Author: Sophia
Date: 2018-10-01 20:35
Category: commentary
-Tags: epistemology
+Tags: epistemology, information theory
_(This is a guest post by friend of the blog Sophia!)_
The problem is, a lot of the blank-slatey environmentally-caused-differences-only hypotheses for group IQ differences start to look 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 IQ testing—it is _itself_ a falsifiable hypothesis, or can become one if you specify what you mean by "bias" in detail. One idea of what it would mean for a test to be _biased_ is if it's partially measuring something other than what it purports to be measuring: if your test measures a _combination_ of "intelligence" and "submission to the hegemonic cultural dictates of the test-maker", then individuals and groups that submit less to your cultural hegemony are going to score worse, and if you _market_ your test as unbiasedly measuring intelligence, then people who believe your marketing copy will be misled into thinking that those who don't submit are dumber than they really are. But if so, and if not all of your individual test questions are _equally_ loaded on intelligence and cultural-hegemony, then the cultural bias should _show up in the statistics_. If some questions are more "fair" and others are relatively more culture-biased, then you would expect the _order of item difficulties_ to differ by culture: the ["item characteristic curve"](/papers/baker-kim-the_item_characteristic_curve.pdf) plotting the probability of getting a biased question "right" as a function of _overall_ test score should differ by culture, with the hegemonic group finding it "easier" and others finding it "harder". Conversely, if the questions that discriminate most between differently-scoring cultural/ethnic/"racial" groups were the same as the questions that discriminate between (say) younger and older children _within_ each group, that would be the kind of statistical clue you would expect to see if the test was unbiased and the group difference was real.
-Hypotheses that accept IQ test results as unbiased, but attribute group differences in IQ to the environment, also make statistical predictions. Controlling for parental socioeconomic status only cuts the black–white gap by a third.
+Hypotheses that accept IQ test results as unbiased, but attribute group differences in IQ to the environment, also make statistical predictions that can be falsified.
+
+Controlling for parental socioeconomic status only cuts the black–white gap by a third. (And on the hereditarian model, some of the correlation between parental SES and child outcomes is due to the common effect of genes.)
[TODO: sentence about sources of variation within/between groups based on Jensen]
-[TODO: sentence about colorism based on https://www.mdpi.com/2624-8611/1/1/17/htm "Skin color is actually only controlled by a small number of alleles, so if you think societal discrimination on skin color causes IQ differences"]
+
+Skin color is actually only controlled by a small number of alleles, so if you think Society's discrimination on skin color causes IQ differences,
And so on.
-In mentioning these arguments in passing, I'm _not_ trying to provide a comprehensive lit review on the causality of group IQ differences. (That's [someone else's blog](https://humanvarieties.org/2019/12/22/the-persistence-of-cognitive-inequality-reflections-on-arthur-jensens-not-unreasonable-hypothesis-after-fifty-years/).) I'm not (that) interested in this particular topic, and [without having mastered the technical literature, my assessment would be of little value](https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#mu). Rather, I am ... doing some context-setting for the problem I _am_ interested in, of fixing public discourse. The reason we can't have an intellectually-honest public discussion about human biodiversity is because good people want to respect the anti-oppression Schelling point and are afraid of giving ammunition to racists and sexists in the war over the shared map. "Black people are, on average, genetically less intelligent than white people" is the kind of sentence that pretty much only racists would feel _good_ about saying out loud, independently of its actual truth value. In a world where most speech is about manipulating shared maps for political advantage rather than _getting the right answer for the right reasons_, it is _rational_ to infer that anyone who entertains such hypotheses is either motivated by racial malice, or is at least complicit with it—and that rational expectation isn't easily cancelled with a _pro forma_ "But, but, civil discourse" or "But, but, the true meaning of Equality is unfalsifiable" [disclaimer](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html).
+In mentioning these arguments in passing, I'm _not_ trying to provide a comprehensive lit review on the causality of group IQ differences. (That's [someone else's blog](https://humanvarieties.org/2019/12/22/the-persistence-of-cognitive-inequality-reflections-on-arthur-jensens-not-unreasonable-hypothesis-after-fifty-years/).) I'm not that interested in this particular topic, and [without having mastered the technical literature, my assessment would be of little value](https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#mu). Rather, I am ... doing some context-setting for the problem I _am_ interested in, of fixing public discourse. The reason we can't have an intellectually-honest public discussion about human biodiversity is because good people want to respect the anti-oppression Schelling point and are afraid of giving ammunition to racists and sexists in the war over the shared map. "Black people are, on average, genetically less intelligent than white people" is the kind of sentence that pretty much only racists would feel _good_ about saying out loud, independently of its actual truth value. In a world where most speech is about manipulating shared maps for political advantage rather than _getting the right answer for the right reasons_, it is _rational_ to infer that anyone who entertains such hypotheses is either motivated by racial malice, or is at least complicit with it—and that rational expectation isn't easily cancelled with a _pro forma_ "But, but, civil discourse" or "But, but, the true meaning of Equality is unfalsifiable" [disclaimer](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html).
To speak to those who aren't _already_ oblivious science nerds—or are committed to emulating such, as it is scientifically dubious whether anyone is really that oblivious—you need to put _more effort_ into your excuse for why you're interested in these topics. Here's mine, and it's from the heart, though it's up to the reader to judge for herself how credible I am when I say this—
https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism/
http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/hierarchy-wings/
+
+vocabulary—I still say "dysphoria" because I don't have another word; I can't just drop "developmental sex" in a conversation because it's nonstandard
> Is it cheating if you deliberately define your personal identity such that the answer is _No_?
(To which I now realize the correct answer is: Yes, it's fucking cheating! The map is not the territory! You can't change the current _referent_ of "personal identity" with the semantic mind game of declaring that "personal identity" now refers to something else! How dumb do you think we are?! But more on this later.)
+
+changing emotions/accent fantasies: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSEHwYbrwtn/other-people-s-procedural-knowledge-gaps/comment/pheakgvLbFndXccXC
\ No newline at end of file
TODO—
- 1. need to clearly define before casually using later: "egalitarian", "renormalized", "human _bio_-diversity"
+ 1. need to clearly define before casually using later: "egalitarian", "hereditarian", "renormalized", "human _bio_-diversity"
-----
4. * Embryo selection looks _really important_—and the recent Dawkins brouhaha says we can't even talk about that; and the ways I'm worried about eugenics being misused aren't even on the radar
+https://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/twitter-piles-on-richard-dawkins-over-eugenics-tweet/13333
+Murray "Yes": https://archive.is/uaFFF
+
5. stages of HBD
The author of the _Xenosystems_ blog mischievously posits [five stages of knowledge human biodiversity](http://www.xenosystems.net/five-stages-of-hbd/) (in analogy to the famous, albeit [reportedly lacking in empirical support](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model), five-stage Kübler-Ross model of grief), culminating in Stage 4: Depression ("Who could possibly have imagined that reality was so evil?") and Stage 5: Acceptance ("Blank slate liberalism really has been a mountain of dishonest garbage, hasn't it? Guess it's time for it to die ...").
https://abc30.com/homeless-women-harassed-in-shower-lawsuit-says/3514544/
-If you ever find yourself saying, "Even if Hypothesis H is true, it doesn't have any decision-relevant implications," YOU ARE RATIONALIZING! The fact that H is interesting enough for you to be considering the question at all (it's not some arbitrary trivium like the 1923th binary digit of π, or the low temperature in São Paulo on September 17, 1978) means that it must have some relevance to the things you care about. It is VANISHINGLY IMPROBABLE that your optimal decisions are going to be the SAME in worlds where H is true and worlds where H is false. The fact that you're tempted to SAY they're the same is probably because some part of you is afraid of some of the imagined consequences of H being true. But H is already true or already false! If you happen to live in a world where H is true, and you make decisions as if you lived in a world where H is false, you are thereby missing out on all the extra utility you would get if you made the H-optimal decisions instead!
-
-If you can figure out exactly what you're afraid of, maybe that will help you work out what the H-optimal decisions are. Then you'll be a better position to successfully notice which world you ACTUALLY live in. http://lesswrong.com/lw/o4/leave_a_line_of_retreat/
-
-
"Jesse Singal is a transphobic piece of shit!"
Separately, may also be worth considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification … when deciding what merits "piece of shit" status? Who knows if some of the ppl you follow are (e.g.) autogynephilia truthers, but don't write about it under their real name because they see the reaction to Singal?
https://medium.com/@transstyleguide/alternatives-to-afab-and-amab-d7cf8fe20a72
-changing emotions/accent fantasies: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSEHwYbrwtn/other-people-s-procedural-knowledge-gaps/comment/pheakgvLbFndXccXC
-
There are Facts About Males that neurotypicals probably don't explain in words? Something about how a gentleman who doesn't want to be more specific, if he were going to be more specific, might end up using the word curvature. But maybe I've already said too much.
support group can't mention anatomy: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/bripts/peak_trans_ix_tell_your_story_here/f6wjry3/
"The problem is not social engineering! The problem is _incompetent_ social engineering! The problem is not experimenting on children! The problem is experimenting on children in the service of an ideological crusade rather than in the service of finding out what happens!" https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154963540980199 (Mike Liked it)
+20 Apr: "she didn't name herself after a fictional character, she was very heavily railroaded into that"
+
+reply: "I'm not sure she's old enough to understand the implications of naming yourself after a fictional character." (I didn't challenge, because I sensed I've already used up my latitude)
+
+20 Apr: "Honestly this is super unsurprising in hindsight / She likes trucks and power tools and children's TV"
+
-----
smart fascism—
marketing opportunity: https://www.peaktrans.org/contact/
https://web.archive.org/web/20160406094634/http://mariacatt.com/2016/03/31/the-adult-baby-story/
+
+> If you want to change a culture, think in terms of the evolutionary aspects of it. You might be able to do it by just shaking things up and letting it slide into a new equilibrium, but this only works if there's an equilibrium where you want to be. Fighting the adaptation pressure is a losing game. —https://notebook.drmaciver.com/posts/2020-02-28-06:33.html
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/g4mse5/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_april_20_2020/fo0oug1/
+> a higher proportion of millionaires (5%) than women (4.9%). In addition, the proportion who want to have more than 4 children in the end (13.5%) is greater than the proportion who currently have more than 0 (13.3%)
_ Phenotypic Identity and Memetic Capture
_ Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences, in Relation to My Gender Problems
_ "I Tell Myself to Let the Story End"; Or, A Hill of Validity ... (UUT)
+_ "More Than We Can Say": High-Dimensional Social Science and ...
UUT—
+_ Beyond the Binary
_ Hrunkner Unnerby and the Shallowness of Progress
_ The Feeling Is Mutual
_ Captions
_ Travis's Trilemma: Creepy, Crazy, or Protected-Class (working title)
_ Reply to Ozymandias on Lesbians and on Single-Sex Spaces
_ Friendship Practices of the Secret-Sharing Plain Speech Valley Squirrels
-
+_ Answers on Great Divides: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/questions-for-great-divides.html
LW/aAL—
_ Algorithmic Intent: A Hansonian Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle (LW)
_ Comment on "Endogenous Epistemic Factionalization"
_ Don't "Click Here"
_ Contra Scott Alexander on Mental Illness; Or, Oh God, Please Don't (aAL/LW)
-_ Butting Heads; Or, Selective Reporting and the Tragedy of Cause Prioritization—marginally neglected truths are more
_ Selective Reporting and Clustering
+_ Butting Heads; Or, Selective Reporting and the Tragedy of Cause Prioritization—marginally neglected truths are more
+
_ Social Construction is an Embedded Agency Problem
it's important to have language for psychology because you can't point to pictures
_ Product Review: FaceApp
-_ The Strategy of "Apartment Patty"
+_ The Strategy of "Apartment Patty" — the outrage strategy only works if you have a coalition to back you up
+you regress to your group's mean—but that depends on how you draw the category boundaries around group membership! This could be a good math post!! https://humanvarieties.org/2017/07/01/measurement-error-regression-to-the-mean-and-group-differences/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agalmatophilia "An important fantasy for some individuals is being transformed into the preferred object (such as a statue) and experiencing an associated state of immobility or paralysis."
a big essay about Batesian mimickry
-_ "More Than We Can Say": High-Dimensional Social Science and ...
+
_ Codes of Convergence; Or, Smile More
_ "But I'm Not Quite Sure What That Means": Costs of Nonbinary Gender as a Social Technology
_ "I Will Fight [...]": LGBT Patriotism and the Moral Fine-Tuning Objection
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff