You know there are black people on this site, right?

(I am black)

Honestly, I thought I must've misinterpreted the original comments somehow, and maybe I did, but I guess I'm not alone.

The IQ tests are quite a bit more culturally specific than people generally assume.

It's disputed that it's due to race, there's a good argument that it's due to culture and culture can change.

I think an even better argument (than 'culture') can be made for socio-economic factors (nutrition, environment, healthcare, etc). There's an "IQ gap" between poor and rich people.

If the cause is cultural, then it's not inherent and is tractable to change through education and is not an obstacle to rehabilitation. It's just a behaviour, not an innate trait.

Even if you take the rather extreme assumption of purely environmental factors, your conclusion does not hold. "Environmental" does not inherently mean "changeable" on already affected individuals. For instance developmental malnutrition is a purely environmental phenomena that leads to stunted growth, reduced IQ, and various other issues. It's completely environmental and completely irreversible upon already affected individuals.

And even if some revolutionary discovery was made to help treat stunted IQs, prisons are probably not the place one would want to start. The IQ gap holds between populations of all classes and socioeconomic condition. You open yourself to missing the true effectiveness of such a monumental discovery due to confounding biases within the prison population. The possibility, if not probability, of coercion upon experimental "treatment" towards prisoners is also probably something we ought probably prefer to avoid.

Low IQ doesn’t mean incapable of changing behaviour. You keep assuming this link but I don’t see any reason to assume low IQ prisoners are incapable of rehabilitation.

Do you know there are black people on this site?

Is this relevant to the discussion? Does it change anything of what I wrote and referenced? Why do you keep bringing it up?

Have you provided evidence that IQ has an influence on one's ability to be rehabilitated in prison?

Said a different way, is IQ relevant to the discussion? Why do you keep bringing it up?

I made a reasonable argument and backed it with referenced facts. Besides the downvotes I received, my main posts were flagged and are now invisible. On top of that, I get low quality comments that add nothing but dilution to the discussion ("Hey did you know I am black?"). Those posts did not get flagged. It's quite clear that the thought police will not allow any discussion on these matters to take place here.

First of all, you are not a victim. Instead of blaming other people ("the thought police") or trying to call out fellow commenters, maybe try to assess why your post was received so negatively. Perhaps you could have presented it in a better way. It's possible that something you find reasonable, is not viewed that way by others.

I still can't see where you've presented evidence that IQ measures have an impact on a prisoners ability to be rehabilitated. This is the crux of your entire argument.

What the actual fuck? 1) Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, try again. 2) This comment thread is bringing out all the racists on HN.

> I used the person's own source to display the cherry-picked nature of their data, try again.

Or you know, you could use a reliable source of information to counter their argument instead of using the same crap to try (and fail) to prove a point..

I empathize with being mad at this subthread, but, respectfully, I think you're aiming at the wrong guy. Because, rhetorically, "you aren't even supported by your own source" is pretty powerful.

Also keep in mind that troglodytes like the racist in the room exist to waste the time of decent people. Doing actual research to beat on them means that they win.

If this was a good faith argument, I would agree 100%. More likely, would be me finding a reliable source, then the original poster arguing about the reliability of that source and it going back and forth. This way, we can show them that their own (admittedly horrible) source disagrees with the assumption.

> such as lack of basic infrastructure related to health and education

Fight the welfare state and toss black moms into prison because they lied to send their kid to a better school (IIRC, 5 years. for lying about her address). Meanwhile rich white people are photoshopping their kids faces onto athletes.

Fund schools with property taxes. Oh look, those mcmansion filled suburbs have better schools.

Fight bussing (thanks Biden). Criticize the south for resisting integration while NY has the most segregated schools in the country.

Extol the virtues of the great charter schools and lottery systems, while the rest of the kids are stuck in shit.

==Criticize the south for resisting integration while NY has the most segregated schools in the country.==

Different actions can be criticized for different reasons. A quick google search shows that nobody is ignoring the segregation in NY schools [1]. In fact, how did you find out about it if it is being ignored?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=segrega...