This "Black people as a whole have more genetic diversity" is a technically correct but entirely irrelevant fact, a staple of popular disinformation on this topic. It is trotted out to lead laymen to a number of incorrect assumptions: a) that it's meaningless to speak of Africans (or specifically of members of the largest African populations) as belonging to a race; b) that raw Fst measures suggest some tribe X is "genetically more similar" to Europeans than it is to tribe Y and therefore is expected to be more phenotypically similar and c) that it's unproductive to discuss those Africans as having some specific average for some trait. It relies on equally irrelevant examples, like the difference in height between Pygmies and the Tutsi (although both sides of the debate are aware that Pygmies belong to a wholly separate "race"; the point of this maneuver is to make laymen assume that "racists" do not recognize this trite fact, and laugh at their lack of nuance).
Genetic diversity is not the measure of non-belonging to a race, nor some quotient by which variance of every phenotypic trait is multiplied or something, and in this context it refers to neutral genetic variation, which is higher in Sub-Saharan Africans (and very high in a tiny, unrepresentative subgroup – Khoisan, not Bantu) than in other continental groups, due to their ancestors not having gone through some ancient bottlenecks. Interesting for anthropology and history – tracing of migrations and such; not very interesting for purposes of differential psychology, "scientific racism", quantifying effects of nature and nurture, whatever you call it. A group can be very genetically diverse but near-identical in all traits, or arbitrarily diverse in phenotypes yet highly inbred; and Khoisan from different tribes will still cluster together despite having "more diversity". It's neither here nor there.
Most HBDers, including Scott, are not racists in the old-timey sense of normative preference for discrimination against some race or races. But sometimes, it's really hard to remain polite to people who know better yet knowingly spread disinformation to get laymen on their side. I fear that this rank dishonesty is enough to push some all the way over, beyond HBD and into the racist camp.
We don't know nuthin' about these topics any more, we know a great deal. And it's not a coincidence that the anti-hereditarian camp trades in vague generalities and factoids, and has to block access to databases. Decades of enthusiastic, well-incentivized search have not yielded any evidence in favor of the blank slate view, of the "it's all culture and schooling" view, the optimistic view.
> The whole argument is flawed. Overall genetic variation is mostly in neutral loci. By itself it tells you nothing about any particular trait. Europeans do have less overall genetic variation than sub-Saharan Africans (~20% less), but they show more variation in hair color and eye color than Africans.
> Essentially every domesticated species has less genetic variation than its wild progenitor. Dogs have less genetic variation than wolves. So, does this mean that the tallest wolf is taller than any dog? No – the tallest Great Danes are taller than any wolf. The heaviest mastiffs are heavier than any wolf. Chihuahua are the smallest. Greyhounds are faster than wolves (by a little).
So we should a priori expect uneducated subsistence farmers (or descendants of historically-recent enslavement, in the African diaspora) to score just as high on a conventional I.Q. test as, e.g. people from Britain, the Netherlands or southern India and China, whose cultural milieus have developed over many centuries in highly urbanized, complex societies? As well as expect them to have equal educational attainment, even at the highest levels (like working in high-tech STEM, or getting a Nobel Prize)? This just doesn't pass any reasonableness test. The Flynn effect on its own shows just how much I.Q. scores are affected by even comparatively minor developments in culture.
Are you referring to some specific study on uneducated subsistence farmers?
> or descendants of historically-recent enslavement, in the African diaspora
I posit that there is a perfect absence of evidence for "historically-recent enslavement" being a casual factor in present differences on tests, or in what they are meant to be predictive of. Controlling for income and parenting doesn't eliminate the gap. Explanations based on lead poisoning in minority environments used to be popular until lead exposure converged – then they got ditched. So it goes. In fact, no proposed mechanism withstands the slightest scrutiny, it's ignorance and/or special pleading all the way down.
> southern India and China, whose cultural milieus have developed for many centuries in highly urbanized, complex societies
How is does this nebulous "cultural mileu" higher classes were exposed to affect the IQ or SAT score of a descendant of an average uneducated malnourished peasant from southern China (and of Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution survivors)? Do you have any concrete mechanism in mind that is as robust to controls as the genetic hypothesis? For example, adoptees of Korean descent in Sweden have significantly higher IQs than non-Korean adoptees and even non-adopted children [1] – how is that explained, social expectations from Asian-looking people? This is just one fact among thousands, and together they require implausible power of racist attitudes to be explained – greater, and bizarrely far more precise, than for any social intervention known. And unchanging in magnitude despite increases in legal and social equality. Cultural milieus, redlining, Pygmalion effect, epigenetic trauma etc. must all act in concert to perfectly imitate the appearance of between-group heritability just working the same way as within-group heritability.
And when another one of those factors fails to replicate, others must pick up the slack.
Crucially, were the Chinese immigrants low-performing, would it confuse you – or would you have been able to spin a just-so story about recent environmental deprivation that's no less convincing than in the case of Africans? Certainly works with Indians, who, as a whole, do not score highly on tests – cultural milieu or not.
...I'd rather we skip this song and dance – no amount of links and arguments is likely to convince you, since you can just suspect the ideology of their authors that much stronger. I am pretty sure that you are not willing to entertain the thought that this complex topic has been studied by smart and unbiased people, with conclusions favoring the genetic determinist side, e.g. [2], and that your ad hoc "reasonableness test" is insufficient to make a call.
What I am more interested in is a sociological question: why do you think it is adequate? Obviously you are aware that you have not inspected the topic in depth.
> For example, adoptees of Korean descent in Sweden have significantly higher IQs than non-Korean adoptees and even non-adopted children
It's one thing to find measurable differentials somewhere, another to pretend that such differences are enough to explain even a worthwhile fraction of the achievement gap. The average kid of Korean descent would have significantly higher achievement in Sweden or South Korea than North Korea, and that for entirely non-racial reasons. And most lowest-developed countries are, sadly, more similar to North Korea than Sweden.
This is a matter of one's priors. One could just as easily say that it's one thing to find a clearly environmentally mediated difference in some extreme situation (i.e. between North and South Koreans), another to pretend that such differences are enough to explain even a worthwhile fraction of the achievement gap – especially between different ancestries within the same polity, in the absence of any overt discrimination or substantial evidence for covert one.
It'd be a better argument, even. Despite severe global sanctions and a ridiculous political and economic system, there isn't that much of a difference between North and South Koreans. Denizens of DPRK still maintain an orderly society with universal literacy and advanced domestic technology, and overall demonstrate cognitive performance on at least European level – with like 5% of GPP per capita that South Koreans have, on par with poor African states. Which are, indeed, among the lowest-developed, and frequently fail to maintain basic infrastructure – despite external support.
I do note that you have ignored my meta-level question, though, and that says enough.
Who is this blogger you’re linking me to and why does your second link try to claim “economists know a lot about human biology and evolution”, with no evidence to prove this beyond I’m pretty sure is just author intuiting it wholesale? Are economists leading genetic sequencing studies?
Genetic diversity is not the measure of non-belonging to a race, nor some quotient by which variance of every phenotypic trait is multiplied or something, and in this context it refers to neutral genetic variation, which is higher in Sub-Saharan Africans (and very high in a tiny, unrepresentative subgroup – Khoisan, not Bantu) than in other continental groups, due to their ancestors not having gone through some ancient bottlenecks. Interesting for anthropology and history – tracing of migrations and such; not very interesting for purposes of differential psychology, "scientific racism", quantifying effects of nature and nurture, whatever you call it. A group can be very genetically diverse but near-identical in all traits, or arbitrarily diverse in phenotypes yet highly inbred; and Khoisan from different tribes will still cluster together despite having "more diversity". It's neither here nor there.
Most HBDers, including Scott, are not racists in the old-timey sense of normative preference for discrimination against some race or races. But sometimes, it's really hard to remain polite to people who know better yet knowingly spread disinformation to get laymen on their side. I fear that this rank dishonesty is enough to push some all the way over, beyond HBD and into the racist camp.
We don't know nuthin' about these topics any more, we know a great deal. And it's not a coincidence that the anti-hereditarian camp trades in vague generalities and factoids, and has to block access to databases. Decades of enthusiastic, well-incentivized search have not yielded any evidence in favor of the blank slate view, of the "it's all culture and schooling" view, the optimistic view.
Some related notes:
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/african-variation/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/economists-and-bio...
> The whole argument is flawed. Overall genetic variation is mostly in neutral loci. By itself it tells you nothing about any particular trait. Europeans do have less overall genetic variation than sub-Saharan Africans (~20% less), but they show more variation in hair color and eye color than Africans. > Essentially every domesticated species has less genetic variation than its wild progenitor. Dogs have less genetic variation than wolves. So, does this mean that the tallest wolf is taller than any dog? No – the tallest Great Danes are taller than any wolf. The heaviest mastiffs are heavier than any wolf. Chihuahua are the smallest. Greyhounds are faster than wolves (by a little).