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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

I might have more sympathy for this post if I only knew about it in the abstract and wasn't familiar with specific cases. For example, lately among Bay Area types, and especially the Rationalist community, there's been a surge of interest in eugenics and scientific racism, now euphemistically rebranded as "human biodiversity". It tends to take the form of hand-wringing about how "people from certain regions" have lower IQs and just how dreadful that is.

Just keep in mind that when Valley "thought leaders" complain about the lack of freedom to discuss ideas, those are the kinds of ideas they're talking about.

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My reaction to that would be to tell them there’s exactly one correct way to treat people. As soon as you categorize someone not by what they reveal about their individual characteristics you’re being prejudicial. An individual will reveal that they’re more likely to commit crime in individualistic ways, for example. Ie pulling up a criminal background check is Ok (though you’ve got to read the contents), but segregation by skin color is very definitely not.

In general people from certain regions do have lower IQs... What makes this bad thing to study? Is the cause culture? Genetics? Education? I think the entire point of article is that asking the question somehow makes you a bad person, instead of a person with a controversial idea.

>In general people from certain regions do have lower IQs

It's been 23 years since The Bell Curve and I am still waiting for someone who makes this statement and seems to have a solid grasp on the problem of general IQ scores across wildly different populations. I think there's a reason I never see it . . .

I don't think people from different regions or types have different IQs, but as a thought experiment, suppose it was proven that (to pick a random example) all Capricorns born on a Tuesday were below average intelligence. Should discussion of that fact be suppressed?

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