studies versus observations about "races".

I'm sorry, but if you're still in the dark about what I believe, then I think you're willfully so. I have to be honest: I didn't really think you were arguing in good faith in the beginning, but I was hopeful that you might be brought into a reasonable back-and-forth.

I no longer believe that's possible.

Edit: Just to make this explicit: I don't have any eccentric or unorthodox views about the differences between "races." I haven't advanced any such views here, nor do I hold them privately. tptacek's implication, of course -- and this happens in every single one of these conversations -- is that I'm concealing some detestable opinion about race. That's why there's always this persistent pleading to clarify what you actually believe. I've stated quite clearly what it is that I believe. No more or less. If I haven't been clear, then we'll just have to attribute that to my failings as a communicator and call it a day.

That is a strange response to a straightforward question, but I can't say I'm unhappy to see this weird little thread die here.

What do you want? How is '''the differences are probably explained by a complicated mix of factors, but that genetics likely play some role''' '''a genetic explanation, should one exist, says absolutely nada about policy, "supremacy," how we should treat each other, or really anything else. I also strongly believe that a good faith inquiry into this question (and acceptance of whatever the science reveals) is a pursuit orthogonal to "white supremacy"''' unclear?

Fact: IQ results differ by race, even though 'races' are a badly-defined concept. Fact: Socioeconomic factors are a lot of this. Postulation: There might maybe be a genetic factor somewhere. Assertion: This doesn't justify treating people differently by race.

What is unclear? What do you object to? You seem to find the idea that there might be any, miniscule genetic factor to intelligence that is more or less common in a specific 'race' as equal to white supremacy. Am I misreading you?

(And note I didn't say anything about which way genetic factors might go. If they exist they might be opposite the socioeconomic factors, who knows.)

How can there be a genetic difference between genetically invalid (badly defined as you say) concepts? I.e. the concept of race is completely social, there is nothing genetic about it (a person commenting on HN is well withing education threshold to be expected to know this). Yet you allow that someone who believes there might still be genetic factors "somewhere" in these differences is not a (closet) racist ... because they don't call for mass murder and insist the supposedly slightly inferior group should "not be discriminated" (just calling them genetically dumber is enough)?

> How can there be a genetic difference between genetically invalid (badly defined as you say) concepts? I.e. the concept of race is completely social, there is nothing genetic about it

Are you denying that there are differences in the genes controlling hair color between different racial groups? Or the frequency of something like lactose intolerance?

"Races" are badly defined, with shifting definitions and fuzzy borders and many different ways of grouping the same people. The idea of categorizing people into a handful of "races" rather than looking at hundreds of intersecting ancestries mixing together is dumb. But there is still a correlation between the two concepts. If you can find a gene that correlates with an ancestry (which you can do), then you've also found a gene that has a weaker correlation with "race".

And because there are thousands of genes that will correlate slightly with race, it's possible that one affects intelligence in some manner. It's not my problem if that's true. I'm confident there are no practically significant differences there. But that doesn't mean there isn't some .002% difference in median intelligence between groups that's caused by genes. It's bullheaded to ignore the possibility just because some awful racist will use it as "evidence" of their superiority. If they can't find out-of-context factoids to abuse they'll make things up anyway.

You want to lump (a) people who simply think, as a technical opinion, that there are population statistical differences with (b) people who desperately want an excuse to cleanse society of black people. They are not the same thing, and to pretend they are is to oversimplify truth in order to make a virtuous statement.

Some people argue that this is a good thing to do, but if you do this you can't complain about the phrase "virtue signaling," as someone prioritizing virtue over accuracy.

"White supremacy" as a movement, as a phrase in common usage, and as a matter of common sense, implies a whole host of beliefs and policy desires that aren't held or sought by Charles Murray or his defenders.

Not holding those beliefs doesn't render you a "benevolent supremacist;" it means, very plainly (and using ordinary definitions of ordinary words) that you're not a supremecist.

It is plainly misleading and obfuscatory to apply that term to anyone investigating population differences in good faith.

Perhaps you mean to say that all such investigations are evidence of nefarious motives? I think that's wrong, but it's at least a coherent worldview.

>If you believe that, in the aggregate, "white" people are intellectually superior to any other race of people, you're a white supremacist. That's not a value judgement; it's literally what it means to be a white supremacist.

Is this 'any' as in 'a single group' or 'all other groups'?

Either way it's not true. You can think a race has better average X without thinking it's superior. A dedicated white supremacist will take a list of advantages that are supposedly inherent to non-white people and make a just-so argument about how that actually makes them inferior.

Edit: If you downvoted, please tell me where you disagree, I'm very curious.

"You can think a race has better average X without thinking it's superior."

Ironically, what this argument tends to reveal is the degree to which the upper crust fetishizes intelligence and believes in the primacy of IQ as the measure of the person. Google practically invented the big, scary interview process that proves you're smart enough to belong.

Is it any surprise that the winners of that genetic lottery believe in the supremacy of that measure?

And once accepted as an organizing principle, you really, really need to believe that there are no statistical differences between groups, because to discover them would, by the original logic, entail grotesque conclusions.

I can only imagine the dissonance this must generate.

This is more or less the response Curtis Yarvin gives when his racism, which seems (if you can hack your way through his prose) virulent, is challenged. To paraphrase:

"I'm not saying black people are worse than white people. I'm saying that white people are smarter than black people, and that our society is biased against those who aren't as smart as white people. Oh, the unfairness of it all".

I have no idea who you are or of this is what you mean; you're just an abstraction to me, a nick on this site I have no association with whatsoever and will presumably soon forget about. But if you're interested (you responded to me upthread), it might be useful to you to know how this kind of logic comes across to me.

I didn't read dionidium's post as an endorsement of the chain of logic, or of the fetishization of intelligence by the upper crust, at all. In fact, quite the opposite.

I don't know who you are either, but this comment comes across as rather harsh and over the top,

I have no idea who that guy is or why I'm being asked to defend him, so I'll speak only for myself when saying that the statement, "white people are smarter than black people" as a summary of population differences is statistically and biologically illiterate.

This is just simply not how serious people talk about populations.

Further, to conclude that such differences, should they even exist, imply anything else about the world (or how to treat the people in it) is morally incomprehensible.

"Society is biased against black people" is a perfectly accurate statement, so I'm not sure what that is supposed to show.

Can't you make an objectively-true equivalent statement about height? People with certain ethnicities are taller. Taller people are treated better. It's unfair.

It doesn't seem like the way that logic is constructed reveals any racism. Just the premise of "X are smarter than Y" is the problem. Kind of begging the question.

> If you believe that, in the aggregate, "white" people are intellectually superior to any other race of people, you're a white supremacist.

Good, then we can agree that all these people who believe that Asians are smarter than whites aren't white supremacists.

  If you believe that, in the aggregate, "white" people are 
  intellectually superior to any other race of people, 
  you're a white supremacist.

Were the 52 professors who signed Mainstream Science on Intelligence in 1994 white supremacists?① Is the APA a white supremacist organization?② If so, with 117,000 members, it would be by far the biggest white supremacist organization in the US.

Thomas, I understand that this is an emotionally charged topic, and you want to attack Damore's argument from all possible angles, but group differences in intelligence has been settled science for many decades, and misrepresenting the facts is not exactly making us look good. It's a long-running conservative meme that people who are interested in promoting equality ignore science for ideological reasons, and this is, you know... exactly that.

Group differences in intelligence are obviously bad, and they seem to be narrowing over time by Flynn effect actions, but they do actually exist. Saying that anyone who measures a difference between groups is literally promoting the supremacy of the white race is pretty wild. What measured difference makes you a white supremacist? 10 IQ points? 0.1? If you measure a difference of 0.000001 IQ points, should you instantly lose your job for being A Racist, as you've argued elsewhere?③

===

①: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellig...

②: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unkno...

③: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953843

The SPLC is not a reliable source, but I think what they have to say about Charles Murray checks out.

If, as you've just admitted, the SPLC is not reliable, why do you think it checks out?

What's hard about this for you to understand?

I found https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi... but:

- It reads like a hit piece, in that it states facts that are technically true but designed to mislead. For example: It says "Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state" but neglects to mention that he wants to replace it with universal basic income.

- The SPLC accuses Murray of using "tainted sources" in The Bell Curve, but the vast majority of the data was from early cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The "tainted source" is apparently Richard Lynn, discoverer of the Flynn effect. Anyone doing any intelligence research is going to depend on Lynn's research, and anyone doing such research in the early 90's is going to use his data. This accusation can be made even if Murray had come to opposite conclusions in The Bell Curve. Sadly, Lynn seems to have gone batty since his days as a researcher. Still, that shouldn't affect the truth value of the data he collected before his decline.

- Many of the accusations are guilt by association, such as condemning Murray for taking money from the Pioneer Fund. Apparently, the fund was started by a proponent of 1930's-era eugenics. As Murray has pointed out, the Pioneer Fund of today is nothing like its original incarnation.

- The SPLC piece never mentions The Bell Curve's conclusion that east asians tend to have higher IQs than whites. It's hard to label Murray a white supremacist when he thinks whites are not supreme.

All-in-all, I have difficulty believing the SPLC's piece on Murray. I don't have the time to vet every accusation, but the ones I have looked into seem without merit. Moreover: Every time I've given the SPLC the benefit of the doubt, they've let me down. Their hatchet jobs of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz have completely destroyed my trust in them.

> "All available evidence strongly suggests that Charles Murray is in fact a racist"?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/why-is-charles-murray...

> A far more illuminating piece of evidence about the Murray racial worldview is found in his little-read 2003 book Human Accomplishment, the text that substantiates point 2 on the above List Of Racist Charles Murray Beliefs: Black cultural achievements are almost negligible.

> Human Accomplishment shows that Murray has a long obsession with racial difference, and with using statistics to prove the lesser intellectual gifts of black people.

> How, in a book that is literally about people’s greater and lesser reasoning capacities, and that literally claims black people are less endowed with such capacities, can you harken back to Jefferson, leaving his racial views unmentioned, and then act shocked when people think you’re a racist? How can you not be a racist? How is there any way?

etc. etc.

First of all, are Murray's claims true? That's the important question. That article gets some things right, but it seems to imply that Murray is racist even if his beliefs are true.

Second, if you're going to use that article's definition of racism (the belief that there are statistical differences in IQ between races) then most researchers on cognition are racist. If you survey experts anonymously, the majority will say that there is an IQ gap and that genes are a significant contributor.[1]

Critics keep smuggling in the assumption that intelligence is proportional to moral worth. Murray explicitly denies this, and claims that all humans should be given equal moral worth (and equal moral agency).

1. http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/2013-survey-o...

You seem to have missed the thrust of the article which isn't that The Bell Curve proves Murray to be a racist (although it certainly has him winking strongly in that direction) but that his other book, "Human Accomplishment" is flagrantly and defiantly racist.

> And what do you know, shockingly enough, out of hundreds of significant figures in Western music, there are almost no black people on the list. (Duke Ellington makes it.) Now, remember, this is a list of the objectively highest human accomplishments in music, and it doesn’t cut off until 1950.

> Do I have to explain why Murray’s framework is racist? Because Charles Murray thinks classical English composers were rooted in human experience and had intellectual depth (which we know, because they showed up more in the encyclopedias he picked), while black American composers (for that is what they are) were not.

etc.etc.

I hadn't read this piece before, and it's quite good. Thank you!

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