Yes, the whole discussion is predicated on if Bell Curve were accurate.
I'd gone back to race, not gender. I think I've seen studies which say African-Americans are as much as a sigma below general population of the US, and certain Jewish or Asian populations are a sigma above, which is 2 sigma net, which is HUGE. I don't know if I buy these studies, but to the extent that IQ measures scholastic aptitude and culture vs. innate genetic intelligence, it's possible.
Engineers at large companies are maybe 1SD above the mean; founders or "10x engineers" at startups are 2SD+.
So, a 2 sigma difference at the 1 and 2 sigma above mean levels would be huge, which is observed in the population of startup founders and famous startup engineers. But there are plenty of other explanations which would account for exactly the same observation even if there were zero difference on population "aptitude" -- it's just one plausible explanation.
(There's also the argument that Asian immigrants to the US are potentially the top of a 3 billion person set, and the total number of African-Americans is something like 30mm. But the Ashkenazi Jewish population and African-American populations are on the same order of magnitude in the US.)
The race issue... well it's just not my little pet issue, LOL. My point is that I see these arguments being brought up in the context of women in engineering, not just minorities, and the underlying math doesn't support the conclusions even if we use the studies that are more favorable to the point. The numbers I've seen Richard Flynn throw around are a 1:5.5 ratio of women to men at 155+ (almost 4SD). While 1:5.5 is just a little under the representation of women in engineering, the 155+ figure is far beyond what you'd find for a practicing engineer. It might characterize the set of engineering professors at top schools.
I'd gone back to race, not gender. I think I've seen studies which say African-Americans are as much as a sigma below general population of the US, and certain Jewish or Asian populations are a sigma above, which is 2 sigma net, which is HUGE. I don't know if I buy these studies, but to the extent that IQ measures scholastic aptitude and culture vs. innate genetic intelligence, it's possible.
Engineers at large companies are maybe 1SD above the mean; founders or "10x engineers" at startups are 2SD+.
So, a 2 sigma difference at the 1 and 2 sigma above mean levels would be huge, which is observed in the population of startup founders and famous startup engineers. But there are plenty of other explanations which would account for exactly the same observation even if there were zero difference on population "aptitude" -- it's just one plausible explanation.
(There's also the argument that Asian immigrants to the US are potentially the top of a 3 billion person set, and the total number of African-Americans is something like 30mm. But the Ashkenazi Jewish population and African-American populations are on the same order of magnitude in the US.)