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late version of a small language model
1yr ago·Edited 1yr ago
Speaking of HBD, here's an interesting, very typical recent exchange on Twitter between a bunch of race realists and a certain Dialectical Biologist (self-identified Lewontin fan), with laymen chiming in too. The crux of the argument is, as always: can races have differences in average cognitive ability? The refutation, cutting aside fluff like «IQ tests have culture bias», is twofold: first, intelligence is always adaptive, and Africans also had to plan for the future in the ancestral environment (equivalently, «would have benefitted from long-term planning for e.g. droughts and... doing something about it). Second, races aren't even a thing, so the point is moot (human groups aren't species, aren't subspecies, aren't breeds, and so he just dismisses examples of cognitive differences within such subsets in non-human animals). E.g. here's an insane bit:
DB: 'Race realists' have never provided a coherent explanation for why/how different environments supposedly selected for high or low intelligence alleles during evolutionary history. High intelligence would be advantageous in all environments!
some guy: So is strength, speed, and height. Do those vary by race?
DB: Do you have reliable data showing those traits do actually vary by race?
DB: I don't, race is synonymous with subspecies, and humans don't have subspecies
So,
pygmies aren't a «race», seeing as «race»=subspecies =an invalid concept to begin with,
so there, by definition, cannot be reliable data relating to pygmies (or anyone) showing that strength, speed and height actually vary by race;
so the example of a specific lineage of humans being obviously short and weak can be safely ignored;
and this direction of attack on the core argument – inherent implausibility of differences in selection pressure on «more is always better traits» – remains guarded.
Obviously there are more layers to it: if this line of defense were somehow breached, he could concede that maxing out height isn't always better (even though I'd expect bigger pygmies to still be more successful in their environment) but intelligence is different, or some such. But he plays to maintain maximum optionality, not to score points in a rational debate, so even non-damning attacks must be deflected.
On the surface, such mental gymnastics, with rapid jumps between abstraction layers and revealed intelligence, seems to require explicit reasoning. I always wonder if these people understand what they're doing, or if they're RLHF'd into mentally circling the drain like ChatGPT is RLHF'd into incoherently preferring an H-bomb to the N-word, and are no more conscious than most folks imagine ChatGPT is. Or if there even is any substance to the idea that there could be difference. @Chrisprattalpharaptr, what say you?
Population differences aren't perfectly continuous tho. Genetic distances between clusters are larger than what would be predicted from geographic distance
Yes I know. There is population structure as the papers you cite prove. This isn't evidence that the 4chan interpretation of the left PCA is correct. Also, I always find it astonishing how hereditarians cite papers by Rosenberg/Novembre and somehow miss points such as these:
As 0.0153 is not a large value of genetic distance, and because the addition of the B term produces only a modest increase in Rˆ2, the discontinuities that give rise to genetic clusters – as we have stated previously [3] – constitute a relatively small fraction of human genetic variation.
Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of "biological race."
That's cute. Meanwhile, I cite papers for their results, not for their authors' hopes and dreams.
Couple things.
A) That's an R^2 statistic, which should always be thought of as more impressive than people intuit them to be (squared apples n such)
B) This is a test for incremental validity; the discontinuities are part of the reason why genetic distance increases with geographic distance (this controls for that; you're bragging that A has no effect on B after controlling for the effect of A). Similarly disappointing would be the effect of geographic distance on genetic distance when controlling for the discontinuities. The proper place for this is binary hypothesis testing, which this passes.
C) Red Winged Black Birds have recognized subspecies despite said subspecies having FST distances of only 0.9%, which the incremental validity here is singlehandedly stronger than.
D) The meaningfulness of FST values differs among species (Remember, percent of variance; 100% of 10 is smaller than 10% of 1000). As it turns out, humans actually have an unusually-high amount of heterozygosity.
Wait, your argument is that you understand the meaning and extensions of scientists' work better than they do? On what basis do you denigrate their research-based conclusions about the meaning of their own work, calling them hopes and dreams rather than research-driven positions?
[…] Ah, working scientific researchers, peer reviewers & journal editors don't understand simple things about statistics. It must be nice to be so much better educated, or naturally smarter, than active researchers. But, of course, human beings are like red winged black birds, so...
Basically, a layman's understanding of science is that it's a thing when special people do certain rituals and write some really hard stuff, and then their special credentials entitle them to recite a politically appropriate conclusion that receives Science Has Shown label. It's pure divination: priestly credentials + wordcel proof of work = Credible Truth that the Sovereign can appeal to when declaring a war of conquest, an early harvest or a tax hike.
But there's sad rationality, learned helplessness, underneath it all. A layman knows that he can be Eulered and confounded, so there is no point to examining whether those conclusions follow from the results, whether they even are conceptually in the same plane, and whether that interpretation is germane to the empirical issue that's being discussed. He can only hope The Experts are deserving of his trust.
On the surface, such mental gymnastics, with rapid jumps between abstraction layers and revealed intelligence, seems to require explicit reasoning. I always wonder if these people understand what they're doing, or if they're RLHF'd into mentally circling the drain like ChatGPT is RLHF'd into incoherently preferring an H-bomb to the N-word, and are no more conscious than most folks imagine ChatGPT is. Or if there even is any substance to the idea that there could be difference. @Chrisprattalpharaptr, what say you?
I don't know; I've never met a population geneticist, let alone tried to talk to them about IQ or race so it's difficult for me to model their thinking. While trying to figure out what he was saying, I ran into both twitter blocking me from following external links (thanks Elon) and paywalled papers with high-minded titles like 'Understanding human genetics for the benefit of society.' If they can afford it, anyways.
If you weren't joking, I've taken the sentience blackpill and will maybe expand on it with a toplevel post at some point. If you wanted to talk about HBD again, I don't think I've changed much since the last time we've discussed it other than to retreat further into uncertainty. I tried picking up some books from the 'race is a social construct' crowd and they do, indeed, seem to be trash. Evolutionary psych arguments are almost always just as bad, as well as people holding up studies claiming to have found 'The Intelligence Gene' distinguishing Whites and Blacks. I'd maintain:
Definitionally, complex traits are determined by a mixture of genetics and environment.
IQ is a complex trait, therefore there should be a substantial genetic component and I accept the data showing this is the case.
GWAS studies and other approaches for studying complex traits have not been particularly illuminating, even in model cases like height and with massive sample sizes.
Study of environmental factors seems to have made even less progress, though whether that is due to poor methodology/researchers or even greater complexity I don't know.
All this said, I don't think any of this would substantially change my politics or worldview whichever way the chips fall.
As an aside, if you avoid using the words HBD/genetics and talk to people about talent you can get them to reveal some hilariously hardline positions. Once they agree that some kids are just more talented than others, it's easy to segue from that to nature vs. nurture so long as you aren't explicitly calling for genocide or mandatory eugenics.
But he plays to maintain maximum optionality, not to score points in a rational debate, so even non-damning attacks must be deflected.
My reading of his view is that he (correctly) understands the inherent weakness of his position. Those attacks might look non-damning at the outset, but the moment he gives ground on them the rest of his position inevitably crumbles into dust. When you allow for a group of humans like the pygmies to exist at all, you open up a line of attack on the "scientific consensus" where the only two counters are to either give up or speak power to truth.
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Notes -
Speaking of HBD, here's an interesting, very typical recent exchange on Twitter between a bunch of race realists and a certain Dialectical Biologist (self-identified Lewontin fan), with laymen chiming in too. The crux of the argument is, as always: can races have differences in average cognitive ability? The refutation, cutting aside fluff like «IQ tests have culture bias», is twofold: first, intelligence is always adaptive, and Africans also had to plan for the future in the ancestral environment (equivalently, «would have benefitted from long-term planning for e.g. droughts and... doing something about it). Second, races aren't even a thing, so the point is moot (human groups aren't species, aren't subspecies, aren't breeds, and so he just dismisses examples of cognitive differences within such subsets in non-human animals). E.g. here's an insane bit:
So,
pygmies aren't a «race», seeing as «race»=subspecies =an invalid concept to begin with,
so there, by definition, cannot be reliable data relating to pygmies (or anyone) showing that strength, speed and height actually vary by race;
so the example of a specific lineage of humans being obviously short and weak can be safely ignored;
and this direction of attack on the core argument – inherent implausibility of differences in selection pressure on «more is always better traits» – remains guarded.
Obviously there are more layers to it: if this line of defense were somehow breached, he could concede that maxing out height isn't always better (even though I'd expect bigger pygmies to still be more successful in their environment) but intelligence is different, or some such. But he plays to maintain maximum optionality, not to score points in a rational debate, so even non-damning attacks must be deflected.
On the surface, such mental gymnastics, with rapid jumps between abstraction layers and revealed intelligence, seems to require explicit reasoning. I always wonder if these people understand what they're doing, or if they're RLHF'd into mentally circling the drain like ChatGPT is RLHF'd into incoherently preferring an H-bomb to the N-word, and are no more conscious than most folks imagine ChatGPT is. Or if there even is any substance to the idea that there could be difference. @Chrisprattalpharaptr, what say you?
But let's dig in. As evidence for races not being a thing, he shows that there is genetic continuity.
HBD bro:
Dialectical Biologist responds with an insistence to accept authors' interpretation:
HBD bro is not impressed:
And here's what I was really leading to: a layman is indignant about him disagreeing with the interpretation:
Basically, a layman's understanding of science is that it's a thing when special people do certain rituals and write some really hard stuff, and then their special credentials entitle them to recite a politically appropriate conclusion that receives Science Has Shown label. It's pure divination: priestly credentials + wordcel proof of work = Credible Truth that the Sovereign can appeal to when declaring a war of conquest, an early harvest or a tax hike.
But there's sad rationality, learned helplessness, underneath it all. A layman knows that he can be Eulered and confounded, so there is no point to examining whether those conclusions follow from the results, whether they even are conceptually in the same plane, and whether that interpretation is germane to the empirical issue that's being discussed. He can only hope The Experts are deserving of his trust.
(brought here by @official_techsupport's post in recent comments)
I don't know; I've never met a population geneticist, let alone tried to talk to them about IQ or race so it's difficult for me to model their thinking. While trying to figure out what he was saying, I ran into both twitter blocking me from following external links (thanks Elon) and paywalled papers with high-minded titles like 'Understanding human genetics for the benefit of society.' If they can afford it, anyways.
If you weren't joking, I've taken the sentience blackpill and will maybe expand on it with a toplevel post at some point. If you wanted to talk about HBD again, I don't think I've changed much since the last time we've discussed it other than to retreat further into uncertainty. I tried picking up some books from the 'race is a social construct' crowd and they do, indeed, seem to be trash. Evolutionary psych arguments are almost always just as bad, as well as people holding up studies claiming to have found 'The Intelligence Gene' distinguishing Whites and Blacks. I'd maintain:
Definitionally, complex traits are determined by a mixture of genetics and environment.
IQ is a complex trait, therefore there should be a substantial genetic component and I accept the data showing this is the case.
GWAS studies and other approaches for studying complex traits have not been particularly illuminating, even in model cases like height and with massive sample sizes.
Study of environmental factors seems to have made even less progress, though whether that is due to poor methodology/researchers or even greater complexity I don't know.
All this said, I don't think any of this would substantially change my politics or worldview whichever way the chips fall.
As an aside, if you avoid using the words HBD/genetics and talk to people about talent you can get them to reveal some hilariously hardline positions. Once they agree that some kids are just more talented than others, it's easy to segue from that to nature vs. nurture so long as you aren't explicitly calling for genocide or mandatory eugenics.
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My reading of his view is that he (correctly) understands the inherent weakness of his position. Those attacks might look non-damning at the outset, but the moment he gives ground on them the rest of his position inevitably crumbles into dust. When you allow for a group of humans like the pygmies to exist at all, you open up a line of attack on the "scientific consensus" where the only two counters are to either give up or speak power to truth.
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Context Copy link
More options
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