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Comment by rosmax_1337 | Hacker News Reader

>It turns out molecular genetics has (for lack of a better word) thoroughly debunked [the view that Intelligence is significantly heritable].

There is also a replication crisis in post-modern science.

Not to mention, is it even legal, let alone reasonably possible for a study to publish in a real journal the view that Intelligence is heritable, in particular when it concerns race? This topic is arguably the in the top 3 forbidden taboos of western society. In European countries you can face charges of hate speech for even suggesting this, let alone dedicating a life of study regarding a certain conclusion.

That an article like this amounts to semantic evasion of the matter, like the post by gwervc here describes, does not give credibility to the side which continues to maintain that evolution has [by all significant measures] stopped at the neck.

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> In European countries you can face charges of hate speech for even suggesting this

Source?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368174

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sormland/hd-tar-upp-fallet...

SVT is the Swedish government news agency. The article describes a politician facing charges for suggesting that South Sudanese people have a lower IQ.

There's no empirical evidence that South Sudanese people, as a population, have lower IQ, therefore this cannot be interpreted as anything but an attempt to denigrate an entire people

Which highlights that even suggesting this is illegal in countries in Europe.

No it highlights that a right-wing politician known for saying inflammatory things about migrants made a comment for purely political purposes and clearly did not care about the underlying scientific validity of his claim, since it actually does not exist.

Can you source that it is actually legal to say that an ethnic group of people have a lower IQ, in Sweden?

I live in Sweden, and can attest to my own knowledge of the law, whilst not being a lawyer, that it is not legal. Let alone, reasonably possible therefore to have these things published in a journal here.

The original claim was that it is illegal to study or to publish on such a claim. For pure slander in a non-scientific context without evidence, sure, some countries prohibit that.

>Not to mention, is it even legal, let alone reasonably possible for a study to publish in a real journal the view that Intelligence is heritable, in particular when it concerns race?

What do you mean by race? Because race isn't genetically determined, its socially determined--two people of a very different "race," can actually be quite closely related genetically, its just that their appearances differ.

>does not give credibility to the side which continues to maintain that evolution has [by all significant measures] stopped at the neck.

Its not that evolution has or hasn't stopped at the neck, its that the IQ test as a single objective measure of intelligence, like measuring height, is incredibly flawed since it has changed dramatically in the decades when these studies have been conducted.

Whether or how someone is intelligent cannot be measured empirically by a single standard since purely intelligible things, like concepts, math, artistic ability, by nature cannot have an empirical appearance. But you know if someone is smart, and you know it because they tend to do things that are smart. But that's only helpful at the level of a single individual, its not something that can be measured population wide.

>post-modern science.

The most "post-modern" thing here is your comment, which you clearly wrote without having actually read the article thoroughly.

IQ remains one of the most highly predictive traits you even can measure from someones psychology, predicting crime rates, happiness, divorces. Just about everything actually is predicted by IQ in someones like, to an extent to which philosophical questions about determinism even can be brought up in discussion.

Race is genetically determined. Are you suggesting that for example breeds of dogs can swap from Labrador to Golden Retriever based on vibes during their upbringing. The term "black" as a racial group is of course an extremely crude and large genetic grouping, much like saying that perhaps "retrievers" are a race of dogs. Nonetheless, groups remain genetically determined.

Dogs have far less genetic diversity than humans since they have been selectively bread for thousands of years, leading in many cases to extreme hereditary issues: often there are breeds which have these problems as a part of their breeding. [0]

IQ also correlates strongly with economic and social class, which also correlates strongly with crime and happiness and probably also divorce. If you think, then, that race, as a determinate measure of IQ, is determinate of economic and social class, then you are actually a racist, plain and simple. But, you might not think that, I'm just trying to point this out to you.

[0]https://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/blog/inbreeding-of-...

>then you are actually a racist, plain and simple.

This is not an argument and is just an inflammatory remark.

I'm not saying you are, I'm saying that if you say what you are saying without qualifying that its only because of social factors that people of particular races tend to have lower IQs, then you are a racist, which is the generally agreed upon definition. Instead of evading the label, why not embrace it? For instance, I am a misogynist through and through, and if someone calls me one I affirm it. Why not accept that you are a racist instead of trying to pretend what you're saying has anything to do with objectivity and empirical science?

Site guidelines prevent me from elaborating further. Have a good day. :-)

> if you say what you are saying without qualifying that its only because of social factors that people of particular races tend to have lower IQs, then you are a racist, which is the generally agreed upon definition

Generally agreed upon by whom? Just you? The dictionary definition, which is most indicative of what is generally agreed upon, of "racist" denotes a requirement of prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism. An assertion of different races exhibiting different IQs due to heredity factors may be incorrect, but being incorrect does not imply prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism.

Its not that the assertion is incorrect, but that if it is made without knowledge that IQ is primarily influenced by social-economic factors, then it can be construed as racist because it is saying that a positive quality (high IQ) is given by nature to certain groups of people who already happen to hold certain economic and social privileges, instead of the other way around. Unless you're claiming that having a low IQ can be seen as something positive.

IQ is neither positive or negative. It is merely a factual representation[1] of what is. What has lead you to establish this emotional connection to it?

[1] To the extent of our best known ability to represent it. Any flaws in that representation accepted.

There are no IQ tests that measure IQ through genetics though. They are all measuring it by asking knowledge questions that the subject answers. There aren't many people that claim IQ isn't measuring anything. Just that it is not a measurement of genetics, as some people do insist that it is.

No reasonable scientist would study a correlation between a physical trait (intelligence) and a socio-economic concept (race). It would be like studying if height is correlated with "proper grammar".

Edit: race, not "rave"

Is race a socio-economic concept? Can you explain what you mean by that?

Its not genetically mediated. Indians are a "race" someone from Assam, someone from Rajasthan, and someone from Tamil Nadu may differ dramatically in terms of their genetic heritage and even racial appearance, simply because they are defined in terms of associations which are not purely to do with genetic lineage.

Right, but this doesn't invalidate the idea that genetic groups exist and that heritability can significantly affect traits such as intelligence.

It simply moves the question to, which genetic groups are correct to create distinctions from. The adage that there is more human genetic diversity in Africa than outside it comes to mind.

>which genetic groups are correct to create distinctions from.

None, because you cannot create a grouping without imposing certain parameters which are non-empirical in nature. Genetic science =! race science. Race as a concept is almost entirely mediated by social concerns and abstractions from concrete reality.

You can create groupings in nature. Biologists do it all the time for all animals. The groupings are by some measure arbitrary, yes, unless you mean to suggest that for example crows are in the same grouping as seagulls, and that even these groupings are invalid?

No, in fact I'm not. But nobody is going to go around saying that a crow is a seagull, you know it when you see it. Its because we ourselves are not seagulls or crows. We are not dogs, we are not animals, except in one specific way. And since you, yes you yourself, are part of the thing you are commenting on (race), there is no way to "purify" your assessment of the thing since your own personal history, which you cannot even be fully aware of, factors into your sectioning of the world.

So we are unable to judge, and therefore the null hypothesis must be that humans are genetically similar enough that trait variation is explained by external factors?

I think we can judge, and also that the null hypothesis should be that humans are evolutionary creatures like all other creatures on the planet, with groupings exhibiting different traits based on the genetic makeup.

No, but we cannot make any pure empirical judgements, just ones that we know are inflected by our particular social histories. Of course different humans have different traits, but IQ is not a measure of individual traits, its a mass measurement that correlates far more strongly with social factors such as nutrition and education than genetic heritage, which is what the article is saying

So do you believe that science as a whole is impossible because it is impossible for us to be truly logical and empirical on every matter?

Logical =! Empirical (there are many books on philosophy you could read on this subject, probably all of them.)

Science is the study of things that aren't logical. Concepts don't have anything to do with natural systems, they are patterns of thinking fixed into definite shapes to be applied to the natural world. It is precisely what we don't know, and what we don't yet know that we don't know, that scientific practice helps us discover. If you trusted in "logic" all the time you'd just get endless mathematical formulas that look cool and feel nice, but don't have anything to do with the universe more than a cat has to do with a ball of yarn that it's playing with. It is always when we discover things that break logic, that real scientific progress is made, not when we mindlessly follow what is "logical."

Absolutely, this is a subject that it would make sense to study. It's much harder to study than "race", though, because you need to do genetic studies on your participants or to design cross-cultural IQ tests (relying on geography as a much better proxy for genetics than skin color is). And in fact, no one is doing it in the area of intelligence, while there is a quite a bit of paper written on "race" and intelligence.

Of course. At best it's based on skin color, eye shape, and hair type. But different countries have different notions of what is a race, or what race a person is. And these also vary historically a lot (e.g. Irish people and Italian people used to be considered different races in the USA). And there is nothing objective about the choice of characteristics attributed to "race".

And finally and perhaps most importantly, no studies of race ever look at any genetics to define the races, they look at the regular proxies. A black-skinned child of a black-skinned mother and a white-skinned father is typically considered "black" even if they are just as black as they are white, genetically (or even more, if the black-skinned parent also had a white-skinned parent).

While “rave” is a misnomer, being applied almost exclusively based on skin color, haplogroups are a well defined aspect of genetic study and are very well defined geographically. It’s why the Germans look so distinct to Australians and so on, because different genetics found their footing in different areas. Claiming they are based solely on “socio-economic” factors is wildly incorrect and wildly racist. To what authority does someone’s social and economic standing define their genetics?

> haplogroups are a well defined aspect of genetic study and are very well defined geographically

Nobody is claiming there are no genetic differences between populations of people. People are reiterating that race is an entirely socially-constructed concept. Human racial categories are not based on genetics.

> It’s why the Germans look so distinct to Australians and so on

As a white person, they both look like average white people with Northwestern European heritage to me. If you had a room with 100 random white people, I guarantee you I couldn't pinpoint to the Aussies or Germans by looks alone.

Race is not defined by genetics. Genetics were used to justify race. Race is also extremely nebulous. According to the US Census, an average Norwegian, Sicilian, Mexican, and Arab are all considered to be white. Again according to the US Census, on average, if you are from southwest Pakistan, you are Asian. If you are from southeast Iran, you are... caucasian? See how stupid this classification is?

I would bet good money that the genetic difference between someone from Iran (White) vs. Pakistan (Asian) is substantially less than someone from Pakistan (Asian) vs. South Korea (Asian).

> As a white person, they both look like average white people with Northwestern European heritage to me. If you had a room with 100 random white people, I guarantee you I couldn't pinpoint to the Aussies or Germans by looks alone.

That sounds pretty racist to me. Would you say the same about people from Uganda as opposed to the Caribbean, or Japan from China? That they all look the same?

There's a loaded grenade of a question.

Here's the thing though, a "white person" from Australia is a blandly generic European, they look like they could of come from Scotland, or Germany .. then of course you can start looking at European Australians and picking out people with deep ancestral roots to Spain, Italy, Serbia | Croatia, etc.

Modern Germany is a greater melting pot of origin stories than it once was - although to be frankly honest much of the population of Neukölln in Berlin look as though they might be from Melbourne, Australia - and they don't look at all like the 'Aryan Race' archetypes certain Germans of the 1920s were so fond of.

Forget "race" - it's a question of whether any family traits and features that started out strongly eveident are still present or not.

The greater truth is that outside of any obvious strong features, Australians come from all over; 25% of the current population was born outside of Australia, and with the exception of indigenous Australians and first settler, early convicts, soldiers that stayed on for land, servant families of the rich, very early gold rush adventurers, etc very few people in Australia are descended from anybody here prior to 1850.

Following 1850 the Australian population quadrupled rapidly from under half a million outsiders as prospecters poured in.

Conversely, the population of Japan largely looks Japanese in origin and it's generally not hard to pick those who don't have several generations there behind them.

The important thing I'm pointing to is that there is no correlation between those haplogroups, which definitely do exist, and what anyone calls race. So when you say that you want to study race VS intelligence, that just doesn't make any sense. If you want to study the heritability of IQ, or variation in IQ between diverse human populations, that's a different matter.

Race is not genetics; genetics are objective reality, race is not. Race is a series of socio-economic labels applied to people based on purely external factors, and highly un correlated with any genetic variation.

I agree with what you’re saying, ultimately I dislike the label. I don’t see where the “economic” part of “socio-economic label” comes in. Race as a social label makes perfect sense to me, because race is used in social contexts mostly as a way to discuss individuals in our daily life. “That [race] man” is expected vernacular, as our social groups tend to be made up of those that are like us, and “race” is a typical exclusion from that. However, it as an “economic” label is far too cultural to for me to accept as a general statement. In certain cultures, say 18th century USA, races such as “Irish” or “African” were seen generally as low-rung groups. However, that’s different nowadays, and was different across cultural borders, so while I would posit everyone understands the social aspects of race, the economic predispositions aren’t something we should be focusing on, as ultimately they are just another social aspect and thus redundant.

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