-This _should_ just be more social-science nerd stuff, the sort of thing that would only draw your attention if, like me, you feel bad about not being smart enough to do algebraic topology and want to console yourself by at least knowing about the Science of not being smart enough to do algebraic topology. The reason everyone _and her dog_ is still mad at Charles Murray a quarter century later is Chapter 13, "Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability", and Chapter 14, "Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ". So, _apparently_, different ethnic/"racial" groups have different average scores on IQ tests. [Ashkenazi Jews do the best](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/). (I sometimes privately joke that the fact that I'm [only 85% Ashkenazi (according to 23andMe)](/images/ancestry_report.png) explains my low IQ.) East Asians do a little better than Europeans/"whites". And—this is the part no one is happy about—the difference between U.S. whites and U.S. blacks is about Cohen's _d_ ≈ 1. (If two groups differ by _d_ = 1 on some measurement that's normally distributed within each group, that means that the mean of the group with the lower average measurement is at the 16th percentile of the group with the higher average measurement, or that a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the higher average measurement has a probability of 0.76 have having a higher measurement than a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the lower average measurement.)
+This _should_ just be more social-science nerd stuff, the sort of thing that would only draw your attention if, like me, you feel bad about not being smart enough to do algebraic topology and want to console yourself by at least knowing about the Science of not being smart enough to do algebraic topology. The reason everyone _and her dog_ is still mad at Charles Murray a quarter century later is Chapter 13, "Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability", and Chapter 14, "Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ". So, _apparently_, different ethnic/"racial" groups have different average scores on IQ tests. [Ashkenazi Jews do the best](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/). (I sometimes privately joke that the fact that I'm [only 85% Ashkenazi (according to 23andMe)](/images/ancestry_report.png) explains my low IQ.) East Asians do a little better than Europeans/"whites". And—this is the part that no one is happy about—the difference between U.S. whites and U.S. blacks is about Cohen's _d_ ≈ 1. (If two groups differ by _d_ = 1 on some measurement that's normally distributed within each group, that means that the mean of the group with the lower average measurement is at the 16th percentile of the group with the higher average measurement, or that a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the higher average measurement has a probability of about 0.76 have having a higher measurement than a uniformly-randomly selected member of the group with the lower average measurement.)
+
+It's important not to overinterpret the IQ-scores-by-race results; there are a bunch of standard caveats that go here that everyone's treatment of the topic needs to include. Again, just because variance in a trait is statistically associated with variance in genes _within_ a population, does _not_ mean that differences in that trait _between_ populations are _caused_ by genes: [remember the illustrations about](#heritability-caveats) sun-deprived plants and internet-deprived red-haired children. Group differences in observed tested IQs are entirely compatible with the blank slate doctrine, a world in which those differences are entirely due to the environment imposed by an overtly or structurally racist society. Maybe the tests are culturally biased. Maybe people with higher socioeconomic status get more opportunities to develop their intellect, and racism impedes socio-economic mobility. And so on.
+
+The problem is, a lot of the blank-slate-compatible hypotheses for group IQ differences become less compelling when you look into the details. "Maybe the tests are biased", for example, isn't an insurmountable defeater to the entire endeavor of psychometrics—it's _itself_ a testable hypothesis, or can become one if you specify what you mean by "bias" in detail. If a test question were biased against a group, you would expect
\ No newline at end of file