To be clear, I fiercely oppose racism in all forms, but the battle should be up against the idea that there's some inherent value in IQ scores, not against the idea that genes play a role in the scores.
How well do they listen to me? Are they willing to give me time, or do they treat their patients as an assembly line? Do they continue to read up on new research, or are they relying on their 30-year-old med school degree? Are they someone that I'd be comfortable talking to about very personal matters?
None of these questions have anything to do with IQ, and I frankly have a hard time thinking of an IQ-related question that would matter to me in selecting a doctor.
>None of these questions have anything to do with IQ
They do, big time. Knowing their IQ allows to make a very good guess on who reads more, who would listen and, in general, do their job better.
You are allowed to choose based on this information only.
(I am what many people would call an "alt righter" and I would choose the doctor with IQ 150). I'm curious how other demographics would answer (white liberals, etc.)
So... it's fundamentally physiological. We just don't know the details of how the physiology gives rise to conscious thought.
> that component is the deciding factor in race-level differences in measures of IQ
I never said that it's the deciding factor and most people don't. What irks me is when people discount it as being a factor at all. Everything in biology is a complex interaction of genetics and environment, and IQ is no different.
> IQ isn't a physiological characteristic. It's a measure of intelligence
See, this is exactly my point—your line of argument does more to support racist claims than it does to dethrone them. You're arguing a position that cannot be seriously defended while giving credence to a claim that is fundamentally flawed. The idea that there is some discrete quantity called "intelligence" that can be measured by a test and that causes some people to be more successful than others is a far more vulnerable position to attack than the idea that our consciousness is influenced by our physiology, and I'm not sure why you picked that windmill to tilt at.
IQ is a predictor of academic achievement, job performance, income, health, and inversely correlates with criminal behavior. But if only we could find some value in it!
Correlated, within populations. Race, intelligence, and genetics are emotionally-charged topics because the historical and socially-prevalent assumption of white superiority threatens to be upended by the prospect of there simply being no real notional space where all three exist as rational neighbors.