Comment by Cutielitarian on A general comment on discussions of genetic group differences · 2023-01-15T01:54:40.264Z · LW · GW

I suspect that most grievances about genetic IQ differences are motivated by status. 

Almost everyone perceives intelligence to be a marker of status, so spreading the belief "Group X have lower average IQ" has the consequence of lowering group X's members' status in the eyes of most people. And intentionally publicly lowering someone's status using words is more-or-less the definition of an insult.  The only difference in this case is that the status lowering isn't intentional; unfortunately, intentions are very hard to signal convincingly.

It therefore seems to me that, if you want to make discussions about race and IQ more palatable to the public and less emotionally draining, you would need to make a strong or costly signal that you're not trying to lower anyone's status. To my mind, the only way to do this is to have high status in the minority group hurt by IQ claims and this is really hard to achieve. Simply saying one doesn't think intelligence impies moral value won't dissuade most sceptics.