Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

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The research definitely is significant - definitely politically, if not scientifically (which I'd argue it is, any research that helps find the truth / predict the future / create a better model of the world is scientifically significant).

We're currently in the middle of several highly emotional political debates, which would easily be resolved by having better/more scientific data, particularly into the correlation of IQ and interests with race & sex. Sure, genetics don't determine an individual's life, but they do influence population averages, so if genetics explain/predict sex & race differences in careers and education, we could hopefully resolve those debates.

Another example of this is the association between violence and (1) computer games, and (2) sex/testosterone. The first one, albeit "intuitive", was debunked using science/statistics, and the second one most people just assume as "obviously" true (and noone claims sexism!) (although AFAIK it's scientifically debatable).

Again, genetics don't determine an individual, but they do influence the population & sub-groups.

What are the debates being resolved?

Clear evidence that one group differs from another doesn't provide any useful information for dealing with individuals.

Like make up a characteristic where women differ statistically from men, but have the difference be about 1/2 the standard deviation for either group. Lots of women will be closer to the average for men than the average for women, and vice versa, there's no useful generalization to make from the clear evidence.

And lo and behold, most human characteristics are similar to this pattern, with clear distinctions available between groups and of no value in making decisions about individuals, because of intragroup variation.

“ Clear evidence that one group differs from another doesn't provide any useful information for dealing with individuals “

This isn’t necessarily true.

For example, I know that two-year-olds are far more sensitive to missing naps then eight-year-olds are.

This changes how I structure time and environment around a two year old so that he is the statistically more likely to behave. If I don’t do that, I set them up for individual behavioral failures.

> Like make up a characteristic where women differ statistically from men, but have the difference be about 1/2 the standard deviation for either group.

> there's no useful generalization to make from the clear evidence.

Unless the selection is on the tail ends. https://darrendahly.shinyapps.io/app1/

>which would easily be resolved by having better/more scientific data

There's already quite a lot of data on the subject. Here's a 30 year meta-study from 2005 for example.

https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense...

The problem described in the article is that people are preventing/defunding further studies.

You know what both Rushton and Jensen were incredibly controversial figures, right? Perhaps not on the same level as Lynn and Vanhanen, but close.

I mean, when society deems this field as toxic, then every figure that aims at exploring it will be filled with controversy.

It's quite painful then that people are obsessed with measuring group differences with the only possible explanation being bigotry. If people ignored identity groups and studied individuals, we might not be in such a political mess.

If outcomes between groups are different, investigation into underlying causes of differences in group outcomes is often useful- bigotry need not be a motivation.

What I see is that if a difference is indeed found, there can only be two reasons for it: Racism or sexism.

Computer science or video games are an example. The demographics allegedly show very prevalent sexism here that is allegedly responsible for said difference.

The self-reflection about how other fields have similar one-sided demographics with the opposite sex isn't interesting on the other hand. On the contrary, that realization is ignored, because it would endanger the sexism story. A look at the pipeline is also just ignored, even if demographics are one-side before discrimination even could occur.

I don't believe that some people believe their own conclusions though. The bad thing is that states and governments now try to correct something that is based on false assumptions. This is nothing else than totalitarian and absurd behavior.

>What I see is that if a difference is indeed found, there can only be two reasons for it: Racism or sexism.

This seems absurd to me. As an example, I figure that the reason that there are more male construction workers than female construction workers is not sexism- it's that men largely have more physical strength and a greater inclination or preference for highly physical and dangerous work than women.

Would you call this sexism? Why should it be the default assumption that men and women have equal preferences to self-select jobs exact equal proportion for each and every profession?

> This seems absurd to me.

To me too, I didn't mean to endorse that view, but it is the ruleset a lot of policies are based upon.

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