Actually, you wrote "Thanks for your analysis! But I deliberately wanted to exclude the cultural / environmental factors! I was interested purely in the genetic component." which wasn't a closure for the previous thread of discussion.Actually, for me, that was the conclusion of that discussion (of the heritability of I.Q.).
Alex, we haven’t 'neatly tied up' the biological premise because your current political argument relies entirely on the assumptions you made at the start.I, myself, sometimes become confused when "debating" several different other FReepers within a single thread. Perhaps you have fallen victim to this here, too. I namely strongly suspect that you have tacitly assumed that I was "in league with" or agreed with others or you conflated my stance with that of other FReepers here who may have said something about the geographical/racial distribution of I.Q. - but I said no such thing / asserted no such correlation!
The only assumption I made at the start was that a random individual (no race specified!) with an I.Q. of 100 would have offspring with another random individual (likewise: no race specified!) with an I.Q. of 80.
A pleasant exchange ensued about "regression towards the mean," etc.
I explicitly labelled my musings as a Gedankenexperiment, for goodness sake!
My final comment (still only a musing) to conclude that line of reasoning was that this "regression towards the mean" might be less noticeable when the two individuals came from two (geographically) separate, long-standing populations. (That was, for me, a genuine epiphany!)
Again: I said nothing about race!
You’re asking 'why we need to import' these populations, but that question is predicated on the view that these populations are inherently dysfunctional or intellectually inferior—a view you established in your earlier posts about 'separate gene pools' and fixed IQ gaps.No, my question / assertion about the supposed "need" to import populations with vastly different cultural norms was predicated solely on my belief that they are very difficult to integrate. In fact - though I don't want to put words in your mouth - I got the impression that you, yourself, posited that it would require instituting very rigorous measures and policies to successfully integrate such vastly different foreign elements. Indeed, that seemed to be your main thesis!
My only objection was that you were apparently proceeding from the assumption that the U.S. had to enact such measures and implement such policies - as though we had no choice but to welcome with open arms these enormous numbers of migrants coming into our country.
I challenge that assumption!
If you truly believed that those earlier biological arguments were independent of your current position, you would have no problem conceding the points I corrected: that IQ is not a fixed racial trait and that intelligence is not a biological 'stock' determined by ancestral geography.I cannot concede those points because I simply don't possess the necessary expertise in the field of, say, I.Q. / g, the genetic basis for I.Q., possible racial disparities in I.Q., etc. to do so!
In my initial questions to you (involving the aforementioned scenario about two random individuals producing offspring), I explicitly asked that environment, nurture, and other factors be left out of consideration - since to do otherwise would have virtually guaranteed that the scope of the discussion would have quickly become unmanageable.
I suppose that I should have added that I'm actually rather skeptical about standard I.Q. tests as reliable measures of g. I am more than willing to "concede" that g is, in reality, a multidimensional metric, probably composed of a multitude of different variables. I'm sure that there is some genetic basis for it - there does seem to be a high correlation among blood relatives - but I certainly couldn't proclaim with confidence that I knew what genes were responsible for it.
Other FReepers here have, perhaps, stentoriously announced that the natives of spec. countries have I.Q.s of 75, or 105. I find that an interesting assertion, and it might have significant ramifications. It might deserve further study. But, again, I am unqualified to comment further upon it.
Does that satisfy you?
Can you explain now why you think that the U.S. should go to the extra (considerable) effort to integrate immigrants from profoundly different cultures?
Regards,