(Förhoppningsvis) slutord om ras/IQ-frågan

På tal om debattörers eventuella överlapp, kopplat till bl.a. ras-&-IQ:

 

Det här sköna snacket är naturligtvis ljusår från nämnda nazistpodden Darwin Digest (kanske det vidrigaste som poddats på denna jord). Överlappen är dock onekligen där. Således har Darwin Digest-nazisterna integrerat skrävor av sanning i sin världsbild - jag bedömer nämligen att Charles Murray har rätt i merparten av sakfrågorna. (Dvs., att han ligger i linje med konsensus.)

 

Eftersom Charles Murray låter så pass vettigt, men motverkas så hätskt av så många, kan en fråga sig: Vad ska jag tro? Liksom i den här reddit-tråden, som ställer samma fråga, vill jag luta mig mot rationalist-under-khalifen Gwern.

 

Självrannsakan:

 

"If, like most people, you’ve only read a few papers or books on it, your opinion (whatever that is) is worthless and you probably don’t even realize how worthless your opinion is, how far you are from actually grasping the subtleties involved and having a command of all the studies and criticisms of said studies."

 

Sunt förnuft:

 

"I never doubted that IQ was in part hereditary (Stephen Jay Gould aside, this is too obvious - what, everything from drug responses to skin and eye color would be heritable except the most important things which would have a huge effect on reproductive fitness?)"

Framtidshopp:

"The reason for IQ is this: yes, Murray failed to organize a definitive genetic study. It hasn’t happened yet even though it’s more important than most of the trivialities that get studied in population genetics (like historical movements of random groups). I don’t need to explain why this would be the case even if people on the environmentalist side of the IQ wars were confident they were right. But the massive fall in genome sequencing costs (projected to be <$1000 by ~2014) means that large human datasets will be produced, and the genetics directly examined, eliminating entire areas of objections to the previous heredity studies. And at some point, some researcher will manage the study - some group inside or outside the USA will fund it, at some point a large enough genetic database will be cross-referenced against IQ tests and existing racial markers. We already see some of this in research: Rietveld et al 2013 (followup: Ward et al 2014) found 3 SNPs simply by pooling existing databases of genetics data & correlating against schooling. I don’t know when the definitive paper will come out, if it’ll be this year, or by 2020, although I would be surprised if there was still nothing by 2030; but it will happen and it will happen relatively soon (for a debate going on for the past century or more). Genome sequencing is simply going to be too cheap for it to not happen. By 2030 or 2040, I expect the issue will be definitively settled in the same way earlier debates about the validity of IQ tests were eventually settled (even if the public hasn’t yet gotten the word, the experts all concede that IQ tests are valid, reliable, not biased, and meaningful predictors of a wide variety of real-world variables)."

Rekommendation:

"My own belief is that as interesting as it is, you should take the blue pill and not adopt any strong position but perhaps (if it doesn’t take too much time) point out any particularly naive or egregious holes in argument, by people who are simply wrong or don’t realize how little they know or how slanted a view they have received from the material they’ve read. It’s sad to not reach agreement with other people, dangerous to ignore critics, tempting to engage trolls - but life is too short to keep treading the same ground.

/.../

My interest does not materially affect when the final genetic studies will be conducted.

/.../

So, I try not to spend too much time thinking about this issue: the results will come in regardless of my opinion, and unlike other issues here, does not materially affect my worldview or suggest action. Given this, there’s no reason to invest your life in the topic! It has no practical ramifications for you, discussing the issue can only lead to negative consequences - and on the intellectual level, no matter how much you read, you’ll always have nagging doubts, so you won’t get any satisfaction. You might as well just wait patiently for the inevitable final answer."

***

 

Eftersom jag också släpade in Slate Star Codex i resonemanget om överlappande debattörer, specifikt angående ras-&-IQ, så känns det värt att påpeka att i t.ex. denna post gör SSC exakt samma poäng som Charles Murray gör (kring basinkomst, samhällets "svårighetsgrad", etcetera - i sista tredjedelen av Sam Harris-intervjun). Murray har uppenbarligen fört detta resonemang utförligt i minst en bok. Men, SSC creddar så vitt jag förstår inte Murray över huvud taget. Här känns det som att debattörs-överlappet banne mig är på nivån kalkylerat, och min djupt kända respekt för SSC-bloggen får sig för andra gången en liten törn (första gången här). Kanske är The bell curve så jädra kanonisk att det liksom inte ens behöver uttalas?

 

(Relaterat, om konsensus: Det finns forskning på't; det där med åsiktsändring; lämna en reträttväg; jävla massa tjat; relativism isn't tillrådligt; magkänsla vs. forskning, del 1, 2 och 3; fallstudie glyfosat. )