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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29421 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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I thought that believing that talent, intelligence, etc have significant heritability is believing in HBD, at least insofar as HBD is what people who use the term generally claim it to be and not just a euphemism for emotion-driven racism.

The way that HBD is used around here seems to imply some amount of believing that racial differences in traits like intelligence (1) exist and (2) are significantly heritable. This is an idea that deBoer clearly rejects while still agreeing that on an individual level such differences exist and are significantly heritable. But perhaps I've misunderstood the term.

The way that HBD is used around here seems to imply some amount of believing that racial population-level differences in traits like intelligence (1) exist and (2) are significantly heritable.

Would he really disagree with this? It's basic statistics. The sketchy part is attempting to map a distinct population onto some kind of "race". Since our populations are not as isolated as they were five hundred or five thousand years ago, race is a muddy lens today.

Since our populations are not as isolated as they were five hundred or five thousand years ago, race is a muddy lens today.

It may not be a top-level Zeiss, but it's still got plenty of clarity even if there is some vignetting around the edges. And self-identified race correlates well and robustly to objective measurements.

Ah I see, no you're right. I forgot about the difference between small-scale heritability and race-level heritability.

I always put a second requirement on HBD: there is significant heritibility of socially important traits, and the distribution of those traits is significantly uneven. IMO, if someone believes that notable genetic differences only happen at the level of the family, then they don't believe in HBD.

I always put a second requirement on HBD: there is significant heritibility of socially important traits, and the distribution of those traits is significantly uneven. IMO, if someone believes that notable genetic differences only happen at the level of the family, then they don't believe in HBD.

I am not sure that anyone actually believes this. I can see them getting to that point and stopping because if you go any further explicitly you get evicted from polite society, but I can't even imagine what kind of epicycle would be required to claim that these differences happen at a family level and then just immediately stop when you zoom out and look at extended families.

I am not sure that anyone actually believes this.

Really? I think it's the most common position.

I'm not confident about the hows and whys of that, but my guess is that people just don't think about the topic, or at least they don't think of that pair of stances at the same time using the same framework.

Its only the most common position because most people have never really confronted the evidence. The average person on the street doesn't even know that races have different average IQs or if they do they think they disappear by accounting for simple cofounders

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