Do genes play a role in cognitive traits like shyness, memory, language skills, and so forth? Of course they do. The only real question is how big a role they play. Take language, for example. In the case of which language you speak, the role of genes is 0%. It's all environmental. But in the case of how well you speak a language, it's much higher.
This is obvious enough that it should be uncontroversial, and it would be except for one thing: if genes have an effect on cognitive traits, it means that genes have an effect on the trait we call intelligence. And if genes affect intelligence, then it's possible that racial differences in intelligence are partly the result of genetic factors.
The fear that this could be true, even though the evidence is currently against it, has driven left-wing opposition to the whole notion of genes and behavior for decades. Luckily for everyone involved, the evidence for the impact of genes is based almost solely on ecological studies, usually of twins. But no matter how suggestive such studies can be, they will never be proof positive of anything. The only thing that has a chance proving anything is biochemical: that is, finding specific gene complexes that affect personality traits. That's basically impossible, which meant everyone could keep merrily arguing forever, safe in the knowledge that no one would ever be conclusively proven wrong.
But lots of things are impossible until suddenly they aren't. Readers with very good memories may recall that a few years ago I wrote about Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS, pronounced jee-wass). These do the impossible: they allow genetic researchers to find single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced snips) that are associated with cognitive traits. At the time, I linked to a paper that claimed to have found SNPs that explained about 5% of the variance in intelligence. But work was ongoing, and the latest studies have gotten up to 20% or so. There's no telling where this number will eventually end up, but it's almost certain that within a few years we'll get to one that's high enough to prove to all but the most recalcitrant that genes do in fact have a considerable effect on human intelligence.
Why mention this? Because in its current issue the New Yorker has a profile of Kathryn Paige Harden, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who has written a new book, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality. Harden has been doing GWAS work of her own and her conclusion is unsurprising: both genes and environment play significant and intertwined roles in most cognitive traits. But there's a depressing coda:
In my conversations with her colleagues, Harden’s overarching idea was almost universally described as both beautiful and hopelessly quixotic....James Tabery, a philosopher at the University of Utah, believes that underscoring genetic difference is just as likely to increase inequality as to reduce it. “It’s truly noble for Paige to make the case for why we might think of biological differences as similar to socially constructed differences, but you’re bumping into a great deal of historical, economic, political, and philosophical momentum—and it’s dangerous, no matter how noble her intentions are, because once the ideas are out there they’re going to get digested the way they’re going to get digested,” he said. “The playing board has been set for some time.”
"Hopelessly quixotic" is a fancy way of saying that no matter what the science says, Harden will never convince people on the left. As Harden puts it, the life of a behavior geneticist resembles “Groundhog Day.” Always the same arguments no matter what.
In fairness, the reason for lefty intolerance of cognitive genetics is obvious and righteous: It's been violently misused for a very long time as a way of proving that certain kinds of people are inferior to others. As Tabery says above, the playing board has been set, and it's almost certain that any new results, no matter how carefully explained, will be used as an excuse by some people to dismiss the possibility of ever improving the lives of the poor, the black, and the oppressed.
But as understandable as this is, it has a big problem: it looks as if we're getting close to a genuine understanding of how genes affect cognitive traits—and the answer is not going be "they don't." At that point the left had better have an argument to make, because they're certain to lose if they just bury their heads in the sand.
The funny thing is that I've never entirely understood lefty opposition to the notion that genes have a significant impact on cognitive abilities. My view has always been close to Harden's: if genes do have an impact, then it makes the case for social safety nets incomparably stronger. It becomes impossible to argue, for example, that poor people are merely lazy if you can point to SNPs that have a clear association with poverty. At that point, it's provably the case that being poor is mostly a matter of bad genetic luck. So what argument is left for leaving anyone in poverty?
Beyond that, as Harden points out, if you know the genetic foundations for a particular trait then it's easier to disentangle its genetic and environmental causes. This makes it easier to accurately identify the environmental causes, which in turn makes it more likely that you can construct social interventions that actually work. In other words, knowledge of genetics is a key part of the liberal project of doing everything we can to improve lives via social programs that are truly effective.
But most people don't see it that way. And beneath it all lurks the deep fear that someone doing GWAS research is eventually going to find SNPs associated with both race and intelligence. I continue to think that's unlikely in anything more than a trivial sense, but I may be wrong. And if I am, what are we going to do?
We will always argue that behavior is more important than cognitive ability. We will reward, punish, or ignore people based on their behavior. Always. It doesn’t matter why they do what they do. People respond to behavior.
I assume this means Charles Murray will soon have a new book arguing that the US and other "white" countries should throw in the towel and let China run everything because Asians are the smarterest (sic)?
"That's different."
Andrew Sullivan would sooner marry a woman than bend his knee to a Chinee.
They already have said that.
At the risk of provoking some to outrage , I will make a few logical points
1) you cannot say genes are responsible for x% of anything as some kind of absolute relative percentage. It all depends on the variability in the two factors being compared.
If everyone was being raised in the exact same environment, by definition genes would represent 100% if intelligence or any traits differences. And if everyone was a clone of a single individual, environment would be 100% of the difference.
To the extent that there are racial differences, multi racial societies, by having greater genetic disparity, would have genes playing a bigger % age role than in a less genetic population. But a multiracial society might also be more environmentally diverse offsetting that.
I assume this 20% estimate is based on the current amount of genetic and environmental differences in the USA? But to think you can fully separate out the relative contribution so exactly is silly.
2) if this is going to be discussed in terms of race, we have to be more precise.
A group that is fairly isolated in a specific environment for a period allowing it to possibly evolve genetic differences in adaption to that environment might be called a " race". For example Negroes in west Africa through about A.D. 1 ( when many moved from west African plains) or maybe 1800.
But in that regard , what we refer to as " African Americans " in the USA are just not the same thing. If you want to consider what their eventual relative genetic makeup is , you have to maybe start with the base western African in say 1500, and then consider how the subset sent as slaves differed in intelligence ( some might think that had to mean stupider but consider that the large majority were sold by other Africans and were often war captives. Are the losers of a war who survive as slaves stupider than the ones who die), how the middle passage changed that, how the pressures of slavery would encourage or discourage intelligence ( is a smart sjave more likely to survive and have kids) , and also real important who the whites were who provided maybe one third of the genes .
The discussion is completely different if trying to understand possible differences in ad 1500 Europeans and west Africans and current American whites and blacks.
3) re the "G" or possible absolute intelligence , if it exists, it is near impossible to be different across two races ( as defined strictly) unless they are really isolated.
If some mutation in Europe produced superior overall intelligence which was always an advantage, then that gene would rapidly spread throughout Asia and Africa as enough contact for that throughout our evolution ( possible that an isolated group like amerindians could miss it though) .
Consider skin color which is an obvious racial difference. Which is objectively " better " lighter European skin or darker west African? Stupid question. Clearly light skin is better in Europe ( to get vit d) and dark skin in west Africa ( to avoid skin damage) . There is no absolute better type of skin- each has different advantages.
And same should apply to any difference in brain structure or functioning. If west African differ on average from Europeans in 1500, I would expect west African brains to be superior in the west African environment and Europeans in the European environment. If Europeans have an advantage in one trait , that is likely because they sacrificed another that is less important in Europe.
And there are obvious differences in Europe vs. West Africa that could select for different modes of thinking.
4) clear that any differences between " racial " groups are dwarfed by differences within them. Genetic racial differences will only show up on average and be more noticeable perhaps on the extremes of the bell curve.
5) if intelligence as measured as what is advantageous for modern American society to succeed is partially genetic, our current society is evolving toward less intelligence and more so for African Americans.
If African Americans were exactly equal in intelligence as compared to white Americans in 1950, they are likely less intelligent on average today
This is because, from an evolutionary standpoint , "better" just means surviving to have more kids who survive , and how otherwise successful is irrelevant.
Throughout most of history, the most successful wealthy and powerful people had the most children, and they would likely be the more intelligent.
Today, it is the least wealthy and successful people who have the most kids. To the extent that they are also less intelligent, the next generation gets stupider.
And this is most pronounced among African Americans.
Partly can be welfare policy but that should effect poor whites too, in the same negative way. But for African Americans, there seems to also be an effect of past discrimination combined with current affirmative action that depresses child bearing among the more successful.
While African Americans have more children than whites, African Americans at a similar income level in the higher income brackets have fewer.
The objections are not principally to the concept of genetic research. The primary objection rests on the fact that "intelligence" is a social construct. There has never been anything close to a scientific consensus about what it means or how it can be measured - see the preface to the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence at https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FtYeTcNwzQ4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA20&dq=the+meaning+of+intelligence&ots=fI8nDQVFNR&sig=bjbFeNC6IgC4dd_NN4ejZLppMuM#v=onepage&q=the%20meaning%20of%20intelligence&f=false It follows that any research about the links between genes and intelligence will necessarily involve an arbitrary choice by the researcher of the variables that constitute "intelligence". The danger that the choice will reflect, consciously or unconcsiously, the dominant cultural values of the group from whom the researcher takes their social identity is obvious.
The problem with the whole intelligence and race debate is that it is obviously ridiculous to treat "intelligence" as a one dimensional quality that can be measured on a numerical scale. There are many aspects to what people call intelligence. While there may be some correlation between aspects it is clear that verbal, math, reasoning, 3D visualization and creativity are different skills. So called IQ tests do not measure a persons inherent intelligence. Whatever it is they measure, it is a combination of abilities and what they have learned from their environment.
The whole idea of IQ testing is a fraud.
Heh. I'm very good at math, logic, spatial reasoning, etc., but only fair to middlin' when it comes to verbal adroitness. My partner, OTOH, is far, far better at words than I am and makes a living at writing them to boot. She has almost zero aptitude for math and gets lost easily.
So I know from personal experience this whole g-load thing as it is presently constituted is just so much hooey.
I think that calling IQ testing "a fraud" is overstating. Intelligence tests measure certain aspects of cognitive function, and completely ignore others. As you say, cognitive ability is multi-dimensional. Presumably, as genetic research advances genes, or genetic complexes, associated with particular aspects of "intelligence" may be identified. I wouldn't be surprised, for instance, if a gene or gene complex associated with the ability to manipulate numbers is identified. Speaking as a person with zero talent in the visual arts but modest musical ability, I would expect that genes associated with various types of artistic talent will be identified.
In other words, I expect that "intelligence" will be broken down into many different cognitive functions, each with genes associated with it.
I suspect you will turn out to be correct, sir. Don't forget that this whole IQ biz started during WWI to sort out raw recruits and their various aptitudes. Psychologists the testers may have been but statisticians they definitely were not.
It is quite elementary and as the Persian said, it is also quite complex.
Can an trait, social or innate, be expressed without a brain? Can a brain be manifested without genes? Can the environment, social or innate, effect the genes? The manifestation of the brain? Trying to separate things intrinsically intertwined is the naive part. It is the way we view the problem, not the reality of the situation.
https://youtu.be/u6aPgA5549g
Re: "At that point, it's provably the case that poverty is mostly a matter of bad luck. So what argument is left for leaving anyone in poverty?"
Have you been in a seconal stupor for the last two or three thousand years?
The only problem I have with this is the conflation of "intelligence" with "cognitive traits." We simply don't have, and probably will never have, a useful definition of "intelligence," because the very notion is socially fraught. For example, I'm a scientist and engineer and consider myself pretty darn intelligent when it comes to math and technical knowledge, and communication in English as well. But I'm hopeless when it comes to learning another language, which I've tried hard to do for decades. I can get the pronunciation down, but with vocabulary and syntax I'm a stone dummy. So, who is more "intelligent" -- the engineer who just can't get beyond Spanish 101 or the Mexican-American waitress who has mastered perfect English while retaining perfect Spanish? Could that waitress do partial differential equations given the right opportunities and social encouragement since childhood? And which skill is more indicative of "intelligence"?
It will probably be more meaningful to parse cognitive skills into several or many sub-categories that define "intelligence" for different skill sets. Even that may never be definitive. So while I agree that the left is too fearful of studying what they call "essentialism," I think it's kind of pointless because "intelligence" can mean anything that anyone wants it to mean, depending on how they see themselves and others in terms of status.
Exactly. There are many skills labeled as "intelligence," from song writing (I've been watching McCartney 3 2 1), to writing ability, to solving complicated equations (pretty much handled by computers these days), to discovering new physical theories, to managing people effectively.
I bet some of these *are* inheritable -- I know lots of people whose 99th percentile skills match those of a parent (thought I know of a lot of apparently sui generis cases as well).
But that doesn't mean we've found specific genes matching these skills. It doesn't mean that skin color, of all things, is associated with any of these skills, much less all of these skills, as that fool Charles Murray apparently believes. It doesn't mean that cultural aspects don't affect how hard people work in school, and that these effects don't dwarf inter-group genetic differences, if any exist at all.
Your 99th percentile goes to the point that wealth and income status are demonstrably more heritable than 'intelligence'. Anyone want to argue that wealth and income status have much in the way of genetic components?
Well, besides the hordes of no-talent no-hopers whose only talent is that their parents happened to be rich, that is.
Lefty intolerance??? Like a leftist cares in general.
First
Intelligence? - we don't even have a bloody DEFINITION!!
If we are going to measure anything then FIRST we need that definition
IMHO there are a LOT of different "intelligences" - and there is no way that a single number is going to be any bloody use at all
Second
Genetics - "intelligence" (whatever it is) is a result of a shit load of different things happening as we develop
As such it will be controlled by multiple different genes
Being controlled by multiple genes will mean that "inheritance" will NOT be the simple clear descent
Instead it will be much murkier - intelligence will NOT be noticeably "inherited"
- That is simply inherent in the fact that there are so many different genes involved
Height is determined by the interaction of many genes, but is clearly genetically determined. In most cases, height is completely determined by your genes. Childhood malnutrition may cause people to be shorter than their "genetic height", and administration of growth hormones may cause them to be taller, but given adequate childhood nutrition and no growth hormones, your adult height is determined at the moment of fertilization.
The simple fact that a trait or characteristic is controlled by multiple genes does not mean it's not noticeably inherited.
Correction: your _maximum_ adult height may be entirely genetic in origin.
As I noted, your maximum adult height can exceed your genetic potential if you are given growth hormone supplements as a child. There is a recognized condition called "idiopathic short stature", which basically is a kid who is much shorter than average despite not having any of the disorders that lead to dwarfism or to midgets. There's some controversy over whether or not idiopathic short stature should be recognized as a condition that calls for treatment, and if so where the cutoff falls between pathological short stature and normal short stature.
Notwithstanding the controversy, there are children receiving growth hormones for idiopathic short stature, and they will grow up (have grown up) to be significantly taller than their "genetic height". In other words, your genetic makeup is not completely determinative even of your maximum adult height.
You have to control 'all other things being equal', all other things being equal. Given the exact same growth hormone treatments, the person with the genes for tallness will indeed be taller than the person with the genes for shortness.
Leftist opposition comes from the same place as rightist opposition to climate change -- it conflicts with the preferred conclusion so therefore it must be wrong.
This is part of an ongoing theme of mine -- despite their smug assurance of superiority, the left is just as likely as the right to ignore inconvenient science and views it not as a means of finding conclusions but as a means of justifying conclusions already arrived at by other means.
Ignore the troll.
You might expect that Inuit, living in an extremely challenging environment and having access to energy dense food (seal blubber) might reach an equilibrium where a larger brain is worth the additional energy cost. In contrast, humans living on an idyllic tropical island, where life's essentials are easy to come by, might get along very well with lesser brains. If this were the case, we might expect ethic differences in average intelligence. But in fact selection pressure for intelligence is pressed to the floorboards in all environments. The limiting factor is the ability of female bipedal apes to give birth to large-brained babies. If our brains were any larger, maternal mortality would be excessive. So while there is variation in intelligence about the mean, the mean is expected to be constant across populations.
I believe it was Carl Sagan who pointed this out and mused that world would be inherited by marsupials 🙂
I've always thought found this idea highly intuitive myself. My (very much non-expert) musing is that it has to do with competition for mating opportunities and our general social nature. Highly social organisms like humans depend on others for resources. The complex interactions required for successfully obtaining these resources (and mating opportunities) strongly favor intelligence genes whether the human group in question is in the Arctic or a tropical paradise.
This strikes me as a very naive post.
First, intelligence is obviously a multidimensional quantity, and people trying to use IQ to force it into a single dimension are kidding themselves. I can't do a New York Times "Spelling Bee" puzzle worth a damn, but I can show you why with a pretty reasonable definition there are more real numbers between .001 and .002 than there are integers, period, and I can analyze highly concurrent programs better than probably 95% of computer programmers. Ben Carson is apparently an amazing brain surgeon, but his understanding of economics is that of a freshman about to flunk out of school.
Second, culture is a major determinant of how well groups do in IQ tests. Newly immigrated Ashkenazi Jews in the 1920s tested at very low levels, but now their descendants test well above average in the US. There are piles of examples of ethnically similar people coming from different countries and having different average levels of success in this country.
Third, I doubt we're anywhere close to finding SNPs that imply strong math, or spelling, or other verbal, skills. I doubt that a single structure is responsible for all these things.
Fourth, obviously various skills are heritable on an individual basis. There are no shortage of examples of people inheriting skills from their parents (see Rufus Wainwright, for example). That *doesn't* imply that you're going to find correlation between skin melanin, and/or geographic origin, and various individuals skills. Discovering that two identical twins are particularly good at spatial visualization doesn't tell you anything about whether a random Asian American is going to beat a random Franco-American in a programming contest. It doesn't even tell you if an "average" person will do so.
Lots of contrarian liberals like to opine about "intelligence" and racial background, but they mostly sound like the idiots you see talking about long term effects of Covid vaccines: lots of "anything could be true." Meanwhile, their analyses are typically junk, using individual trait inheritance to somehow implies that is disproportionally bad at .
This is all junk logic.
Sigh. the last sentence was supposed to be "...using individual trait inheritance to imply that your-least-favorite-ethnic-group' is bad at some-random-skill-you believe-important." I used angle-brackets in the original, which is apparently a serious error.
Obviously, certain genes occur with different frequency in different groups. However, attempting to apply such statistical facts to an individual is the fallacy of generalization. Suppose, for example, that for a given definition of "intelligence", it is determined that Chinese people have a higher frequency of occurrence of a gene complex associated with higher intelligence than French people do (in other words, the Chinese average "smarter"). That tells you NOTHING about the relative intelligence of a randomly selected Chinese person as compared to a randomly selected French person.
Racists are very big on the fallacy of generalization, and compound their error by trying to generalize from "statistics" that have no evidentiary base. It's those fundamental errors that have created the problems for geneticists that Kevin refers to.
It's clear that intelligence is highly multi-dimensional. Finding a gene that strongly affects one dimension just isn't going to matter. Additionally, we pool people together to solve large problems. It may well be that if we find a gene that matters for a dimension, we strongly want both genes in our pool. (See Scott Page, _The Difference_)
> genes have an effect on the trait we call intelligence
There's the flaw in your argument. There is no trait we call intelligence. There may be a large collection of traits that we collectively call intelligence.
Concepts of race have pretty much nothing to do with genetics. They zero in a few characteristics that are quick to to visually identify in what is often a highly genetically diverse population.
As long as we're bringing race into the discussion, we are going down a wrong and dangerous path. We are a long way from saying skin color or eye shape tells us something about intelligence.
Yep. Which is why the popular conception of race is scientifically, er, untenable.
I also really need to see the details of the studies identifying DNA sequences with intelligence. There are two obvious alternative mechanisms:
1 -- in a society where certain physical traits are disproportionately associated with discrimination strong enough to affect average IQ test results, your DNA sequences might simply determine those physical traits. For example, you might just have found that the DNA sequences associated with more melanin production correlates with IQ test results, without being anywhere near finding the DNA sequences associated with any type of intelligence.
2 -- Imagine you're looking for genes associated with half a dozen traits, like verbal ability, mathematical ability, Spelling Bee ability, etc. And imagine you check 10K genes for this correlation, and you have several hundred sample genomes. What's the probability that you're going to get 95% likelihood matches on *some* of the genes just by random chance? I'd bet the answer is "very high, indeed."
This is the heart of the replicability crisis in social sciences, and brute force searches for correlations in the presence of lots of data and no underlying theory can generate these random matches unless the experimenters first specify the results they're looking for. And in these cases, with no underlying theory of these structures, it is pretty much impossible to specify the gene sequence you're looking for in advance.
So, although I do believe that various intelligence skills are significantly inheritable, I doubt we've found specific genes for specific skills, much less an overall intelligence G-factor gene.
I'd be more interested in research to see if the lower intelligence of Trump voters is genetically determined, so we'd know if it's hopeless or not, but I suppose it would be politically incorrect.
Of course humans, like any non-clonal species, are genetically highly variable and there would be no trait that was not also variable to some degree. That is the entire point of sexual reproduction as an evolutionary strategy, it mixes up genes. Being a social species, it is also absurd to believe that we are all the same and have the same abilities in anything. Why would we - we don’t all have the same role in human society. Sociality itself should select for trait variation. Take a simple example how many readers can imagine wanting to be a soldier? I can’t, and I’d be completely inept at it but many people throughout human history are really good at it. On the other hand, I’m really good at growing plants/gardening, taking care of animals and identifying and knowing about plant, fungal and animal flora/fauna. I’m obviously from farming heritage even though my parents were not themselves farmers, but at least my maternal grandparents were farmers. My father was an engineer and his father a jewelry designer and manufacturer. Intelligence is subjective - intelligent in what respects? Evolutionarily, social species assume different roles in their societies. Humans are so socially interconnected, that most of us would simply die of starvation if it weren’t for the services/talents of others.
See the above comments for all the ways in which "the intelligence wars" will not be over in our lifetime, if ever.
Beyond that is the question of how such information will be used if published. A number of arguments, even scientific provable ones, are like batons in relay races. In front of those publishers are millions of people waiting to grab that baton and run forward to use it as a tool to denigrate black people and make their lives hell. No matter how scientifically accurate it might be, that news doesn't ever go out into a world that doesn't end in lots of personal damage.
Exactly. Whatever science concludes, the mere discussion will offer arguments to bolster pre-existing bias. Science was already an excuse in Hitler's day but not really needed. The light side is that though racism was never based on science, anti-racism wasn't either and until recently seemed to be winning anyway. Same is true of women's rights. Ultimately equality is an ethical choice between universalist principles and tribalism. Science cannot arbitrate that divide.
'And if genes affect intelligence, then it's possible that racial differences in intelligence are partly the result of genetic factors.'
OF COURSE genes affect intelligence (putting aisde how broad that category is), just like they affect everything else that proteins in the body are responsible for. But no- it's not racial, and if Kevin knew that genetic disparity is greater WITHIN a so-called "racial group" than between them, he would know this.
If you find lower "intelligence" stats among a socio-economic group, it is because of the poor nutrition and heightened pollution, not because of the color of their skin.
Nope. We already know that characteristics like "intelligence" are due to the contributions of many genes. People dumb enough to try to figure out which race has more of the good genes will inevitably find that any chosen group has some, and any other group has others. Which, in any individual, is more important? I can tell you with professional certainty, that the answer is not only unknown, but unknowable. The interaction of genes with one another and with environmental factors is so profound that the outcome cannot be predicted.
I think this post is misdirected: Very few people seriously doubt that cognitive traits are in part genetic. What the "Leftys" object to is the "bell curve" argument: That African Americans are by nature stupid and deserve therefor to be treated as inferior. The exact opposite of Kevin's idea that inherited intelligence would make a strong case for a much better social safety net.
If intelligence were 100% inherited a professor should make the same salary as a grocery store clerk since the professor's intelligence is not due to any superior merit. The right obviously does not see it that way.
As to the racial angle: For many decades (at least) the scientific consensus was that whites are superior to other races (superior in intelligence but also values and religion etc...). Only recently have scientists looked at actual data and found no difference in intelligence between races. For now--and most likely for a long time to come--this is the established fact. We should argue from there.
A last point: GWAS is a statistical method. It proves association, not causation (and this is the best case scenario; lots of bull shit associations have made it into the public press--like the gay gene, remember?). This come on top of the fact that a generally accepted definition of "intelligence" has been elusive and so has a definitive method of measuring it.
The above 2 comments are on target. Recommend Richard Sapolosky's Behave for more detail on GWAS & the heritability of intelligence. Another indicator of the challenges of extracting meaning from GWAS analyses is the modest effectiveness to date of GWAS in teasing out genetic markers of cancer risk. Compared to determining the clinical presentation of cancer, defining a meaningful measure of intelligence is much more difficult. On top of that, there is the (impossible?) challenge of genetically defining race. All that combined, it is unlikely science will find a meaningful genetic connection between race & intelligence. That won't stop racists asserting science as a basis for their views.
The war will come to an end when the Right admits defeat. The Left has been correct that class rather than "race" is the main dividing lines in human society. This has been true for thousands of years.
"It's been violently misused for a very long time as a way of proving that certain kinds of people are inferior to others. "
This is neither here nor there. Any number of scientific concepts can be "misued", including Darwinism, Heliocentrism, Germ Theory, etc. The fact that it can be misued is not factor in whether it is true or not. But it's not, so the point is mute.
I"m late, but like many things framing is helpful with the use of Star Trek.
The Enterprise encounters a new planet which wants to join the Federation.
On this plant, all resources are allocated according to a person's best time in the 200 meter dash prior to age thirty.
At any given year, those in the top 20 for men and women are awarded a lifetime stipend, and do not have to work. The stipends decrease and eventually if you are in, say, the bottom 50% of the population times, you end up working your whole life to support the top 50%.
To some degree, the children and grandchildren of top 20 sprinters also have luxury lifestyles if their parent or grandparent manages the stipend well, regardless of the 200 meter time of the child or grandchild.
The people on the planet think this is an extremely fair way of allocating resources, because the people accept that one's 200 meter time is the best representation of making the most of one's ability through practice and its provides a certainly to life that's comforting.
The Enterprise's medical staff calls a senior staff meeting to discuss how the prime directive should apply to this planet. Dr. Crusher (Bones, Bashir, pick your show), points out that its fundamental medical knowledge that a person's 200 meter time is primarily a matter of genetics, certainly if one is to be ranked in the top 20 on the planet, and those in the bottom 50% are basically being consigned to a life of toil on a random genetic basis.
PS., on this planet there are not "races" clouding up the analysis.
Kevin't skipped right to the Enterprise executive staff meeting without covering point one. The issue is not how you define "intelligence" its how you define LACK OF intelligence. What jobs are there for those without any type of intelligence ? Math science? Music? Verbal? Engineering? Or, more accurately, those with less than first rate skill in any particular area?
The left, to the extent you can broadly say this, does not believe in the first part of the example, the left would rather have a world where all people, regardless of skill, have a good shot. Not a meritocracy where a few win and the vast majority lose.
I don't know what the left, again, broadly, would do when it becomes clear that in fact we are very close to the Star Trek 200 meter planet. There are less and less opportunities for dumb hard work to succeed at anything more than getting more dumb hard work.
That's the issue. I sure don't know the answer.
The answer is stipends.
If you replace 200 meter dash with "attain a personal net worth of $500,000 (amount is a SWAG), you have good analogy of US economic and social reality. Its somewhat credible to compare attendance at an elite college as the US version of the exoplanet 200 m dash test, but that is a gross oversimplification. Many environmental factors over a lifetime contribute to college selection.
Segue to "Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment," Nature, 2016, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17671/ Is it a question worth asking whether these genetic markers have significantly different distribution among racial groups? I agree that asking the question implies a racist worldview that I would rather see fade into the past.
The more important question is whether or how this GWAS analysis should be applied to individuals' genomes. I've only gotten as far as deciding that individual genetic privacy should be a universal right. That position doesn't feel widely understood or accepted. Its alarming to think of the possibility of private or government entities using or selling access to individuals' genetic information similar to the current credit reporting industry. Racist political abuse of genetic information is a potential problem, but broader commercial or government exploitation of individuals' genetic information is a much larger problem.