Submission statement (and this post title is the title of the linked-to article): While Sam has stated he has no interest in the topic of race and IQ (and I basically take him at his word on this at least moving forwards), he nonetheless used this issue as an example of a topic people can’t talk about without facing excessive political blowback, and hosted Charles Murray on the podcast because of this. In doing so, and in other conversations (such as with Siddhartha Mukherjee and Ezra Klein), Sam has discussed both race and IQ and implied that there is likely some genetic component to observed racial IQ differences, and discussed the matter of how scientists should be able to talk about this subject without fear of career-ending repercussions.
Contrary to what one moderator here might believe, I am not obsessed with this topic. In fact I probably would never even have given it much thought had I not listened to the podcast episode with Murray (Forbidden Knowledge) and then witnessed the later dust-up with Ezra Klein and their eventual discussion which followed. And this period has clearly brought a lot of racists, ‘race realists’, ’human biodiversity’ enthusiasts etc. into Sam’s audience and by extension some have found their way to this subreddit. The Murray and Klein episodes were clearly important and/or notable ones in Sam’s podcast output, and as such this topic is appropriate to discuss here. Especially as this post relates both to Sam’s apparent view that there is likely to be some genetic component to observed racial IQ score differences, and the matter of scientists talking about race, IQ and genetics (which Sam seems to feel is an important issue).
I bring Sam’s apparent position up because there does not appear to be any direct genetic evidence clearly demonstrating it to be the case, and thus the speculation about there being some degree of a genetic basis is irresponsible and not evidence-based. On the matter of scientists being able to talk about race, IQ and genetics, it turns out that a group of qualified individuals have just written a brief introductory piece on this very topic! They are: Ewan Birney, scientist (genomics) and director of the European Bioinformatics Institute; Jennifer Raff, geneticist and anthropologist; Adam Rutherford, former geneticist and science communicator; and Aylwyn Scally, geneticist at Cambridge University. This piece not only
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This is a view that I am neither proud nor happy to hold, but it seems to me to be the truth after some research. It is an ugly, and potentially unhelpful and harmful belief, but that may not stop it from being true. This post is so long because I want to be thorough in expressing my ideas. I am truly hoping that my view can be changed.
To clarify my view: I believe in the concept of races. This CMV is not about the existence of races. For one, races are a very clearly visible thing that we can distinguish from an early age (there is evidence that 1 year olds form racial preferences). I can look and see, 'this guy is white, this guy is indian, this girl is native american, this girl is east asian'. I believe that while races can intermix, there are still pretty clear delineations between groups. Some populations or countries might, for example, be 80% caucasian and 20% east asian, and there may be spectrums between races in some areas, but I don't think that negates the concept of races. I think it's very possible that Africans, having had more time to evolve in Africa than the other races since they left, could be considered to be more than one race, but I don't know enough about it. I've heard that different African populations have more genetic dissimilarity than caucasians do compared to Asians, for example. I will be using the term 'race' to refer to the broad groups (i.e. caucasians) as well as smaller, less distinct people (i.e. semitic peoples, or jews, or slavs) because I don't understand enough to differentiate.
My belief relies heavily on IQ scores and testing. While IQ is only a tool we can use to measure intelligence, which isn't even that well defined in the first place, I fully believe that it is a useful and valid measure of what we generally think of as intelligence. It is highly and positively correlated with almost all the things we think of as good in people and society: reduced criminality, increased wages, increased lifespan, reduced mental illness, increased level of education. I don't think anyone will CMV by arguing that IQ is an illegitimate measure of intelligence. When I speak of the intelligence of a race, I fully understand that the measured IQ of a group is a single number given to a distribution of scores, and that not only individuals, but families, clans, and ethnic groups will have IQs significantly higher or lower than the group they belong to. It is my sincere hope that this post doesn't offend anybody.
My biases: I
... keep reading on reddit ➡I agree that there is no genetic basis to racial differences in IQ, but would you say there are intra-racial between individual differences in IQ? So, a white middle class family has 4 kids and all 4 are differences in IQ and academics/personality. Is that substantially genetic?
I have this intense fear that I was simply born dumb, as in innately less intelligent than many of my peers.
In the last few years since the New/Alt Right entered the political arena, categories like ethnicity/race and gender became central subjects of social discourse once again. I'm studying Archeology and Cultural Anthropology, so I know the humanity science point of view on these categories, which is to see those at least as social constructs and at most as categories, which should be abandoned at best. Movements like the Alt Right critisize exactly this view on those categories. Now, admids a lot of pseudoscientific, right wing esoteric and conspiracy theoretical agruments the Alt Right also uses valuable scientific, biological/human genetic evidence and interprete them in an invaluable way to prove and promote there concept of "race reality".
My intend now is to understand the scientific background of these arguments and how they are informing the idea of a biological race category disregarding the ethical aspect of it for once. This way, one could actually find counterarguments for those statements. As far as I understand it, the strict biological idea of race in racial theories was/is mainly based upon clusters of cranial, facial structure, phenotypes and caracteristics, which help a population to survive under certain geographic and climatic conditions. Now, my question is, if the human genetic research delivers any correlation between the mentioned two aspects?
Thanks for the answer and for being open minded in advance!
So I’ve talked to friends about this and have noticed a trend. For some reason me, a middle eastern man who’s fare skinned (I look Persian/Moroccan) and a lot of other guys like me with my skin color are very attracted to blondes. Luckily, I seem to have the best luck with blondes and noticed they are very attracted to me and people that look like me. Do you think that there is a scientific reasoning for this ? Could it be genetic diversity or a predisposed attraction?
I mean I would assume these generalized traits was what people where talking about race. Am I missing something?
