I've always felt, based on my internal experience, that the things I believe I have little to no control over. I'm just persuaded by the evidence or argument, or I'm too emotional/blind that I just don't see why I'm wrong. I can imagine motivated reasoning blinding me, but I truly can't really imagine what it would be like to actually consciously think something is mostly false, and then make an effort to try to get myself to believe it. It just seems like it wouldn't work. Maybe you are using the word "think" differently than I am?
Same here, but I do strongly suspect that's not how most people think. Most beliefs seem to be adopted based in large part on how they will affect the mental state of the believer. In a sense, I can even consider it psychologically rational to believe something that is not rational. Studies conducted on the mental health of religious people usually find them to be considerably healthier than atheists, to give one example. Our brains aren't really "designed" for exclusively rational thought - myths, stories, art, music, spiritual experiences, etc. have been more dominant in human cognition for most our existence than they are now.
Here we have an awful and destabilizing belief that, from what I have seen, has a significant chance of being true. I
really hope it's not, and I do think there is some chance that it will turn out not to be. But I've been combing the literature and haven't found anything that would allow me to dismiss it on rational grounds.
A person with better mental hygiene would just have continued to dismiss this out of hand as a discredited early-mid 20th century white supremacist belief with a 21st century veneer*, without actually looking at the data. To a great extent it really is that belief, of course - certainly people who go around loudly promoting it aren't acting benevolently. Yet, when I wallowed in the psych mud, I found it to be entirely plausible despite my hopes to the contrary.
I don't think there are many major implications in terms of our actions, really. Trying to avoid interpersonal racism and to minimize structural racism are still important. There are a few things I'd say to keep in mind, though.
1. Racial gaps we see will hopefully narrow but may never close entirely, for reasons that are not only due to structural racism or even the dysfunctional cultures of any race (including whites). This
does not mean that efforts to close these gaps are pointless - if anything, it means we need to keep innovating to
2. Data on genetic differences are rapidly coming out. While it will take a while for data on specific genes to become convincing, we might reach a tipping point within ~10 years where the scientific consensus will shift to favor intelligence differences among racial groups.
3. Assuming the data keep appearing the way they do so far, the notion that different racial groups differ from each other in intelligence will become more popular in the coming years. Many people who come to this view then go full-bore into it and become full-fledged scientific racists. We really should be thinking about how to counter that.
*Part of the veneer would be putting East Asians above whites, so that it isn't
white supremacism per se.
edit: split my post in two