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Comment by theclansman | Hacker News Reader

Everything plays a role but genetics is the most defining factor.

I'll cut straight to the chase:

White people are _not_ more intelligent than black people. And it is both factually incorrect and racist to believe so.

- "I never said white people were mo--" Sure, but that is nevertheless the belief held by 99% of the people who think that some ethnicities are inherently more intelligent than others. It's a reasonable assumption that that is what you think.

What a fun logical jump you made.

At no point did they say anything remotely related to race. You choose to make it about that.

If you take two people of the same race and one of them happens to have better genetics that lead to them being smarter, they are more likely to grasp the information provided to them and succeed in life.

I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t racist people in the world who believe what you were saying. I won’t pretend that there aren’t massive systematic issues in the western world that lead to non-white people having a harder lot in life.

I won’t pretend that you aren‘t trying to pour gasoline on the fire when it wasn’t even necessary. They made a polite comment and you just raged at them for no good reason. Calm down.

You might want to look at the GP's name. Yes, they didn't mention it explicitly. In the context of being named "theclansman" though, it's very likely to be the line of thinking the user had.

He cut to the chase. Which is what he said.

The logical implications of genetics determining IQ is obvious.

If genetics can determine physical appearance and genetics groups many certain physical aspects into a collection of common features for a race then if genetics determines intelligence, by what black magic does this grouping suddenly stop at intelligence?

Are we saying genetics can make Asians all have black hair, brown eyes, a tendency of a smaller size and suddenly zero effect on intelligence? Doesn't seem logical.

Thus when someone brings up intelligence and genetics it is by inescapable logic that they are also saying something about race.

Hair and eye color are simple epigenetical traits, and very easily measurable. As for size, I don't know if you've traveled to East Asia recently, but the young generations are just as tall as we Westerners. I follow a number of Asian bodybuilders and they aren't any smaller than your average white bodybuilder. The stereotype is likely the product of a historically poor nutrition, but that has changed, and Asians born in the last 30-40 years are proof.

Intelligence, on the other hand, is far more complex to define, measure and test than eye color or height.

Average size is still smaller according to data. Google the stats according to age range. The results still point to the generality that Asians are smaller.

One metric for intelligence is IQ. If you don't think IQ is a good measure of intelligence then let's not talk about things with vague definitions. Replace every usage of the word "intelligence" in my post with "IQ". Now we can talk on more exact terms.

I love how straight forward you are, seriously, let's not beat around the bush this is basically what the conversation is gonna come down to. IQ might be a completely useless number (as it has been pointed out, it doesn't predict success or anything like that), but denying that it's related to genetics is absurd too.

Agreed, if genetics didn’t have a factor then it’s like saying you can’t prove a human is smarter than a dog (the difference of course between species stems from genetics - similarly as between humans).

This is the paradox of IQ.

IQ is only a slight predictor of individual of individual success there are many other factors that are superior to IQ for predicting individual success.

However the paradox is that while IQ is not a good predictor of individual success, the economic success of a country correlates heavily with the average IQ of the people in that country.

It is a paradox. One cannot simply say that IQ doesn't "predict" success. From the data, the answer seems much more complicated.

IQ is a much better predictor, controlling for other known contributors, of success for individuals within, say, the United States, than it is for countries.

Sure, IQ “correlates strongly” with national economic success, but that’s because of other causal relationships, like that economic success predicts environmental conditions which are known contributors to IQ.

There’s no paradox here.

There is a paradox.

First off IQ only has a slight correlation with individual success past a certain point (someone with below 60 IQ is obviously going to have a hard time succeeding). The data shows that for high IQ and average IQ there is only a slight correlation with success.

Second what you said is patently false. We do not know if there is a causal relationship because a casual experiment is nearly impossible to conduct. This is very different from saying there is "no causal relationship." A correlation points to a possibility of causative relationships. Literally. You make a statement as if it was true, tell me the exact causal experiment you used to determine your statement about "no causal relationship".

Third. The correlation between economic success and IQ is much much stronger then the correlation between individual success and IQ.

Again there is a paradox. You are wrong.

Makes sense. If you're a genius in a country of people who make worse decisions (IQ/culture/other), you may ne worse off than an average person in a country with an average average decision making level

To me it doesn't make sense. Why doesn't this exact same logic apply to individual success?

I think lots of posters are more concerned about their families and future children than racebait crap like this.

Even if ethnicities correlate with IQ, clumping them together into "white" and "black" buckets would just average out any differences because both "white" and especially "black" people are so genetically diverse.

But Ashkenazi Jews are undoubtedly more intelligent than both. They also end up with a disproportionate amount of over-performers across the arts, sciences, finance, media, and entrepreneurship.

Can't their success be more attributed to a culture that favors learning and education, as well as the relative financial prosperity of Ashkenazi Jews compared to other groups? That the children of successful artists, scientists, or financiers become successful artists, scientists and financiers themselves is least surprising.

I highly doubt it. For example in New York City there were historically immigrants from lots of different backgrounds all living in the same place working in the same industries. Is it just a coincidence that the most intelligent of them also became the most successful across every metric (on average)?

It's also least surprising that a group of abnormally intelligent people finds themselves perpetually ending up in positions of wealth and power.

Of course. This is obvious. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. Just look at animal IQ.

Clearly human intelligence is determined genetically.

However, although human intelligence is clearly genetic and superior to most other animal intelligences there could be enough variability within the boundaries of human level intelligence such that variation in intelligence between humans could be influenced more heavily by other factors.

This is wrong

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