The problem is that generally people use these kinds of articles to extrapolate from group to individual--and that's generally not a good idea.

Individuals break "typical" all the time.

If I'm interviewing you for a job, I shouldn't apply "group stereotype" as I'm specifically looking for your individual traits that break the norm. I don't want the "average" from your group--I probably want someone far from it.

So the arrow from individual to aggregate group is generally strong. The reverse arrow from aggregate group to individual, however, has nowhere near the same strength.

I think that as a policy matter (what interviewers should do or should even be allowed to do), a stronger claim can be made. Suppose there are some groups A1 and A2 (men vs women, different races, etc — there could be A3, etc). Then I would argue that, regardless of whether the groups have substantial differences affecting qualification for the job, group membership or perceived group membership should not be allowed as a substitute for individual qualification. So, as an extreme example, if a job requires heavy lifting and short or contained hair, then an applicant should not be preferred because they’re male.

Obviously there are nuances here. If the groups are actually job qualifications (hiring a singer based on vocal range, for example), then none of this applies. There are surely plenty of gray areas, too. Gender doesn’t fit cleanly into a pair of groups. Sometimes it might be very hard to measure actual aptitude, and proxies of various quality are needed. College admissions are an example of the latter — you can’t measure how well someone can do, so admissions departments use proxies of varying quality and social acceptability.

As for gender differences, if I’m hiring someone, I believe that it doesn’t matter whether one gender is likely to be more qualified for any reason — if I’m hiring, I have an obligation to consider the applicant as an individual regardless of gender.

> if I’m hiring, I have an obligation to consider the applicant as an individual regardless of gender.

Since it's illegal to hire based on the results of an IQ test in the US, we have to come up with other proxies for it. So, we use stereotypes that are associated intelligent individuals as filtering criteria. Gender provides one of those stereotypes - in both directions. Men have traditionally not been considered for jobs like nursing or caretaking. Women have traditionally not been considered for jobs which require physical strength or analytical skills.

But back to your original premise: when you're evaluating hundreds, or thousands, of applications for a single opening, you're going to fall back on stereotypes, because it's too much work to do otherwise. Gap in employment longer than a few months? Skills have expired. Lots of job hopping after 6-18 months? Unreliable. Only has worked for companies known for their physical labor? Not capable of working in an office. A short job history with no college? Not smart enough.

Even though every single one of those is potentially wrong, it's also potentially correct. If you need to weed 100 applications down to 10 for phone interviews in the next hour, can you really afford to give each of the 100 applicants the benefit of the doubt?

EDIT: Removed "intelligence", replaced with "the results of an IQ test", which is what I meant originally. Apologies.

> Since it's illegal to hire based on intelligence in the US

Source? This article says it can be legal. https://www.hiresuccess.com/resources/guide-to-employment-te...

> when you're evaluating hundreds, or thousands, of applications for a single opening, you're going to fall back on stereotypes.

You personally might. But that's not what everyone does, not what the most successful people in recruiting do, and definitely not what I do. Why not use far stronger signals? For example:

1. Do they have the exact skills you are looking for or only some of them? 2. Aside from listing the skills, do they give concrete examples of using those skills? 3. How much experience do they have in their role? 4. Do they have experience in our specific industry? 5. If written communication is part of the job, how well is their resume written?

You can do a quick scan of the above in 10 or 20 seconds.

Thousands of resumes? Scan the first hundred that arrived and skip the rest. For most companies, your job isn't to find the one best person out of thousands of applicants, which would be a huge cost. It's to find someone qualified for the job.

Why use stereotypes when you have much stronger signals already available and it's just as quick to scan for those better signals?

> Source

See sibling comment.

> Why not use far stronger signals

These all rely on assumptions that an exhibited trait - a well polished resume that is tailored to the job description - have the non-visible traits sought.

Stereotypes work the same way. They're an assumption of someone's internal traits based on an outward trait, and are typically accurate when applied to groups (much as your resume filtering likely is mostly accurate, with a few outliers).

Stereotypes are just typically considered to be negative.

The factors I listed have nothing to do with a polished resume. It's comparing information with a strong signal.

Stereotypes are actually an extremely poor quality signal when hiring. If you use them, you're doing more work than you need to find a qualified person. Test it out and find out for yourself like I did on the advice of someone who does it for a living.

>Since it's illegal to hire based on intelligence in the US, we have to come up with other proxies for it.

Where are you getting this from? Mental disability is a protected class but not the same as intelligence.

I should have worded it better - it's effectively illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co

TL;DR: It's hard to defend an IQ test against a discrimination lawsuit.

Unless there's an explicit business need to concretely identify someone's IQ, a business is at risk of being called out as using the IQ test to discriminate against some protected group, since that protected group is potentially disadvantaged while taking the IQ test by any one of dozens of (legitimate) reasons.

It's not effectively illegal. That's a mis-characterization of both current law and that lawsuit in particular.

The court ruled that "the company's employment requirements did not pertain to applicants' ability to perform the job". And it was more specific than that. If such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.

That does not make IQ tests effectively illegal. Demonstrate that anyone with an IQ lower than X cannot perform the job in question, and you're good. The actual "problem" is that other tests are far better at determining if you will do well in a job role. So companies use the better tests. If there were a job for which IQ was highly related to being able to do the job, then companies would surely use IQ as the test for that job.

To give a concrete example, why would I give a programmer an IQ test when I can give them a programming test? I'll take it further: an extremely high IQ is a deficit for many developer roles. Most of the genius programmers I personally know write code no one else can maintain, and are often condescending - usually without even knowing it, which hurts team moral. I love those guys and they often inspire me, but many of them would make bad employees if the job required writing average business programs on a large team. A programming test would reveal that when you see their code is very clever, and also includes an internal compiler so they can write the solution in a high level language they invented... There is good reason my very smartest programming friends are often unemployed. When a genius programmer is called for though, boy do they shine.

So it's not a case of companies avoiding the use of a good test due the law and replacing that good test with less effective proxies, as you first suggested. The real effect of that ruling and the law is that companies use tests that can be proven to demonstrate whether or not you can perform the job. That's better for everyone.

It is almost certainly legal to hire based on assessments of intelligence. If I insisted in a job interview that 4+9=12, the moon is simply a sky-reflection of the lights from Manhattan, and that I can’t stand to be in the same room as tall people since they affect gravity in disturbing ways, you would draw conclusions about my intelligence. Would you then avoid hiring me?

IQ tests might be illegal under some circumstances, but I would point out that they are not a reliable measure of intelligence anyways, making this all a bit of a moot point.

Interesting read, as was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_v._DeStefano

I'm glad I don't have to worry about hiring. Seems like employers are caught in a catch-22.

> generally people use these kinds of articles to extrapolate from group to individual

As the article quotes: "People might be more reasonable than you think"

Or in other words: Citation needed.

Please check out Lee Jussim's work on Stereotype Accuracy[1]. His research shows that not only are stereotypes highly accurate (according to him one of the strongest effects in social psychology), but people only use them when they have no other information available. As soon as they obtain information about the individual in front of them, that information takes precedence over the stereotype.

[1] http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-res...

The article seems to say that the difference here is strong enough that you can do that:

> To put this number in context, a D= 2.10 means a classification accuracy of 85%. In other words, their data suggests that the probability that a randomly picked individual will be correctly classified as male or female based on knowledge of their global personality profile is 85% (after correcting for the unreliability of the personality tests).

The article suggests that you can do the opposite of that (use traits of the individual to reasonably accurately infer that they're male or female).

The parent's concern is that, given you know someone is male or female, you will make further assumptions about them based on their group membership rather than their individual traits, something that is not supported by the article.

> I am a strong believer that individual differences are more important than sex differences.

But the only case where you would rely on group membership is if the individual traits are unknown. Obviously generalization will never be as accurate as individual knowledge. Why would anybody be worried that people would act otherwise?

Assuming things about individuals based on group membership is a key part of racism, sexism, etc. Why would anybody be worried? Because people do it all the time.

Stereotypes exist because there are statistical patterns in groups of people. Those stereotypes are useful cognitive tools while they remain accurate. It certainly isn't fair to people in those groups who don't fit the stereotype, but as long as the stereotype accurately describes the majority, there's nothing to be done about it.

Would you run up to a lion or a tiger in the wild and try to hug and kiss it? I'm guessing you have a stereotype of big cats as dangerous predators, and you'd steer well clear, even though there are countless friendly lions and tigers in captivity that have never hurt anyone.

Are you saying that with a high accuracy, you'd feel comfortable treating an individual according to their group?

I don't want to appear too argumentative; it's just not exactly clear what you mean when you write

> .. difference here is strong enough that you can do that

Do you not do that? When you are first approaching someone you don't know, do you not take their expressed gender into account in how you make the initial greeting? Would you offer a woman the exact same handshake you'd offer a guy?

How would you approach someone who doesn't fit the norms - for example a male bodybuilder in drag? Does your brain hiccup for a moment when considering how to greet them? Mine does.

I'm sure I do act a little differently, but I try very hard not to.

Especially if I work with them or have some influence over their future.

This is a poor excuse, and I do not buy that people “generally” do this. It’s plainly obvious what people mean when they discuss averages and trends, and this hypersensitivity and paranoia that they might also hold those beliefs as universally applicable to every member of a group, and thus must be silenced, is not something we should accept.

If you put it in historical context it's neither hypersensitive nor paranoid. People did and do hold beliefs as universally applicable to every member of a group. Women were not allowed to vote in the USA less than 100 years ago. Only in the 1960s did it became illegal to request a specific gender in job advertisements. And it was only in 1974 that it became illegal to discriminate using gender in credit matters, including being able to obtain and use credit cards.

Plenty of people still use average and trends as an excuse to claim a gender (or race) is not as capable at some skill or career. It's not even that hard to find. Probably pretty easy actually in the US states that require creationism to be taught in public school.

> and thus must be silenced

Where did the parent comment say discussing averages must be silenced?

Those examples are not indications that people hold beliefs as universally applicable, especially those that were 100 years ago.

Also, most auto insurance still discriminates against men, especially young unmarried men, and we know for certain that’s not because every actuary with authority at every insurance company is under the impression that the increased risk is applicable to every single member. Likewise for life insurance that asks about age and smoking.

In case it needs to be said, there is a major difference between believing traits are universally applicable (which nobody believes) and believing that because something is true on average, that this is valid justification to discriminate against the whole group.

If someone makes the claim that a given trait is true on average, and therefore discrimination against a group is justified, only then should the discussion focus on that. Otherwise, it’s logically inconsistent, hypocritical, and even a little ironic to suggest or even suspect that individual’s line of inquiry is in any way connected to them suggesting or even suspecting a diminished capability from you (or any other specific person) as an individual.

> Plenty of people still use average and trends as an excuse to claim a gender (or race) is not as capable at some skill or career. It's not even that hard to find.

I’ve never seen this claim being made personally, and I don’t believe it happens with any significant prevalence, at least in the US. I could be wrong of course. I have seen many cases of people claiming that someone said it, only for the truth to come out that they actually did not.

> Plenty of people still use average and trends as an excuse to claim a gender (or race) is not as capable at some skill or career. It's not even that hard to find. Probably pretty easy actually in the US states that require creationism to be taught in public school.

Hah, you can even find this in neighbouring comments in this very thread.

> The problem is that generally people use these kinds of articles to extrapolate from group to individual--and that's generally not a good idea.

Conversely, people assume that any studies or discussions that even tangentially touch upon this are meant to encourage extrapolation from group to individual (even if they explicitly state the opposite, this is dismissed as lip service).

> This is part of the nature vs nurture debate that has been argued for millennia. People try to decide which is more critical.

If you read the article, though, it isn't. The article claims that sex differences are large; it explicitly makes no claim as to what causes them.

Maybe not directly. However, the article does cite the Gender Equality Paradox:

"Contrary to what one might expect, for all of these personality effects the sex differences tend to be larger-- not smaller-- in more individualistic, gender-egalitarian countries. "

This finding, which apparently surprised and puzzled everyone, is very difficult to square with the idea that it is the societies/cultures that are creating these effects, because then you would expect the correlation to be the other way around. So not a magnitude difference, but a sign difference. Again, that observation, which has been replicated repeatedly with ever larger sample sizes and larger effect sizes, just isn't compatible with a cultural source.

Honestly, it kind of makes sense. If you have the option to be anyone you want to be, you take advantage of that option. There's no reason it would (or should) apply only to jobs, dress, and outward interactions.

Let's take a non-gendered example of someone (we'll call them Kris) who loves creating art, but is also capable of being a computer programmer.

If Kris lives in a country where being an artist means being poor and mocked, Kris would be smarter to chose the path of a computer programmer.

However, if Kris lives in a place where an artist can live a good, and perhaps even a great life, and be encouraged while pursuing that path, why would they go into computer programming?

Coming back to the topic at hand, if Kris has the capability of expressing compassion and will not be punished for doing so, why wouldn't Kris do that? A more individualistic and gender-egalitarian country is less likely to punish such expressions of compassion.

It makes sense if you believe that men and women generally have different interests. If you believe that the men and women don't generally have different interests it's a paradox.

I believe this is the case, based on personal observation. Exceptions are everywhere, but:

- I know more women who knit than men

- I know more men who follow football and basketball than women

- I know more women who write novels than men

- I know more women who enjoy romance novels than men

- I know more men who enjoy horror films than women

- I know more women with an interest in fashion than men

- I know more men who play computer games than women

- I know more women who play cellphone based games than men

EDIT: To underscore how exceptions matter: I know how to knit, but I find it interminably boring. I don't follow football; my mom does. I enjoy romance novels and hate horror films. I'm an oft-maligned cis-het male.

Knitting is weird, TBH. It seems like the sort of thing you would only enjoy if you managed to enter some 'flow'/'trance'/'hyperfocus' state while doing it, and that seems like something males would experience, far more than females. It's also a highly solitary pursuit that doesn't engage the 'social' brain at all. So what's up with it, how can the average female like it so much?

I just toured Alcatraz recently, and during the audio tour I learned that one of the male inmates there taught other male inmates how to knit, and knitting became a very popular pastime among the all-male prison population of Alcatraz.

There are likely lots of historical, social, and cultural reasons why knitting happens to be more popular among women than men -- reasons that might go back to our hunter-gatherer days, when the stronger, more physically capable men were the ones going out to hunt while women stayed home and took care of, among other things, the creation of clothing.

I'm a self-taught knitter and I also code (though I'm a dude so I can't speak for the female experience).

I wouldn't describe knitting as a flow state in the same way. I frequently listen to podcasts, watch movies, listen to music, etc, when I knit. Knitting is... I dunno... rhythmic?

Now granted that depends. If I'm working cables or some sort of motif or whatever, it can require a bit of focus. But it's definitely not the same as coding. And if the fabric is simple stockinette or something, I don't even need to look at my hands.

It's also not at all solitary unless you want it to be. Knitting circles are a very common thing and I personally love hanging out with my other friends while we each work on projects.

In short: my guess is your confusion is mainly borne of a misunderstanding of the hobby.

My suggestion? Give it a shot! YouTube has made it easier than ever to learn, and a pair of sticks and a ball of yarn will cost you less than ten bucks. You never know, you might love it!

Self-taught here as well, though I haven't done any knitting for nearly a decade now. It was always something for my hands to do while watching TV.

It’s like any other creative hobby — woodworking, metalworking (computer programming?) etc. There’s joy in using your hands and brain to make something enjoyable out of low-value materials. There’s joy in being able to show people “Look what I made!”

Creative hobbies do tend to be a bit male-coded or female-coded for various reasons. For some hobbies I suspect that the very single-sexiness of the hobby is part of the appeal — women join knitting circles as an excuse to hang out with other women, men go golfing as a way to hang out with other men.

Not disagreeing, but the data invalidates even the much weaker hypothesis that "the differences are a combination of cultural and inherent causes", at least in the usual reading of both components contributing to the differences.

The data, however, indicate that, at least in sum, culture contributes negatively to differences, that is it makes men and women less different than they would otherwise be.

That apparently was expected by no-one.

Yeah I've never understood how people take such one-sided positions on this issue. And it becomes such an emotionally-charged subject for both sides.

> it becomes such an emotionally-charged subject for both sides.

Yeah but it's not like one side is claiming it's 100% nature and the other is claiming it's 100% nurture. One side is claiming it's 100% nurture and the other side is claiming it's some mix. The side claiming it's 100% nurture is 100% wrong. But somehow it is verboten to state this publicly or you are shamed.

Here is the thing. There are probably innate differences between different men and women. There are probably also innate differences between different races.

However, this doesn't say anything about individuals. A group of people might be more likely to have trait X, but it doesn't say that any member of that group has that trait.

The problem is that people are not very good at thinking probabilistically, so emphasizing differences between groups will lead people to make unwarranted assumptions about members of those groups.

> However, this doesn't say anything about individuals

That is an often-repeated line but as an absolute statement it is not true. Statistical differences do have predictive power. It's just that they are weak predictors and trumped by concrete information. But you don't always have that information at hand and in that case those heuristics may be better than nothing. The problems arise when people stick to their heuristics (stereotypes) even when better information is available.

> so emphasizing differences between groups will lead people to make unwarranted assumptions about members of those groups.

Yes, that may be a problem. But denying the existence of heuristics and demanding that every single person you ever interact with should be treated as a carefully analyzed individual seems unrealistic.

> There are probably also innate differences between different races.

That's highly unlikely aside from a few genes having to do with appearance. Race is determined by society, and is not a grouping of similar genetic populations. A Kenyan can have far more in common genetically with an Irish person than that Kenyan does with a Pygmy. But according to society, the Kenyan and the Pymgy both belong to the same race and the Irish person is a different race.

If you want to say there are innate differences between different genetic populations, then sure. But genetic populations must be far smaller than anything we would call race to start to see interesting differences. For example, many of the world's best runners come from one Kenyan tribe.[1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/...

> Race is determined by society, and is not a grouping of similar genetic populations

Sure, and "species" is defined by taxonomists, but it is not based on any formal, rigourous analytical division of intrinsic properties. In both cases, such arbitrary divisions can still serve as useful analytical tools.

> but it is not based on any formal, rigourous analytical division of intrinsic properties

Actually it often is. For example one way to determine species is as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring. That's a far more rigorous and biologically based definition than race is. And taxonimists are looking at actual genes now. That is a formal, rigorous, analytical division based on intrinsic properties. So already there it is a poor comparison. Species is far more useful as an analytical tool because it is based in biology.

Scientists (in biology related fields) don't use race anymore as a category because it is an outdated and failed model of ancestry differences in the human population. In fact, race often gets the biology completely wrong. Because society, not science, determines someone's race.

Race is mostly useful to society and so will reflect the various motivations and ideologies of a society. People who choose to continue to use a failed scientific model as a useful analytical tool most often are pushing an ideology, and very often a racist one. The choice to use a failed model over more accurate categorization should always be suspect.

So the comparison to species is a very poor one. Taxonomists are broadly not ideologically motivated in their decisions like society is. And taxonomists continually refine their categorizations based on new scientific information, including genetic information. So species categorizations continue to get more and more accurate and increasingly based in science. That's why species continues to be a useful analytical tool. It is largely based in science and society has no say. Race is the opposite.

> For example one way to determine species is as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring. [...] That is a formal, rigorous, analytical division based on intrinsic properties.

No, this is not a rigourous, formal distinction because procreation is not transitive, ie. A and C could procreate, and A and B could procreate, and D could procreate successfully with C but fail to procreate successfully with B. What are the species involved in this case?

"Species" is just as much a social construct as race; all distinctions made in each case are fairly arbitrary. One might have more utility, or be more precise in some equally arbitrary sense, but neither is somehow more intrinsically justified than the other.

> Scientists (in biology related fields) don't use race anymore as a category because it is an outdated and failed model of ancestry differences in the human population

Let's not pretend that scientists are immune from the prevailing political winds of the day. We can't possibly know whether race is a signficant factor in any given scenario until it's studied. Often it produces no meaningful results, but sometimes it does, and we won't be able to figure out why unless these studies are permitted.

> A and C could procreate, and A and B could procreate, and D could procreate successfully with C but fail to procreate successfully with B. What are the species involved in this case?

That's still rigorous and biologically based. What you've pointed out is a rare exception, where that one methodology breaks. In which case you'd have to analyze the situation in more depth. Which scientists actually do (it's not society doing it), and based on the data (not social pressures), they decide what the species are. The example I gave is one of many factors used to determine species. It's not the only factor and used in isolation, is it? So in the above case, the next step would perhaps be to look at the actual genes involved.

> "Species" is just as much a social construct as race.

Then please provide examples of two organisms that have very little in common genetically but are considered the same species. And where society decided what the species is. Race is exactly that: groups of individuals that have almost nothing in common except for a few genes but society has decided to group them together anyway.

> Let's not pretend that scientists are immune from the prevailing political winds of the day.

Please give examples of species that were categorized due to politics or ideology and where it gets the underlying biology wrong.

> We can't possibly know whether race is a signficant factor until its studied.

It's not studied because it is a disproven and outdated model that is useless to biologists compared to the far better tools we have today. We can look directly at people's genes. Why would you group people using far less accuracy when you want to study heritibility of traits? That doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't you look at what genes people have and group them according to their genes? That's what will give meaningful results and that is why scientists choose to group based on biology rather than grouping based on what society decides. Grouping based on what society decides what race you are is close to useless for biology.

> So in the above case, the next step would perhaps be to look at the actual genes involved.

And the next step after finding a correlation with race is also to figure out why it holds.

> Then please provide examples of two organisms that have very little in common genetically but are considered the same species.

That's irrelevant. The point is you are assigning meaning to genetic similarity, just like people concerned with studying race are assigning meaning to racial classifications (wherever they come from). You are prioritizing one set of properties over another and simply declaring that these are more important, or "real", or "natural" when this simply isn't the case.

If species were truly a natural kind there would be no exceptions like the one I pointed out. If we're not studying a natural kind, then any distinctions we wish to make are arbitrary. Like I said, they may be more useful, or precise, but they're still arbitrary.

> Please give examples of species that were categorized due to politics or ideology and where it gets the underlying biology wrong.

So you're claiming, "an example of this specific political influence doesn't exist in the sciences, therefore political influence doesn't exist in the sciences". Is that your argument?

> Why would you group people using far less accuracy when you want to study heritibility of traits? That doesn't make any sense.

And yet, plenty of correlations have been found. Making sense of these is exactly why racial studies should be allowed. Finding surprising associations and figuring out why they exist is exactly what science is supposed to do.

> And the next step after finding a correlation with race

No one is studying genetics and heritibility of traits using race. It's an outdated model that is broken. We look directly at genes now.

> That's irrelevant.

It's not. You claimed species is a social construct. And then can't provide any categories constructed by society.

> you are assigning meaning to genetic similarity

The only meaning I'm assigning is that we have proven cause and effect with genes and traits. It's simply how things really work. We know that genes result in traits. We can point out the exact genes that make someone tall in a specific genetic population. <-- That's important.

Now let's reverse that to contrast it with a social construct. A social construct would be calling all tall people a grouping. The tall race. And that's scientifically wrong. Because we already know that the genes for being tall in one genetic population can be different from the genes for being tall in another genetic population. The tall people grouping was a good first attempt. But it's a broken model once you have better tools and can look at reality and true cause and effect. Now we can correctly group people: tall people with the X set of genes - common in Norway. And tall people with the Y set of genes - common in central China. Why would you go back to the broken model of saying all tall people should be grouped together as one race when you can see that the cause for tallness is unrelated between the groups? That wouldn't make any sense to insist on a grouping that does not reflect reality.

> If species were truly a natural kind there would be no exceptions.

There are exceptions to which methodologies can help us identify species. The methodology is still based in biology, even if there are exceptions. The methodology does not involve society deciding what is and is not a species. Just because a scientific methodology has exceptions to when it is useful does not prove that it is not rigorous or not based in biology.

> So you're claiming, "an example of this specific political influence doesn't exist in the sciences, therefore political influence doesn't exist in the sciences". Is that your argument?

No that's not my argument. My argument is that you can't show where politics and ideology have resulted in miscategorization of species. Because species, unlike race, is not a social construct and society has no or little influence over how scientists categorize species.

With race it's the opposite. You could come up with a massive list of where someone's race has been decided due to politics, ideology, and power dynamics, and where the underlying biology was never considered for even a second.

You cannot show the same for species. People who categorize species are very interested in the biology and will fix a wrong categorization given better information.

> And yet, plenty of correlations have been found.

So what? Correlation is not causation. That's a fundamental basis of science. We know what causes certain traits in humans. We can look directly at the genes. It's not that "racial studies should be allowed". What you seem to be missing is that we are actually studying genetic populations, genes, and what causes certain traits. We are just using a far better and more accurate model than race. The better model can prove causation. Race can't. Why would you use the broken model for science when you have a better one? Scientists don't use race not because they aren't allowed. They don't use race because it's a wildly inaccurate grouping that was decided by society. Society continues to use it because it is useful to society. Often in bad ways, but still useful.

> No one is studying genetics and heritibility of traits using race. It's an outdated model that is broken. We look directly at genes now.

Who's disputing this? Certainly that doesn't contradict any claim I've made.

> And then can't provide any categories constructed by society.

All of them are constructed by the society of scientists, who are also members of a larger society. That was the whole purpose of pointing out that classification of "species" is arbitrary.

Yes, biologists are interested in biological justifications for classifying species, but again no such classification process is complete because species does not form a natural kind. Frankly, all of your arguments on this amount to a red herring because I've never disputed any of what you're saying, besides the fact that classification of anything beyond the fundamental ontology defined by physics is arbitrary. The point of contrasting these two was never to say that race was equally arbitrary in biology, but that all such classifications beyond the fundamentals are arbitrary, period, and so the common argument of dismissing "race" as socially constructed and arbitrary is not an argument against its use. It would only be an argument against its use in some domains in which there are better metrics, all else being equal.

> The methodology does not involve society deciding what is and is not a species. Just because a scientific methodology has exceptions to when it is useful does not prove that it is not rigorous or not based in biology.

"Based in biology" is itself an arbitrary metric to which you're ascribing meaning. It's useful and more precise for biological purposes, but that's entirely besides the point, because 'biological purposes' is itself arbitrary. What distinguishes it from chemistry or physics? Don't you see that these are all merely useful but fairly arbitrary classifications of varying coarseness, each of which carries their own utility in a strictly limited domain?

Studying causal influence of genes is conceptually no different than asking people to classify their own race and measuring their responses to various life experiences of racism, or even correlating race and IQ. These are all metrics of varying precision, predictive power and cost. I'm concerned with the scientific process as a whole, not biology specifically, so I believe you misinterpreted the point I was making.

> So what? Correlation is not causation.

Sure, and I never claimed otherwise. Race is a far less precise and less useful classification than genetic populations for biological purposes. These aren't our only purposes in the pursuit of truth.

My purpose in pointing out the arbitrariness of species as a class is that we should not be trying to stymie scientific exploration for political motives. Contra your claim, some scientists do have an interest in studying race (though certainly biologists have less interest), and the reasons could very well be have scientific merit, but that's irrelevant in today's political climate. Research whose data counters the prevailing narratives of the day are harshly criticized, and its scientists sometimes even punished.

Why even say this? Everyone with an IQ over 65 knows that this is obviously true.

Does anyone really think that when people say things like men are stronger than women, they believe that literally every single man is stronger than every single woman?

I don't think most people literally believe every man is stronger than every woman.

I think it's much more common that someone will say "of course there are some women who are stronger than most men" then go back to tending to, for example, hire men over women for a job requiring the ability to lift 60 lbs, without bothering to strength-test female applicants.

Exactly, this phenomenon is also known as unconscious bias.

But if you really reflect on that statement, it becomes apparent that the level of irony in what you just said is off the charts.

Apparently the irony is over my head. Could you explain?

Do you have any data to back up your claim that one side is claiming it's 100% nurture? Or is it anecdotal?

If we are going with anecdotal data, then here's mine: I've almost never heard anyone say it's 100% nurture.

I have heard people claim something close to 100% nature though. Just as one example, the pretty common "boys will be boys" excuse. As in they just can't help themselves because it's in their nature, right?

Oh man, yes, there are lots of people claiming it's all 100% nurture. There even was a media shitstorm in France around the "patriarchy of steak" in 2017. Basically, an anthropologist claimed in her PhD thesis that women are smaller and weaker than men because of millennia of patriarchal oppression. She received support from many famous social scientists, and a long documentary on Arte (the French-German TV channel), countless newspaper articles, etc.

See (in French, sorry): http://www.slate.fr/story/155300/patriarcat-steak-existe-pas

This ideology is absolutely dominant nowadays in social "science" around the world.

How much is lots? You gave one isolated example. That's anecdote. We are back to my original questions: do you have any data to back up your claim that one side is claiming it's 100% nurture? Or is it anecdotal?

> countless newspapers

You can count newspapers. How many was it? How many of them are from "one side"? How wide is their readership? That's data. You are still in the world of anecdote.

The article I posted is a comment on the media ruffle on this subject, with links to articles from various media. It was mentioned in national dailies (Liberation, Le Monde, etc), information websites (Slate.fr, HuffPost.fr, etc), weekly papers (l'Obs, etc), science magazines (Science & Vie, etc), and national television (with a full, prime-time 1 hour documentary on Arte, plus TV news). You hardly get more coverage than that.

That's still anecdote. You haven't even established which "side" is promoting this 100% nurture story. The vast majority of the progressives / socially liberal people I personally know think that both nature and nurture are factors. So it must be the conservatives who believe that nurture is 100% and are promoting this idea? We both know that's not the case. So is there really a "side" promoting a 100% nurture theory? Or just a few people pushing an extreme theory that is then sensationalized by the media?

That's why you need data and numbers to prove your point instead of one anecdotal data point. One example is close to useless, and a widespread news story is not evidence of what people believe.

> an anthropologist claimed in her PhD thesis that women are smaller and weaker than men because of millennia of patriarchal oppression.

That would be a claim of gene-culture coevolution. Not really "100% nurture" in the generally-understood sense.

I never got that from that statement at all. Just acknowledgement that they're acting according to expectation. It makes no inference that the expectation is there because you can't change it, merely that you haven't.

The nature argument doesn't say you can't change it. Just that the source of your inclination is built in genetically and from birth rather than being a result of nurture. Are boys more aggressive due to nature? Considering that we know what testosterone does to behavior and the stereotype exists across most cultures and all of history, I don't think "boys will be boys" means they were nurtured to be that way, at least not to most people.

It's not the claim that natural differences exist, it's the claim they're relevant that'll get a person laughed out of the discussion.

Irrelevant to the individual, but relevant when talking about groups.

For example, upon observing that more women than men tend to take up nursing. Do we conclude that there is a gender bias in healthcare recruitment and a distorted soceital expetation of gender roles, or can it be explained as a consequence of the aggregate personality bias between the sexes resulting in more women choosing that career. The personality science comes in to play when trying to answer that question.

Usually, the correct answer is "insufficient data." The systems are circular and self-reinforcing; what does maternity leave look like in the nursing profession, for example?

All good points. I wasn't actually trying to start a debate about the nursing profession, of course. Just an example of where average personality differences may partially explain observed outcomes.

So they're all irrelevant? That's effectively the same as saying they don't exist in the context of this discussion about their effects.

Why do you think nature is completely irrelevant?

The underlying political philosophy of the US includes the axiom that people are created equal (misunderstanding from original usage of words notwithstanding). If there are differences, they aren't enough to look at a male job candidate and a female job candidate and say "we should definitely hire the man, because his natural advantages will" etc.

The topic is nature vs nature, and how 1 side claims that it's all nurture. You said that nature still exists but is irrelevant, which is effectively the same thing.

What does this have to do with hiring? When did anyone claim choosing one sex over another based on natural sex-based group differences? Of course hiring should be fair and equal opportunity, there's no disagreement there. However if you accept that then you must also agree that both sexes are interchangeable for most jobs and so there's no such thing as a sex imbalance either since anyone can do the job.

If by "sex imbalance" you mean the ratio differential currently exhibited in the workplace, the last piece of the reasoning doesn't follow from the first.

"Both sexes are interchangeable for most jobs" doesn't imply "there's no such thing as a sex imbalance" if people have historically believed both sexes aren't interchangeable for most jobs and workforce gender distribution reflects that history.

It is kind of disturbing to think that your personality and many other traits make you different from other people, and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's quite disturbing to me.

Sure, its kind of disturbing, but that's just life.

There's a lot of things that you can't do anything about. I didn't grow up to a rich family and that prevented me from doing a lot of things rich people got to do, for example.

I agree that it can be disturbing that traits that you have no control over make you different from others, but its normal and just part of life. Certainly nothing to lose sleep over.

I cope by having an unfounded sense of superiority.

Hopefully we are able to use our willpower to bring about personality change over the course of our life.

Your genes are at work 24/7/365. How much willpower do you have?

I have a lot. Whats your point? Are you saying there's no willpower at all or what?

There are people with unusual levels of willpower. I am one of them and I know others. It is what it is.

Implying our willpower is separate from your genes. Maybe the will to change yourself is encoded in your DNA.

True. But DNA is also to some degree shaped by the choices we make in life, no?

That’s a question for people who know about epigenetics. But it seems so. Not necessarily our choices alone, but the environment as a whole.

You are responsible for the choices you make.

You can learn new information, and you can adjust your behavior or habits based on that.

The new things you learn wouldn't have been inside your DNA/genes.

I don’t wholly agree with the first point. I’m not much of a free will guy.

Regarding learning new information, surely the type of info you’re susceptible to, and how to act upon these, isn’t all of your choosing.

I believe it is possible for some people to change some aspects of their personality, and I have managed to do so. It’s hard to assess something like that objectively, but I’ve hit positive feedback from family members that I have changed over time. I used to get very frustrated and obstructive or confrontational about things, but with effort and self reflection Ive mostly tamed those tendencies.

I also remember as a child noticing how adults behaved, and particularly how they treated children, or even other adults, and made a conscious effort to develop the positive behaviours I admired and avoid ones I saw as negative. This has been particularly important in bringing up my own children.

Of course the capacity to change may well be something that varies from person to person, I’m sure it does, but I also believe we all have every human capacity to some extent.

I find that notion somewhere between comforting and irrelevant.

The difficulty lies in not succumbing to fatalistic complacency.

Accepting that one simply is of a heavy physique and not needlessly starving oneself sounds healthy to me. There are plenty of activities for which a heavy frame is desirable. On the other hand, giving up in the face of ones perceived insurmountable genetic makeup serves nothing.

Yes ideally you would be some kind of indistinguishable Borg creature.