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I'm guessing it's a combination of the 1st 2, since Scott seems likely to believe that 3 wouldn't work; the people who tend to accuse him of racism would do so regardless of whatever hedging he might choose to do except on the margins, and those margins probably aren't that big. Like most people who dive into this topic, at least from my perception, he probably hopes that the environmental factors, which can be more easily controlled than genetic ones, are very important. Thus he ends up genuinely believing it.
It could also be a combination of 2 and 3 - also like most people who dive into this topic, he probably wishes that the types of people who would accuse him of racism for exploring this topic in good faith would be willing to modulate such accusations based on hedging. And so through wishful thinking, he genuinely believes that such hedging would help him.
Can they? Inequities have continued to exist despite countless social engineering efforts. If we just need to modify the environment more, that's pretty dispiriting: it's not easy and has failed.
On the other hand, if the cause is genetic, I can more easily imagine a fully egalitarian, rich world a century from now, with some new, effective gene therapy that we can put our efforts into making universally accessible.
The rather spotty - at best - track record of social engineering efforts is a good point. However, despite my generally tech-optimistic stance, I think population-engineering efforts through gene therapy has an even worse track record, i.e. none. That doesn't mean that it's worse or less likely to work, but I do think, until we actually see real-world examples that gene therapy - and specifically population-wide gene therapy of this sort - can be implemented, we are correct in believing that environmental factors are easier to manipulate than genetic ones.
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Boosting Africa and India into having IQ’s in the mid eighties is enough for them to be functional lower-middle income countries. You don’t need a ginormous environmental effect.
India is a lower-middle income country?
https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups
We might disagree on the criteria for being a "functional" one, but it matches my own standards in a way most of Africa doesn't.
Is it high-functioning? Hell no, but it's also not Sub-Saharan Africa, and better than Nigeria and the like (I happened to have a nice chat with a Nigerian doctor who joined my workplace)
I expect that in a decade or two, if AI didn't steal livelihoods, we'd reach Thai or Eastern European standards. Think of how the average middle-class American looks at how impoverished the middle-class Brit is (and the latter really isn't starving to death or has a absolute dearth of consumer goods) and perhaps that's how they'd look at the middle-class Indian.
There is an enormous chasm between Thai and Eastern Europe. The latter are catching up with the west very fast, the lag is only 10 years. In Poland, for example, the purchasing power today is similar to that of Brits in 2018. The purchasing power of Thais is more like Britain in the 90s.
Poland was always a more Western European country than Eastern European. The East Slavs have always been different and they are in much worse shape.
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