Aaron Gross

“We know there are no uncontrolled confounds, because we discovered the mechanism.”
“What’s a ‘mechanism’?”
“A causal process where we know there are no uncontrolled confounds.”

Seems you need a more direct conception of mechanism for the concept to be useful?

Interesting post!

There’s something that bothers me though (maybe my misunderstanding) in the “Mechanism is Unconfounded Causation” section. Doesn’t your “quick and dirty” definition of “mechanism” lead to circularity? Like…

Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.

In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.

Happy holidays to all, and Fuck Palestine 🙂

…were also only assuming heritability and nothing else, like Lewontin, probably because I misread.

But if you’re assuming we ALREADY know an IQ variant X and its frequency in different races, then sure it’s like the island example and it’s clear. Thanks!

I understood that and the island example, but it wasn’t clear how that carried over to Lewontin’s point about races, maybe because I misunderstood your whole point?

Lewontin’s example was about heritability, by itself, not implying between-population “genetic” differences, right? I thought you…

If anybody could explain this to me I’d appreciate it. The context by the way is criticizing Lewontin’s “two populations of seeds” thought experiment.

Somehow the sentence sounds intuitively reasonable, but I don’t know how to translate it to precise language, much less to a result in statistics.

Specifically, who are the “you”, “me”, and “groups of people like” you/me? Are you and I in the same population? If so, aren’t the “groups of people” also in the same population?

Or are you and I in different populations? If so, the premise of the conditional is exactly what we’re trying to answer!

Thinking again about this deceptively simple sentence from @ent3c.bsky.social:

“If you believe…that genetic differences explain why you are smarter than me, then those same genetic differences will cause groups of people like you to be smarter than groups of people like me.”

What does this mean?

I think that question mostly comes down to how you define “biological reality”, not to anything about race itself.

Depending on that definition, race is either not biologically real at all; or biologically real only to a trivial, insignificant degree.

This is my last reply here. Have a good one!

This was a really interesting talk! Interesting Q&A too.

Uh, no.

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Disillusionment, apocalypse, pessimism, nihilism, corruption, nervousness, bitterness, dysfunction: Are these really what most viewers of these movies have experienced, either in the 1940s or since? Even with the most luridly perverse and pessimistic melodramas-Out of the Past, Criss Cross, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers—it may well be asked whether spectators were any more devastated by the destinies of the doomed lovers and killers than viewers of Knots Landing or Dallas. They had come to the movies for excitement, and were more likely to be entertained than crushed by the spectacle of a comfortably vicarious emotional showdown. In the world of film noir, words like "dark" or "empty" or "desperate" refer not to real-life experiences but to movie experiences: they describe certain sub-varieties of spectatorial thrill. The movies' actual effects might more accurately be described in terms of exhilaration, gaudy invention, tight and jaunty choreography, cocky self-assurance. They practice an aesthetic of flamboyant exhibition, reveling in exuberant sexuality and hip self-parody.

Nice article on film noir from the NYRB, 1991 <https://archive.li/2B57B>

This is a really good point about how audiences experienced film noir in the 1940s–50s. They weren’t ancient Greeks experiencing catharsis from a tragedy. They were there to enjoy thrills and entertainment.

OK a last comment about race.

When I say that human races have existed for thousands of years, that might sound ridiculous to educated people, who say race was invented a few centuries ago.

But like it or not, right or wrong, I think most ordinary people agree with what I said about it.

OK, no more posts from me. I did post one reply after that but before I read your post.

Like, don’t even label that concept I quoted “race”. I think the “race” label might be misleading. Call it R-groups or something. Then I’m saying that R-groups existed thousands of years before that R-groups concept existed.

That’s separate from the question of whether it’s really a race concept.

Electrons were a bad example because they’re a natural kind and race is not. My point was simply that THE DEFINITION I QUOTED describes a thing that existed before the concept was invented.

Of course those statements are consistent. There’s no tension at all between them. I’m sorry that I couldn’t explain it clearly.

If you don’t accept that distinction, between the concept in our minds and the category it picks out, then fine. But it’s a disagreement that has nothing to do specifically with race.

OK, well at least we finally got to the disagreement. It’s got nothing to do specifically with race.

For example, we have an invented concept of ELECTRON. The concept has only existed for less than two centuries. But the concept picks out a category, electrons, which has existed for much longer…

All talk about beliefs, discourse, practices, etc.—which everyone agrees were socially invented—seems irrelevant to what I said above.

That CONCEPT picks out a CATEGORY. The CATEGORY is constituted entirely by non-social things: just read the definition again. I’m saying the CATEGORY existed—was non-empty—long before the CONCEPT existed…

You just described how people’s CONCEPTION of race was invented, along with race-oriented discourse and practice. Of course those were invented! No one denies that.

Set aside for a moment the question of whether the concept I posted is an ordinary concept—not conception, but concept!—of race…

A race is group of human beings (C1) that, as a group, is distinguished from other groups of human beings by patterns of visible physical features, (C2) whose members are linked by a common ancestry peculiar to members of the group, and (C3) that originates from a distinctive geographic location.

My beliefs aren’t in opposition to anything. My definition of what I called the (or an) ordinary conception of race was a rough paraphrase of this, below.

I said it has certain implications, such as, races have existed for thousands of years. I still don’t see why that doesn’t follow obviously.

Also I should add, Glasgow’s chapters in “What Is Race?” He explains his “basic realism” again, but he also argues cogently against Sally Haslanger’s constructivism as described in her chapters.

(I don’t agree with everything he says, but I agree with his argument against constructivism.)

OK. If you’re interested in the topic, you can find pretty much everything I was trying to say in the two sources I cited above. Hardimon’s “Rethinking Race” and Glasgow and Woodward’s “Basic Racial Realism”.

These are analytic philosophers so whatever their faults, they are painstakingly clear.

Also, regarding “my analysis”, nothing I’ve said here is original. I’m just repeating stuff other people have said.

As to how it fits into my broader “analysis”, it doesn’t say anything about whether race is biologically real. It ILLUSTRATES how what I call “the ordinary concept of race” picks out a category that exists (has members) and is not socially real. This contradicts widespread elite opinion on race.

I said what I mean by “whites” in this post a couple days ago. Basically, geographic ancestry and physical features tied to that ancestry.

I claim there was a set of people satisfying these conditions thousands of years ago. I don’t understand why you think that’s wrong.

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I think there are multiple concepts of race, but what I’ve said about race is about one concept, this one:
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