'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

I'm confused about how you got to your first point. You cited figures from the survey paper that show a spike at 0% genetic (meaning that a bunch of the people surveyed think there's a very low genetic influence on intelligence), but then you say "the view that IQ is hereditary is well represented among experts - moreso than the opposite." Doesn't the figure you cite contradict your conclusion?

The HN post you referred to supporting the idea of "race" included a link to a paper [0] where these are the final 2 lines of the abstract: "Respondents educated in Western Europe, physical anthropologists, and middle-aged persons reject race more frequently than respondents educated in Eastern Europe, people in other branches of science, and those from both younger and older generations. The survey shows that the views of anthropologists on race are sociopolitically (ideologically) influenced and highly dependent on education."

I wouldn't call that scientific support for the notion of race as a meaningful category.

Ever since the idea of "white" people was invented, groups which have at one time or another been considered non-white include the Germans, Greeks, white Hispanics, Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Slavs and Spaniards. [1][2]

I agree with you about the video I linked to cherry picking that quote from Murray about heritability. That section was taken from a critique [3] of The Bell Curve, and the paragraph it was pulled from ends with this: "The Bell Curve itself does not make these embarrassing mistakes. Herrnstein, the late co-author, was a professional on these topics. But the upshot of part of this essay is that the book's main argument depends for some of its persuasive force on a more subtle conflation of heritability and genetic determination. And Murray's confusion serves to underscore just how difficult these concepts can be, even for someone so numerate as Murray."

It doesn't seem like we will be convincing each other of anything here. For me, it's just about impossible to be schooled on the history of America and the incredible multifaceted assault on people that aren't white, which is still very much ongoing, and then argue that there's any way to say that there isn't an overwhelming environmental cause for disparities in socioeconomic status/IQ/incarcaration rates/etc between blacks and whites. Just falling back on ockham's razor, which seems more likely:

A - After humans migrated out of Africa and spread out over the globe, there was selection for genes that generated differing amounts of melanin in reaction to different amounts of sunlight at different latitudes. For some reason, genes linked with intelligence shifted as well so that there is now a strong correlation between skin pigmentation levels and intelligence despite a lack of any obvious reason for these things to be linked.

or

B - Africans, being better adept at surviving the malarial load of the new world due to a genetic predisposition [4] were recruited en masse for the trans-atlantic slave trade. The people running this slave trade, having at least a modicum of morality and most likely Christian, invented a theory of race that placed Africans below Europeans so that it became less morally repugnant to maintain the chattel slavery system. This theory of race pitted all of the poor people against each other, allowing people in power to maintain their positions. This theory of race also allowed for a prolonged (and ongoing) withholding of resources from an entire population of people (defined by having dark skin), and this deprivation is having a direct effect on the success of dark-skinned people in many different measurements.

For me, it's B all the way.

[0] https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/current-views-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people#United_States

[2] https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylj/vol109/iss4/4/

[3] https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Her...

[4] https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/lowCountry_fu...

> I'm confused about how you got to your first point. You cited figures from the survey paper that show a spike at 0% genetic (meaning that a bunch of the people surveyed think there's a very low genetic influence on intelligence),

No no no - the spike is not at "very low", but at zero. While the people that believe there's some genetic influence, are about evenly distributed between thinking that influence is anywhere from 10% to 90%. In total, more believe there's some influence than zero influence.

> I wouldn't call that scientific support for the notion of race as a meaningful category.

Neither is it a consensus debunking it. And what the idea used to be is irrelevant to the current understanding.

> argue that there's any way to say that there isn't an overwhelming environmental cause for disparities in socioeconomic status/IQ/incarcaration rates/etc between blacks and whites.

But I never argued that. A and B aren't mutually exclusive.

As for Occam's razor, well, claiming that of all the genetic distance caused by geographical separation for tens of millenia, none of it affects intelligence or personality - that just doesn't seem very likely to me. It's not the case for dogs [1], why should it be for humans?

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201304...

No

I accept that it's not a great study, but Gwern's refutation seems focused on mental illness/autistic disorders, and doesn't include the other conditions mentioned in the Mensa study - i.e., "environmental allergies, asthma and autoimmune disorders", which is more common in my observations of myself and others. (Notably, these conditions do not necessarily lead to reduced lifespan, particularly with modern medical interventions to extend lifespan, but they nonetheless affect enjoyment of life and limit people's abilities in various ways).

Also, Gwern's refutation doesn't cite a conclusive study that either links IQ/intelligence to genetic coding, or positively correlates IQ/intelligence with physiological health.

Another Scientific American article references several different studies that link brain/body impairments with enhanced cognition [1].

And we can easily see that several people generally accepted as being among the most intelligent in history – e.g., Hawking, Einstein, Tesla and Nietzsche – experienced debilitating physiological illness for much of their lives.

I'm well aware that none of this is conclusive; it's a hugely complex topic, with a lot of different evidence pointing in different directions, and the evidence one will embrace will likely be influenced more by their pre-established position than anything cited in this discussion.

For what it's worth, I had previously accepted the genetic-deterministic view of intelligence and general life outcomes, but can no longer do so after researching the topic deeply over many years. I do accept heritability has a strong influence, but I don't accept that it's limited to genetics, or that the effects are immutable.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/transcending...

He said that about Jews, not just about Jewish women