Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

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You're looking to compare the psychology of adopted Asian-Americans and un-adopted Asian-Americans? This is definitely a place where correlation can be a million things other than causation. I'm no social scientist, but two things come to mind right away:

Consider the financial situation of a household which adopts children - adoption is a very expensive and rigorous process, so adopted children of any nationality are going to be in a family which is financially secure and meets some kind of standard psychologically and legally. Not so for many Asian immigrants - I would imagine that on average, Asian immigrants aren't as well off as foster parents. Culturally, their environment will be quite different.

Cultural identities also come into play - adopted or not, Asian children will identify themselves as "Asian", just as Jewish children identify themselves as "Jewish", Russian children will identify themselves as "Russian", and African American children identify themselves as "Black".

Okay, you have a hypothesis. It seems a little unlikely, but I agree that it could be true.

Now, let's get to the proof side of things. What evidence makes you think this is a good explanation for the range of phenomena that you see? What else does it explain? Why can we discount other explanations, etc.

I'm not sure what you are referring to.

When it comes to social science, there is no one single comprehensible good explanation for the vast majority of phenomena - what I was pointing out is that there are systematic biases when comparing "adopted Asian Americans" and "Asian American immigrants". These biases - financial, psychological, etc - will have a significantly larger influence on how children perform than what you're testing for (genetic differences).

Only they don't, because when you measure it, you can predict 80% (studies differ on the exact number) of IQ from parent's IQ. The rest is mainly unshared environment (what we don't know how to fix).

You sound exactly like someone who has been in college for 2 or 3 years and thinks he now knows all the answers to every problem.

Wait until you try to get a job. Then the real fun begins.

Oh hey, I remember you from last time. No, I'm a number of years past that age.

I am a little depressed to be arguing with people who think that calling names is a valid way to argue this sort of thing. The closest I've gotten to a real intellectual response is someone who claims that thinking you're Asian will make you better at math (alert the schools of this discovery!).

I thought that Hacker News was a place where intelligent people were willing to hold intelligent discussions. If you're going to talk about immigration (which HN wants to talk about a lot) you have to consider this sort of thing at least.

Instead, what I see is the view: "On this subject it's okay to turn off our reasoning facilities." Why? I guess because thinking about it would be wrong. You'd have to be a Nazi to know about the Hapmap data or brain genes that vary across population groups like ASPM and microcephalin. Ah well.

Maybe I should begin attacking people for being dirty culturists instead. Attacking African culture, claiming that it causes IQ drops, is a terrible slander against what are sometimes a very beautiful set of social systems. Only evil people could claim that.

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