Nicholas Wade

Do you just suppress the scientific knowledge you're gaining?

Surely what you should try and do is let everyone know what the science says so that people can then make informed views as to what implications they should draw from it.

I mean, just because we have races that sort of differ in various aspects, that gives you no basis of saying one race is superior to another.

Well, it's true.

And Tibetans are adapted to living at high altitudes.

So you can say Tibetans are genetically better than lowlanders at living at high altitudes.

But it's a pretty useless observation.

The thing is, you can't prevent people going around making claims like this.

But should that mean you don't discuss these things at all?

I think you can get into difficulties if you don't discuss racial differences that may be relevant in some aspects of social policy.

Well, I don't want to get too far into this because I'm really not an expert in the politics of race and have no real interest in it.

But I assume, for example, if you look at education, it's very important to give everyone the best educational experience you can so that everyone has a sort of fair chance of living a digital life.

Now, if some people are less educable than others...

you surely need to recognize that and give them a different and appropriate treatment to the ones who are more easily educable.

Now, this lack of educability can come from a lot of causes, many of them environmental.

You have parents who don't make the kids do the homework, who neglect the kids, who kids live in poverty, and so on and so forth.

And that can be a genetic element.

It doesn't really matter.

You've still got

two groups, say, that require different treatment if you are going to make the best use of your educational facilities.