Race realism: Refuting stupid arguments

 

Whether it's called race realism, hereditarianism, or human biodiversity, the concept goes by many names. It essentially describes the same concept. Race realists basically challenge the scientific consensus that race is a social construct and believe that races are distinct biological groups. This is nonsense; even the most religious race realists will admit when pressed hard enough that race is a social construct. Mind you, humans can be classified into distinct racial groups. However, how humans are classified and how many different races there are are entirely up to the person doing the classifying. Even race realists can't decide how many races there are. Some believe in the rule of three: the classic Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. Some adhere to the Five races grouping, which divides Amerindians and Aboriginals into distinct groups as well. Race realists will often use K-clustering analysis to "prove" the existence of race. But this alone proves race is a social construct. K could equal 3, 5, 7, or 10 either way, congratulations You've just admitted it's a social construct, and you are assigning K-values based on how you feel. Race being a social construct doesn't mean that racial classifications are arbitrary.

The truth is, scientists avoid these distinctions for the exact reasons I just mentioned. They are inconsistent and often not precise. Scientists prefer very precise terms and definitions. For example, how would you define one second? I'd probably define it as the amount of time it takes to breathe. But that's very imprecise. Here's how scientists define one second:

One second is the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 (or 9,192,631770 x 10⁹ in decimal form) cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium-133 atom.

 Extremely precise. So it's obvious why scientists would prefer not to use terms like "Caucasoid," which could include everyone from Iceland to Somalia, when someone's nationality or ethnicity would provide far more precise information about their genetics than just calling them "Caucasoid" or "Negroid." The race realist argument can be essentially summarized as follows:

The differences we observe between racial groups are mainly due to genetic or inherent differences.

So to the race realist, if one group is poorer on average than others, there is no point trying to fix it because this is inherent to the group. This worldview is not only pseudoscientific but also dangerous. The motivations are often malicious, and the motivated reasoning behind it often translates itself into terrible scientific methodologies. This is why race realists disproportionately advocate for things like cutting welfare, eugenics, segregation, etc. Part of the motivation is also to ease some racial guilt some of these people may have. The race realist worldview eases the tension some people may have with past wrongdoings or historical injustices. The race realist would say to himself, "We may have disenfranchised these people for centuries, but it doesn't matter because they would have failed anyway." "We aren't in any way at fault for what has happened to them." The truth is that no one is personally responsible for any historical atrocities committed by their group. However, racialists get very emotional and feel personally slighted when historical discrimination is used to explain the disparities we see today. They take any of these explanations as a way of "blaming Whitey" when they are anything but. Things like redlining or Jim Crow aren't the fault of whites today or even all whites back then, but the system that created those laws created disparities that have lasted till today.

 

That's besides the point. The main point of this post is to go over the worst race realist talking points or "arguments" I have encountered. I have literally debated 100s of race realists on Twitter, Reddit, 4chan etc. so trust me I've seen these or different versions of these dozens of times. With these points addressed you should be get a foot in understanding basic race realism and its flaws.

 

1. "Evolution didn't stop at the neck" 

The first on our list is this point. It goes something like "evolution didn't stop at the neck" or "you don't believe in evolution!1!!1". The summary argument is to basically say that "different races have evolved to have different skin colour, evolved to have different nose shapes but you're telling me that they didn't evolve different intelligence?" This is a terrible argument. One can easily explain why different races have different skin tones or hair textures. These are adaptations to their environment. Blacks have darker skin as adaption to the hot sun in Africa, Whites evolved to have pointier noses in order  to adapt to the cold, dry climate so that the cold air could be warmed up and moistened through the nasal passage before it reaches the lungs. These phenotypic traits differ very much from intelligence which is not only difficult to define but one would need to explain what evolutionary pressures would lead to these differences in intelligence. Why exactly would some groups evolve to be smarter than others?

Hereditarians attempt to explain what selection pressures lead to higher/lower IQ using theories like the "cold-winter" theory, a theory which hypothesizes that people in colder areas evolved higher intelligence in order to deal with a harsher environment and the "r/k selection theory" which states that different races had different strategies when mating and taking care of offspring, with others deciding to have less offspring to dedicate more time to their children while others chose quanitity over "quality" offspring. The races with the k selection strategy (more investment in offspring) evolved higher intelligence than the r-selected races.  These theories are incoherent, ahistorical and adhoc. I will address in a later post in greater detail but for now I'll leave you these links to explain why the 2 theories are wrong here and here if you're interested. So equating IQ with these phenotypic traits which were clearly under selection is fallacious. 

2. "Races differ in bone density, height, Brain size but somehow...

The full version of this is something along the lines of "Races differ in bone density, height, and brain size, but somehow you are saying they would have the same average IQs, okay?" Firstly, this is literally a logical fallacy similar to the one used above, reductio ad absurdum:

a method of proving the falsity of a premise by showing that its logical consequence is absurd or contradictory.

 

Secondly, it's not contradictory or absurd. Men and women differ in basically all physical categories more than do any of the major races, yet they have the same average IQs. This is because physical or phenotypic traits aren't like intelligence or IQ. Physical differences don't necessarily translate to intellectual ones.

3. Brain size differences between racial groups

figure 1

Different races differ in brain size. This data has been replicated in different studies, and the difference seems to be persistent at all ages, as this table shows. Not only that, but it seems to mirror the IQ hierarchy by race.  There is also a consistent r = 0.2 correlation between cranial capacity and IQ. (Rushton, J. P., and C. D. Ankney, (2009) Whole brain size and general mental ability: A review.) Well, I guess that's it. We've got to tip our hats off to these hereditarians. They've really got us here. Since cranial capacity and IQ have a positive correlation, the group with the biggest skulls must be the smartest, and the group with the smallest skulls must be the dumbest!

This is illogical because most of these studies on cranial capacity and IQ find this correlation within groups like families or countries, for example. Mapping this within-group correlation onto different groups to explain between-group differences in IQ leads to very fallacious conclusions. For example, if the relationship between brain size and IQ was causal, one would expect to find major differences in IQ between men and women. Yet men and women have the same average IQs. I will illustrate this with another fantastic example.

 There is also a consistent correlation between IQ and height  and the races differ significantly in height as the table below shows.

                                                                        figure 2

However, it doesn't mirror the IQ hierarchy. Asians have the highest IQs despite being significantly shorter than both Blacks and Whites.This shows the problems with mapping within-group correlations to different groups. Hereditarians do something similar with heritability, but again, that is a post for another day.

 Because of different adaptations to different environments, different races or ethnicities appear to have larger brains. People in colder, more polar regions have bigger eyes and larger brains to help them process information at the low level of light typical in those areas. The brains are bigger to devote a larger portion of the brain to vision, which is needed in these areas. "Caucasoids", like Indians, are from hotter regions than other members of their race have the smallest brain size of all ethnicities. So we have established how ridiculous it is to use this correlation to explain racial IQ gaps. But even if we granted the hereditarians the causal relationship they want so badly between IQ and brain size. It still wouldn't explain the IQ gap. It would only explain between 5-9% of the the IQ gap between Africans and Europeans. In America it explains even less of the gap between African-Americans and white-Americans. This is because brain size is also affected significantly by environmental factors such as nutrition and pre and post-natal care, which varies vastly from Africa to Europe. So if we use the figures from figure 1 and a standard deviation of 130cm³ for Cranial capacity in humans as per Wichert's meta-analysis, and a correlation of cranial capacity with IQ of r=0.3, it would explain little over half of an IQ point of the 15 point gap between Blacks and Whites at the time. (16 ÷ 130 × 0.3 × 15 = 0.55 IQ points or 3.7% of the gap). This is a stupid point which many amateur hereditarians desperately clutch to but is again in reality meaningless.

4. Dog Breeds

 I'll keep this short but this comic encapsulates this argument perfectly. It's again the same race realist tactic by trying to make your argument look absurd or ridiculous using idiotic analogies. It's important to first of all note 2 big reasons why this is a bad analogy

a)The greater variation between different dog breeds is about 5 times greater than that between human populations

b.) Dog breeds are a result of artificial selection or selective breeding not natural selection like in humans. In essence different dog breeds are so different due to planned breeding so they are in no way comparable to human races. Furthermore if one believes that natural selection lead to the cognitive differences within races there is no evidence to support this.

This study does a better job than I ever could of explaining why this is a terrible comparison and goes into far greater detail

5. Occam's Razor

This is less of an argument and more of an admission of defeat. It's always used when the person has run out of arguments or in combination with the first and second arguments I listed, for example. Occam's razor, or the law of parsimony, is a scientific or philosophical tool that states that the simplest explanation or the one that carries the fewest assumptions is most likely correct. The first time I heard this in a debate on this topic, I was honestly taken aback. Not only was it illogical, but it was hypocritical. In my experience, race realists tend to be overrepresented in psychotic or conspiratorial beliefs like election denial, COVID denial, Holocaust denial, etc. When a Holocaust denier hits you with Occam's razor, all you can do is laugh. The first person that ever hit me with this was a literal holocaust denier, and when I pointed out to him that using Occam's razor, holocaust denial would fall apart, he blocked me. Occam's razor is most suitable for situations like those in Figure 3 and not in Figure 4.

figure 3

figure 4

 

The misapplication of Occam's razor can lead to absurd conclusions such as discounting scientific evidence for simpler solutions. When you have no arguments just screaming "Occams razor" is illogical. 

 I would even admit that some of these arguments sound plausible or even inviting to a layman. Many of these appeal to intuition and play off already existing biases. But when you have a decent knowledge of the subject matter you realise how silly these all are.

So these are in my opinion the 5 worst race realist arguments. There are many more in my opinion but these 5 have stood out in particular for me due to how outrageous, fallacious or just downright nonsensical they were or their conclusions. Until next time!