safek

Since it's certainly possible that blacks have genetically higher IQs than whites but are environmentally made to underperform, isn't that all the more egregious? Wouldn't that be an important, uplifting thing to know? Why not find out?

When people are anxious about genetic explanations, it's usually because they're afraid of one group underperforming. "Look, we know blacks score lower on IQ tests, but we've got to be careful here—they have bad environments." But actually we have the tools necessary to model outcomes like this. If it's true that blacks are underscoring despite a genetic advantage, eventually this truth will emerge.

So when people are worried a priori that an investigation into genetic explanations will disfavor blacks, either they fundamentally don't believe these things can be rigorously studied, or they're worried that even under fair standards blacks will underperform. The former implies unknowability of truth, the latter genuine racism.

The canonical reply here is that while it's true IQ tests a narrow range of abilities, (a) it's highly predictive of various facets of success in life, and (b) "specialists" are relatively rare, in that intelligence tends to be fairly well correlated across disciplines.

They concede that IQ (a) exists, (b) predicts many life outcomes, (c) differs between groups, and (d) is partly heritable. If an alien at this point were presented with these premises, does anyone suppose its natural conclusion would be, "this must be completely due to environmental factors, and not in the least genetic ones?"

Surely claiming a difference of outcome is entirely due to environmental factors is as extreme as claiming it's entirely due entirely to genetics. Yet imagine the uproar if someone had claimed the latter. Contrast that with the support Vox has gotten for their article.

It is dangerous to require a conclusion to be true rather than being open to whatever is.

Fair enough.

You are possibly right to be frustrated about gender problems, but your suggestion — that in the fight for gender equality it's ok to construct a double standard for men and women — is mistaken. If you want to fix gender inequality, fix specific unjust advantages and disadvantages. The idea that because men have blanket "privilege" women should be compensated with additional privileges leads to more inequality, not less.

The assumption that a woman is not capable of holding that opinion is sexist.

The strange thing is that the same comment has been used in support of gender equality. In Iceland, where every board must have at least 40% representation for each gender, they interviewed some female CEOs, who said something like, "Men are selfish! That's how we got the financial crises. Women will look out for the good of the group. It's in our DNA."

Sorry. I wrote it impulsively and thoughtlessly.

Have you considered using a Chromebook? It costs $150 and runs Ubuntu.

Holy shit are you the dude who was on Shark Tank? That episode was hilarious hahahaha

Link is down.

> Do not ever even attempt a big-bang rewrite

Really? Are there no circumstances under which this would be appropriate? It seems to me this makes assumptions about the baseline quality of the existing codebase. Surely sometimes buying a new car makes more sense than trying to fix up an old one?