This is why these questions are deemed dangerous. They have the possibility of challenging and upsetting deeply held beliefs and narratives. What is there to fear but an observation and the data it’s based on?
Genes within a single species' gene pool follow a Poisson distribution because they are randomly permuted [1][3][4], assuming the pool is large enough. This means that often, some genes will be popular for no good reason; that is, these popular genes are cosmetic. When, for example, most people in the world follow one of several popular skin-coloration patterns, that does not therefore imply any sort of fitness function is selecting for skin colors, because the null hypothesis that they are randomly permuted has so little problem explaining how they could arise without any effect on fitness.
These questions aren't dangerous because they somehow subvert existing institutions, but because they're a direct introduction to ethnofascism via eugenics. We should roundly not just reject them based on empirical observations and data, but also based on theory and modelling; this is because we can then use contraposition to flip around various deductions. For example, people often ask whether "race" affects "intelligence" and point to survey data which shows correlations; using contraposition, and understanding that "race" is a social construction, we can refute the idea that "intelligence" is innate and suggest instead that it is tied to socioeconomic status or quality of education or other confounders.
I would end with a question: What observations and data, exactly, are you looking at? What conclusions have you drawn? Can we use contraposition to flip around any of those conclusions and find deeper or simpler truths?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift#Wright.E2.80.93F...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_collapse
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution
[4] https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2019/12/random_permutat...
> I would end with a question: What observations and data, exactly, are you looking at? What conclusions have you drawn? Can we use contraposition to flip around any of those conclusions and find deeper or simpler truths?
None. I'm arguing that if Professor Hsu wants to model an experiment and a thesis, collect data, arrive at a conclusion, and publish a paper, that should be absolutely fine and provoke no outrage, even if some feel "that's a direct introduction to ethnofascism via eugenics". Let the reader of the paper be the judge if it's "ethnofascism". I'm prioritizing the scientific method over hurt feelings.
What lets you assert that? There are most certainly genetic clusters that correspond to "races" - that's how sites like 23andMe work, after all. And these variations aren't just "melanin content" or "nose structure" - the obvious one is sickle-cell anemia, but a lot of other genetic disorders are racially correlated too.
Second, those drift differences are largely cosmetic, and cosmetic on average. Both properties follow from differences being Gaussian distributed with respect to fitness; the typical drifted gene is neither especially fit nor especially unfit.
Third, as gene pools grow, the ability to control for fitness on a per-gene basis shrinks exponentially, so that the behavior of the pool is like a random permutation. To see this, imagine a picky procreator choosing from a list of suitors by genetic partition; at each stage, they will reject some suitors who have the wrong allele. The pool randomly combines each pair of alleles (because it is deep enough to hold every viable combination), so each rejection removes roughly the same proportion of suitors every time. Thus, a linear list of picked alleles requires an exponentially-large list of suitors to choose from!
Aside: This third fact is why breeding dogs gives us pugs with their poor breathing and also why breeding tends to give us lots of hip dysplasia across different breeds. We can only positively select for a relatively small handful of traits and alleles, and each selection allows thousands of selfish genes to join the entourage, giving us patterns of unwanted gene expression.
None of these facts preclude services like 23andMe; we can certainly write down lists of clustered alleles which correspond to drifted genes, and use that information to correlate people with the geographic history of their ancestors, on a probabilistic basis. (Remember, large gene pools are randomly permuted, so these services must be probabilistic.)
None of these facts preclude some genes from being selected for fitness, either. Let's examine sickle-cell anemia more closely. Sometimes a mutation can improve an allele's fitness when one copy of the gene is present, but two copies results in a poor allele. Sickle cell is a very good example of this. Having one copy gives the "sickle cell trait", which resists malaria. It has a bunch of other minor health effects, positive and negative, but resisting malaria is sufficient to allow the gene variant to stay in the gene pool.
What I'm saying is that, just because some people have sickle-cell anemia, that doesn't therefore change the fact that people are all of the same species. If folks want to talk about which individual genes they have, then they should do that, and not talk about race, because genes only stick together in geographic clusters probabilistically, due to drift.
This makes absolutely no sense. Either we can investigate some issues, or we can't. @markdown is a bit more honest when they say we should not research the issue at all, because the answer is very unpleasant. But note that race is only the ultimate taboo in the west; researchers elsewhere, in particular in China, will continue this research. And I think it's worth having people in the west researching this area, so they understand this research and can, indeed, challenge it when necessary.
I do not want to shut down research, but I do want to point out that the research which contradicts Hsu is already done and the theories which explain why he is wrong are already understood.
Nothing is ever really settled. And certainly not that topic in particular. How could it be, considering how controversial it is? (This very topic is another proof.)
>the fact that race is a social and cultural construction rather than some genetic reality
That is an absurd claim. I'm well aware of the sensitivity around this topic. I wish we could research it freely, but I can see why people get very agitated about certain findings. I can see why it's unpleasant. Still, just like you can't research dermatology, immunology and other fields of medicine without taking race into account (the idea that racial differences are only skin deep completely breaks down when it comes to finding bone marrow donors), if it turns out that there are also racial difference in cognitive or behavioral traits, it's important to know for research on diseases like Alzheimer, or indeed for research on psychology, sociology, etc.
> That is an absurd claim.
Indeed. Idpol/woke ideology posits one outlandish race-realist conception of race to use as a strawman in order to claim that race is but a social construct, and simultaneously advances another (implicitly race-realist) conception of race that's shallow and incoherent in order to license its moral claims. It's a mechanism of manipulation.
"Race" is an ambiguous term — it has to be operationalized to be used coherently. There's a sense of the term that describes a social reality and another that describes ancestry groupings.
This is a great primer for anyone who's interested:
https://www.amazon.com/What-Race-Four-Philosophical-Views/dp...
There is everything to fear. This is one issue for which a definitive answer (if not the correct one) could be catastrophically damaging to relations between humans forever.
In this matter, ignorance is bliss.
The ignorant may keep the bliss. We are not served by putting our heads in the sand for the sake of political correctness.
Hiding science is not the way you attack bigots; you attack their immoral views directly.
My partner and I used IVF to have our first child. We had several fertilized embryos result. We were given the option of DNA sequencing and implanting embryos that met our genetic criteria. We didn't opt for it, but if we decide to have additional children and the data showed we could select for traits that were important to us (intelligence, height, athletically predisposed), I would absolutely opt for it. You want the best for your children (in my experience), and this is yet another selector in life to give them every advantage.
So, I do keep these things in mind. This research is going to occur (if not in the US, likely China), regardless of the uncomfortable feelings of vocal opponents. Get comfortable or get left behind.
Gwern has a nice article on embryo selection: [0] I think the summary is "it has moderate-to-large effects, and might be worth the money today, and almost certainly will be worth the money in ten years".
You treat existing humans with the utmost of respect, but you also target maladies so future humans have better quality of life (including a lack of disabilities).
[1] https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/browse-by-first-l...
Yes. I understand the fear and loathing some people feel, but I've been watching this research area for the past decade or so — it might move around, but it's not being shut down.
I note that we don't have issues with men being over-represented on the other side of the curve (mental issues, violence, etc.) We're not calling the police "systematically sexist" despite the fact that most of the police shooting victims are men, for example. There is no call to have gender equality in prisons or mental hospitals.
[1]: https://i.redd.it/cc8wtw97vo931.jpg
I would be just as upset if a smallpox researcher agreed to be interviewed by someone interested in reintroducing smallpox to the public, and seeing the researcher giving them the scientifically accurate information about how to do it.
There is indeed such a difference. Some clarifications:
(1) That's not Hsu.
(2) That's not an academic.
(3) You're not in a position to divine whether or not there was intent to harm in that tweet (re. "trying to harm").
(4) It's a safe bet that no one was harmed by that tweet.
(5) For cognitive democracy[1] to work in a free society, the possibility of marginally hurting someone's feelings can't be grounds to silence people.
[1]: https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/23/cognitive-democracy/
You have it backwards. The privileged are losing their privileges, and desperately seeking to find ways to justify why they should remain privileged. It is these people who desire to find evidence that proves their existing deeply-held belief that they're special, because "god" made them so and that others are genetically inferior.
Basically, a small +-5 IQ point difference doesn't change the big picture that much - still most people between 80 and 120, and some outliers below and above that.