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Comment by EnigmaFlare | Hacker News Reader

Finding evidence to be obnoxious because of political associations is anti-science. You could make a moral argument that humans shouldn't be allowed to know certain things because we can't be trusted with that knowledge, but that's separate from trying to understand reality.

> The genetic variation across one race (say black) is much greater than the variation between races.

Why did you say that? Are you implying that there must be a wider range of IQs among various ethnicities within a race than between races? That's not a logical conclusion. Do you have some other chain of logic in mind?

By the way, I only use the word race loosely. I really mean ethnicity. Although the findings do still broadly apply to the classic 3-ish races.

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So IQ is a word used to describe the results of a bunch of tests first established by eugenicists in the late 19th century, and has no scientific extraction whatsoever. Genetics is a field of science, and you can identify groups that carry particular genes. However, the 'races' don't map to distinct genetic groups, which is very unsurprising: the 'races' or 'ethnicities' are just administrative or cultural groupings from the 19th century.

The origin isn't relevant to whether it's valid or not.

No, ethnicities are absolutely not just administrative or cultural groupings. You've clearly done no research into this topic whatsoever and are just repeating some misinformation you got fooled by. Even the classic races which are unnecessarily crude by modern standards do actually partly correspond to distinct genetic groups. We can now classify ethnicities at a much finer level of detail and they're still distinct genetic groups.

Ironically given the article this is under, IQ was considered to be dirty Jewish science by the Nazis, probably because it showed Jews to be superior.

... That's just nonsense. Normal scientists working in genetics don't believe in race. The field has moved on from the 40s. It's not a conspiracy, there's just no evidence, because why should there be? It would be very surprising if a bunch of 19th century racists had accidentally discovered a deep truth about genetics before anybody had even discovered DNA.

Honestly, you just sound like you're a racist. Which is sad, but it's also indicative of a lack of common sense that you expect the universe to conform to your prejudices.

I can't understand how you can say that when it's transparently false. There's an enormous quantity of research on ethnicity and genetics. Researchers have found all sorts of correlations. Even common sense tells you things about eye color, hair color, etc. but it goes far deeper than that. It's more precise than classic race but both are still valid classifications.

You must also think scientists don't believe in the distinction between planets and dwarf planets, or even stars. Yes it's an arbitrary classification, but it's still useful.

You're thinking is just like the people in TFA. Rejecting some science for arbitrary and nonsensical political reasons. You've replaces dirty Jewish science with dirty racist's science.

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