I think we're quite lucky as a species, and from an egalitarian perspective, that our genders and ethnicities are so similar to each other. The problems we face today eradicating sexism and racism are nothing compared to a world in which a human subspecies had evolved in isolation for two hundred thousand years and ended up with an average IQ of 50, or if we had much more significant sexual dimorphism and one sex was vastly more intelligent than the other.
Well, in some sense the question only makes sense within a narrow band.
If one group of humans (sex, race, whatever) were to be _vastly_ more intelligent than the other, then we may well simply not care about the question at all.
Consider animal welfare. We may care about the treatment of animals to some extent, but the idea that a cow should, say, be able to become a computer science major is laughable. It's not even on the radar.
...but the idea that a cow should, say, be able to become a computer science major is laughable.
However, even more, if say, not a cow but a crow (a plausibly intelligent creature) was being helped through the steps of learning computer science, I suspect the reaction would be fascination rather than the anger characteristic of racism.
Indeed, the notable thing for me about racist responses is how far they are from a rational response to hypothetical situation of biological variation between types. The core racist position is overall fixated on avoiding race-mixing yet any animal breeder could tell you that a hybridized type is often a stronger individuals than either antecedent. So racist reactions might be a biological responses then but not responses that strengthens humanity but responses from a single selfish but not superior gene.
I mean, we've domesticated plenty of animals to do various parts of our work for us. It was a huge part in the advancement of humanity. I don't think any pitchforks were involved.
Pitchforks are definitely involved in ruminant husbandry.
Pedantics aside, it still seems quite optimistic that a hypothetical crow graduating in computer science would be fine with being treated like a domesticated animal. Perhaps it is possible, but ethically that would be uncharted waters.
True, but I mean vast differences on the sapient being scale. What if a human subspecies was otherwise the same as us but had the life expectancy of a chimp, about forty years at best? What if the difference was as small as a thirty point difference in IQ?
I'm not sure if you tried this, but your hypothetical is quite close to a real category of people. Young adults with down syndrome (a chromosomal disorder) have an average IQ of 50 and in developed countries typically live to only 50-60.
They used to be treated very poorly, sometimes exceedingly poorly. In the modern era they are generally treated with more respect than they were historically, despite almost everybody having lower expectations of them.
While people will take this as a sign of progress, I think realistically people with downs or other significant handicaps were a much greater burden on society in the past, and I think our current attitude of acceptance has more to do with our increased ability to care for such people.
As cruel as it seems to us now, if you're struggling to survive and there's no social safety net, infanticide or child abandonment start to become much more attractive options in comparison with being burdened by taking care of a dysfunctional human for the rest of your life.
In our world, human population groups evolved in isolation for one hundred thousand years[0]. And at least as measured, the difference between the lowest and highest IQ groups is about 35 points.[1]
Men and women are closer in many respects, but it depends on the arena. Men still have double the upper body strength that women do and about seven times the testosterone. When you're talking about anything physical, it's impossible to treat men and women the same (speaking in terms of group outcomes).
And even in the psychological realm where there's a lot of overlap in trait distributions - even small differences that produce a 6:4 ratio around the average, as many gender differences do, become absolutely massive at the edge of the bell curve - like 50:1. And the nature of our modern world is that it's at the edge of the curve where the big results are made - the very smartest physicists, the most capable engineers, the most dedicates CEOs are who are driving outcomes.
Far from making egalatarianism easy or even, it seems like the way our world is set up makes it simply impossible.
It might even be easier if the differences were bigger! They'd be impossible to deny and we'd just learn to cope with that. Right now we're in a weird place where the differences are huge and impactful, but there are just enough individual exceptions and just enough fuzziness to deny that they exist at all.
I think we need some ethical framework that can be moral and evenhanded and kind without having to pretend that distinct groups are the same; a morality based on false beliefs about the physical world cannot stand.
[0] The last common ancestry between the San people from southern Africa and Eurasians was roughly 100,000 thousand years ago. For Australian Aborigines, it's about 70,000 years. For the larger sub-Saharan African populations, it's about 50,000 years. In contrast, Chihuahuas and Bernese mountain dogs have perhaps 3,000 years of separation.
[1] Obviously some of this is environmental, but the scientific consensus seems to be that a good chunk of it probably is not.
> And at least as measured, the difference between the lowest and highest IQ groups is about 35 points.[1]
I may be very confused here, but are you saying that there are genetically separated people that have a 35 pt IQ difference? If that is true, I would love to see the source.
See but we know that things like nutrition, toxins like lead, education, wealth, family structure, infection rates, and other factors that also differ between nations affect intelligence. That's not even getting into Differential item function, the use of IRT vs fixed testing or other statistical and psychometric factors that may impact the measurements.
You can't just compare two samples without controlling for confounding differences.
Science can't even fully explain the Flynn effect, in which industrial nationals have had IQs going up 3 points per decade on average within the country, and people are trying to use IQ to talk about differences between sample populations.
You can always compare two samples without controlling for confounding differences. However, you need to controlling for confounding differences when you want to explain the differences. When we say there is a difference in IQ between two groups, we are not saying the difference is genetic. The raw difference in IQ does have a meaning by itself.
I do agree with you that there are questions regarding to measurement issues and confounding issues. But it is hard to believe all the group differences can be explained away by solving these issues.
One problem here is that you brought up IQ, which is a garbage metric. Different populations have adapted to different environments. Maybe some groups are better at certain types of mental activities such as rotating a 2 dimensional image in their head, but the groups that are worse at those tasks are better at other things that you're just not measuring. Humans intelligence is many dimensional, and IQ is a one dimensional quality that is biased to certain facets of intelligence.
As for your end of the bell curve comment, COMPENSATION might push to 50:1 at the ends of the bell curve as people get into bidding wars for the top tier talent, but the actual spread of ability is the same at the tails as it is near the mean.
No, it's not a garbage metric. The idea is popular with those who don't know the literature. Christopher Hitchens wrote 'there is an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and their propensity to be impressed by the measurement of IQ'. In this case, a wonderful putdown by and for people who don't know any better and certainly not the scientific literature.
Check out the studies in polygenic analysis that's showing how cognitive ability, personality and health rely on common genetic pathways.
There are overwhelming correlations between intelligence and real life measures.
IQ measures very specific things, in a very specific way which is biased towards people who made the test. It doesn't measure overall capability, and it's quite easy to teach people to take the test, resulting in 15-20 point increases in score after a few months of practice.
Usually, it's racist elitist assholes who hold IQ up as this important measure, mostly because malnourished people from different cultures who aren't white don't tend to do as well, thus confirming their cherished desire for aryan superiority.
Try surviving in the Australian outback and tell me how stupid aborigines are...
Do you have any source to back what you wrote up? Because basically anyone who's studied this area disagrees with this. Just a few points:
1. Managing to raise someone's score on an IQ test is considered basically impossible.
2. Why would you think tests are biased towards the people who made the tests? IQ tests are generally worked on quite a bit, and there is extensive literature showing that they work (and they're not just tested on one subpopulation).
3. There are lots of different kinds of IQ tests, actually, and they correlate with each other. So they don't test very specific things - different tests go about this in different ways.
4. "Usually, it's racist elitist assholes who hold IQ up as this important measure [...]" I mean, no? Basically every scientist researching this agrees that IQ works. You're just flat out wrong.
