# Interesting podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 23, 2017, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052 "2017-04-23T09:21:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/321 "2017-04-26T18:01:35Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > If you genuinely believe that the results would be negligible when other factors are in play, then you are saying you don’t have the experimental data to back up your idea. And thus you have no way to determine which group, if any, has better intelligence genes. > > The one thing we can be quite sure of is that it’s not divided along racial lines, for the simple reason that races are not a genetic construct. > > When you bring up these ideas in the context of “scientific racism,” yeah, people are gonna assume you promote racist conclusions. Because that’s how this sort of stuff is actually used. > > If you’re saying “intelligence is at least partly genetically determined, but we don’t know how this effects different subpopulations” then you’re not really saying anything to disagree with. That is the mainstream. > > The problem is when you try to use “evidence” when you admit the results are negligible. Negligible means that any differences are so small that they don’t actually affect anything. And, if nothing is affected, you can’t have evidence. Negligible may be too strict for what I mean, but even very small variations can express themselves when you distill things enough, for example at the bleeding edge of achievements related to a certain trait the differences would become more obvious, elite intellectual positions, peak athletes, the sort of places were literally one in a million can aspire to be in, the exceptional among the exceptional. In those cases very small variations among populations would lead to an apparent under or over representation of different groups. For example, according to Steven Pinker the average IQ of men and women is about the same, but among men the ends of the curve are over represented, which as he puts it it means more geniuses but also more dumbasses; however the way this would manifest itself would be that, rather than seeing a 50-50 ratio of men and women throughout fields were smarts are the ticket the ratio would begin to skew in favour of men at some point near the top of the scale (having been against before). Of course some people would pay more attention at that top of the chain and call bloody murder, but what about all the dumbasses balancing the equation at the bottom? Is it better, as a group, to have an even distribution of intelligence or to have extreme outliers? The bottom line is that since we are not all clones there will never be a perfect equality of outcome in life, in this situation I believe the best and fairest course of action is to strive for equality of opportunities, let people be the best they can be. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/322 "2017-04-26T18:02:51Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > It’s beyond dispute that there is a strong element of heredity in intelligence, this can only be mediated through genes, if you want to call this a hypothesis, as I said, you will need to come up with a new theory of on how traits are passed down that doesn’t involve genes. Uh, it has actually been disputed. As it is the implication that some “races” do not have much of those genes. As noted, there is likely to be a very significant part that is heritable, but not as much as Murray and others want it. > **[Cavalli-Sforza on “The Bell Curve”](https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/cavalli-sforza-on-%E2%80%9Cthe-bell-curve%E2%80%9D/)** > > Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a Stanford geneticist, said in 1995 that “The Bell Curve” (1994) by Charles Murray and Harvard psychologist Richard J Herrnstein is wrong on the science. Murray and Herrn… > [@](#): > > Murray and Herrnstein said that IQ is about 60% genetic. That was the best value as of 1976. Since then several important papers, particularly Rice, Cloninger and Reich (1980), have come out showing that the true number is about 33%. > > Cavalli-Sforza says that the best known way to to tell how much genes affect something like IQ is to do adoption studies and then run the numbers through path analysis. At first that did give a number close to 60%, but since 1980 it has been repeatedly turning out numbers close to 33%. > > Cavalli-Sforza: > > > [@](#): > > > > It is somewhat disconcerting that all these papers are totally ignored in “The Bell Curve”…. Researchers who might be called “IQ hereditarians” are in general reporting high heritabilities for IQ without any information on how these calculations have been obtained, or why the other papers here cited have been ignored. It is unlikely that they were not seen or read; they are published in well-known scientific journals. > > **But even if we assume that IQ is 60% genetic between parent and child, that still does not mean the difference between blacks and whites is mainly genetic.** And that bolded by me part kids is just another way to say that “That doesn’t mean that we know for a fact that some groups have superior genes for intelligence.” as **iiandyiiii** said. Has to be repeated because it is becoming clear that pseudo scientists have shown a likely inherited deficiency when trying to understand science. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/323 "2017-04-26T18:12:39Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Sam is the most impressive polymath of the modern world. This struck me as a bizarre claim. I searched “modern polymaths” and found lists of people with ridiculous resumes, usually with multiple degrees in a wide range of fields, people who have discovered or invented many things and won many awards. Harris wasn’t on any of the lists I saw. Here’s a random example: [Erez Lieberman Aiden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erez_Lieberman_Aiden) > [@](#): > > Aiden studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy at Princeton, and earned a master’s degree in History at Yeshiva University. He proceeded to complete a joint PhD in mathematics and bioengineering at the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where he was advised by Eric Lander and Martin Nowak. > [@](#): > > Lieberman Aiden contributed to the founding of evolutionary graph theory along with his PhD supervisor Martin Nowak. He has since been involved in researching the three dimensional structure of the human genome and the field of culturomics. From what I’ve seen over the years, the philosophy community doesn’t particularly care for Harris or his arguments regarding free will and morality. He doesn’t have much of a publication record when it comes to neuroscience research. He mostly writes books for a general audience and gives talks. I might be missing something, though. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/324 "2017-04-26T18:19:40Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > No. You’re still not understanding my logic, apparently. You’re saying “Group X has superior genes for intelligence to group Y, on average”, without knowing what those genes are, much less how prevalent they are in groups X and Y. How could you possibly know this? How could you know that test score differences are caused by genes rather than culture, society, education, racism, or a million other factors, if you don’t actually know what the genes are? A very few of these might be able to be corrected for, experimentally, to some degree, but the vast majority have not been so far, and even the corrections tried so far aren’t perfect. > > I’m not calling this part a hypothesis. This doesn’t dispute anything I’ve said. > > This also doesn’t dispute anything I’ve said, though we don’t know for a fact that _every single human characteristic_ necessarily varies genetically between all population groups. If there are genes for sense of humor, we don’t know for a fact if one group has “better” funny genes than another. If there are genes for thumb flexibility, we don’t know for a fact if one group has better thumb flexibility genes than another. And so on. There are a nigh-infinite number of human characteristics, and we only know the genes and variations for a very small number of them, and intelligence ain’t one of these. > > I’ve never claimed that “there is no intelligence variations among populations”. > > None of this has any relevance to anything I’ve said. It doesn’t dispute anything I’ve said. > > You’ve presented no evidence that any particular group has superior genes for intelligence to any other. Black people might very well have the best brain genes and we wouldn’t know it, if racism is significant enough. Or maybe the Inuit. Or the San bushmen. Or Tibetans. Or all the descendants of my grandfather. Or a million other groupings. Or maybe, since intelligence is so critical to human survival and reproduction, and no human groups are truly isolated, the best brain genes have distributed themselves among every group, or almost every group, or most groups, etc. Certainly Africans, Asians, and Europeans have been exchanging genes for thousands of years and more. I’m not discounting any of these possibilities, or others, since _we don’t know the genes._ > > Maybe some groups have superior genetics for various traits, including intelligence. I’ve never denied this possibility. But until we know all the genes for those traits, and how prevalent they are in different populations, we won’t be able to conclude this about any particular groups. And it still boggles my mind why so many people want to pretend science can state with confidence that any particular identified group has superior genes for intelligence than any other when we don’t know what those genes are. Then, if you, me, and everyone else can’t tell with certainty that every group has exactly the same baseline IQ then on what basis would policies that assume this to be true would be the correct and fair ones? Why assume that people of African, American, Asian, European, etc… origin must achieve the same academic scores or else racism is to blame? ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/325 "2017-04-26T18:22:39Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > :rolleyes: > > I’ll tell you what, you come up with an explanation of how traits are passed on from parents to children without the intervention of genes and I’ll buy you the plane ticket to Stockholm when you go there to pick your Nobel Prize. Are you telling me that the fact that most children of English speaking parents speak English is because language is genetic? > [@Ale](#): > > You are not thinking things through. > > According to your logic hereditary conditions for which a gene or genes causing them have not yet been found are not real. > According to your logic Darwin was wrong until the exact mechanism through which traits were inherited was discovered. > And so on and so forth. > > It’s beyond dispute that there is a strong element of heredity in intelligence, this can only be mediated through genes, if you want to call this a hypothesis, as I said, you will need to come up with a new theory of on how traits are passed down that doesn’t involve genes. > > We know for a fact that there are marked variations in traits among population groups across the world and this too is determined by genes. > > Then, for you to be right and me to be wrong you need to describe the mechanism through which different populations somehow manage to maintain an exact parity between IQ levels. > I don’t believe such mechanism exists, what magic would had been at play play to keep Andeans, Australian Aboriginals and Ainus at the exact same level? > There is going to be variation, that’s how genetics work; just declaring that there is no intelligence variations among populations is dogma, the exact opposite of science. > > This is why I mentioned that people that oppose this notion are taking a page from the anti-evolution camp, I see the argument of _well, yes, intelligence has a hereditary component but surely this can’t lead to a statistically significant difference between populations!_ as being equivalent to the Creationist dodge of conceding “micro” evolution but rejecting it can lead to “macro” evolution. > > You can’t have your cake and eat it too, either you reject the notion that intelligence has a significant hereditary component or you recognize that by that mechanism distinct populations will have different baseline IQ levels. > You may argue how much difference there may be and what, if anything should be done about it, but that’s a different matter. Cool, but utterly useless. By that claim, people with different blood types have different intelligence. People with earlobes have different intelligence than those without earlobes. People who can roll their tongues have different intelligence than those who can’t And as everyone knows people who hate the taste of cilantro are smarter than those who like the taste of cilantro, as exhibited by the differing GDP between North and South America. And yet with all of the myriad ways to divide people genetically it happens to be skin color that is the one defining correlation that is the important one. A trait which just so happens coincidentally to line up with historical racist notions. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/326 "2017-04-26T18:24:30Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Then, if you, me, and everyone else can’t tell with certainty that every group has exactly the same baseline IQ then on what basis would policies that assume this to be true would be the correct and fair ones? > Why assume that people of African, American, Asian, European, etc… origin must achieve the same academic scores or else racism is to blame? It’s very clear to me and many others, and I think the data overwhelmingly supports this, that black people in the US face very significant obstacles in every level of achievement as compared to most other groups. I don’t know about assuming that test scores must be equal, but I think policies should keep the data in mind that strongly suggests that racism is still a real force in our society, and opportunity really isn’t yet equal. Are you conceding that it’s not reasonable to claim, without actual genetic data, that white (or European) people have superior genes for intelligence, on average, as compared to black (or sub-Saharan African) people? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/327 "2017-04-26T18:32:28Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Then, if you, me, and everyone else can’t tell with certainty that every group has exactly the same baseline IQ then on what basis would policies that assume this to be true would be the correct and fair ones? > Why assume that people of African, American, Asian, European, etc… origin must achieve the same academic scores or else racism is to blame? In the case of African v. European, we have an actual scientific study showing no measurable relationship between percentage of African heritage and average IQ. That would suggest that something other than population genetics is responsible for differences in average measured IQ. We also have scientific studies showing that discrimination results in decreases in average IQ. QED. Why are you even involved in this discussion if you don’t know these thing? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/328 "2017-04-26T18:51:29Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > The most impressive polymath of the modern world can say that the moon landings were filmed in the Arizona desert, that the World Trade Center was brought down by preplanted explosive charges, that vaccines cause autism, etc etc ad nauseam, without making any of these assertions any more true. > > (Oh, and you don’t get to counter “Sam Harris never said any of that stuff” without having listened to each and every word he’s ever uttered. You set that standard in the OP, you’re going to be held to it yourself.) Riiight. It’s the same “standard” to listen to one two hour (or less) podcast, as to listen/read every word ever publicly produced by a guy in his fifties. :rolleyes: (And that’s assuming you didn’t also mean words he has uttered in private.) > [@Steve\_MB](#): > > This is a particularly ridiculous example, even by the standards you’ve set on this thread. > > I’m sure that, for example, if the perpetrators of the existing live-action Dr. Seuss movies somehow convinced the executors of his estate to let them try again, there would be many perfectly justified declarations to the effect of “I’m not gonna waste my time watching _that_!” Of course they could. But I would consider it rude of them to go and natter on and on about that in a thread dedicated to discussing the film among those who have seen it. > [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Post a 500-1000 word summary of the key points. That would not do it justice. Everything valuable in the details would be lost. There were probably close to 20,000 words spoken in that episode. And you’ll notice that the two times I did transcribe from Sam’s podcast to this board (800 words each time), I used mostly contiguous sections, transcribed verbatim, rather than trying to summarize. In those two cases, there was one section of the episode I wanted to bring in. This time, it’s pretty much the whole thing. > [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Your method for assigning who has the most “eggs” (genes) seems to be based on the race/ethnicities who are among the highest performers. In doing this, you downplay environmental factors…_but only when it goes against your argument_. > > Let’s go back to the Jamaicans. Members of this ethnic group are disproportionately represented among people who have genes that favor sprinting (I actually don’t know this is true; this is just supposition). At the same time, we see that Jamaicans are disproportionately represented among Olympic winners. > > But when we look at West African tribes that sourced the Jamaican population, these people appear to be even more overrepresented among those with sprint genes. And yet they are not overrepresented among Olympic winners. > > How should we square these results? You seem to say the reason West Africans aren’t Olympic winners is obviously the result of their environment, because clearly they have the right genetics. Jamaicans are putting resources in churning our Olympic winners while those West Africans have other fish to fry. Like keeping their kids from getting malaria for the 11th time. Or something. > > So why doesn’t this conclusion extend to all disparities that we see? At this time, we have no evidence that “smart genes” distributed differentally across racial or ethnic lines. In the absence of such evidence, wouldn’t the safest conclusion be that environmental factors account for the disparities we see? > > The Jamaican example shows how quickly you’re willing to make convenient exceptions to the “genetics account for performance superiority” hypothesis when it suits you. This just shows that you don’t understand where I am coming from at all, which is pretty much the same as Sam Harris–and, from what I could tell on this podcast, Murray as well. I would never dispute that environment plays a huge role (here is where I’m a little bit at odds with Sam, in knocking that down to as low as 20% by saying genes play “50-80%” of the role in IQ). For example, let’s take Yo Yo Ma. I think it’s beyond dispute that he’s the world’s most acclaimed cellist. Whether he is \*the \*best living cellist is, I’m sure, hotly disputed, but few would argue that he’s not at least \*one \*of the best. He was a child prodigy, playing at the White House at age 5, and a quick Google search finds people who sound knowledgeable saying he’s gotten even better after age 40 which is apparently unusual. I’m not going to be able to produce the ironclad proof that only a small percentage of the world’s population has the genes that allow them to reach this level of mastery. But I strongly believe it to be overwhelmingly likely: that no matter what kind of family environment and no matter how much practice, the vast majority of the people in the world would not be able to get there. However, I would also bet that there are scores or hundreds of others, particularly in China, who have pretty much those same genes (or equivalent ones) and thus were born with the potential to be as good as Yo Yo Ma or better at the cello. But they were born in some rural village, have maybe never even seen a cello, and have toiled away at plowing fields in total obscurity. Necessary but not sufficient: the right genes. Necessary but not sufficient: the right environment. You have to have **both**. But this is not a precise parallel, because as of now we can’t intervene in an individual’s life (or a family’s) to give them “expert” genes. (A couple of us–was it \*\*Sandor \*\*who raised the point?–eagerly look forward to the day when we can do just that.) We _can_ intervene to give them the opportunity for expert tutelege, training, and nutrition, if they already have the right genes that just aren’t being activated (as long as we haven’t passed some critical period). > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > No. You’re still not understanding my logic, apparently. You’re saying “Group X has superior genes for intelligence to group Y, on average”, without knowing what those genes are, much less how prevalent they are in groups X and Y. How could you possibly know this? How could you know that test score differences are caused by genes rather than culture, society, education, racism, or a million other factors, if you don’t actually know what the genes are? You are right, at least in part. It is possible that the populations who seem to have the highest average IQ actually inherited fewer of the genes that advantage IQ than did the average member of the various dark-skinned ethnicities back in the more diverse gene pool of sub-Saharan Africa, but these light-skinned European and Asian populations have benefited so much from their wealth and hegemony, and have so oppressed sub-Saharan Africans, that the end results in terms of aptitude scores come in “upside down”. It’s possible. But then you would need to explain why even affluent (not middle class, but wealthy) African American kids, raised all their lives in privilege, still lag behind (again, on average). You’d need to explain why the intervention described in Freakonomics, that was so carefully designed and had such dramatic effects in improving the scores of poor white and Latino kids, utterly failed to work for black kids even though their families were said to have participated just as enthusiastically. Or why 20 years of funding Camden schools at levels far higher than the national average has still failed to budge test scores (although I want to be clear, again, that I agree with the Camden superintendent that it has had many positive effects not measured by tests). In short, Ockham’s razor cuts pretty sharply against that hypothesis. But sure, it’s _possible_. My particular axe to grind, as you must know by now, is the assumption behind massive amounts of federal funding and policy: that your hypothesis is not only possible but axiomatically true, and therefore that schools that don’t achieve 95% “proficiency” on standardized tests are, _ipso facto_, “failing” and must be reorganized or shut down. > [@Ale](#): > > You are not thinking things through. > > According to your logic hereditary conditions for which a gene or genes causing them have not yet been found are not real. > According to your logic Darwin was wrong until the exact mechanism through which traits were inherited was discovered. > And so on and so forth. > > It’s beyond dispute that there is a strong element of heredity in intelligence, this can only be mediated through genes, if you want to call this a hypothesis, as I said, you will need to come up with a new theory of on how traits are passed down that doesn’t involve genes. > > We know for a fact that there are marked variations in traits among population groups across the world and this too is determined by genes. > > Then, for you to be right and me to be wrong you need to describe the mechanism through which different populations somehow manage to maintain an exact parity between IQ levels. > I don’t believe such mechanism exists, what magic would had been at play play to keep Andeans, Australian Aboriginals and Ainus at the exact same level? > There is going to be variation, that’s how genetics work; just declaring that there is no intelligence variations among populations is dogma, the exact opposite of science. Right. Sam mentioned something along these lines: that just as a fact of probability, it would be astonishingly, vanishingly unlikely for different populations who evolved other characteristics differently, to maintain absolute parity on the distribution of the heritable components of IQ. > [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Hokay. He’s my gene-free explanation for how the trait of “obesity” is passed on from parents to children: > > Fatass Mama and Fatass Papa, who constantly shovel food into their faces, teach Fatass Junior the same habits. > > Flights to Stockholm seem to be running around $600-$800. I accept checks, a PayPal, or postal money orders. :rolleyes: > **[Human Obesity: A Heritable Neurobehavioral Disorder That Is Highly Sensitive...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2570383/)** > [@](#): > > A commonly expressed belief of people who are naturally lean is that, as they find little difficulty in controlling their weight, they are puzzled as to how people who are obese have “let that happen to themselves” and therefore assume that this is some sort of adverse life choice born of moral weakness. Whereas there is no doubt that emotional stresses and other factors can predispose to overeating, it is crucial that we recognize that **the drive to eat varies enormously between people, with a strong genetic underpinning for that variability. Because of this, the conscious effort that needs to be made by the obese to slim down to a normal body weight is likely to be far greater than that required for a naturally lean person to remain so. This not only refers to the issue of greater appetitive drive but also to the neuroendocrine adaptations to weight loss that tend to conserve energy in the “reduced obese” state, making continued weight loss harder still** (62,63). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/329 "2017-04-26T19:04:53Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Then, if you, me, and everyone else can’t tell with certainty that every group has exactly the same baseline IQ then on what basis would policies that assume this to be true would be the correct and fair ones? > Why assume that people of African, American, Asian, European, etc… origin must achieve the same academic scores or else racism is to blame? Yup, this is my bottom line. > [@Ale](#): > > The bottom line is that since we are not all clones there will never be a perfect equality of outcome in life, in this situation I believe the best and fairest course of action is to strive for equality of opportunities, let people be the best they can be. I’m not quite that libertarian. I believe we should put a thumb on the scale in terms of outcomes, especially for groups of people (like African Americans and Native Americans) who got so much taken away from them and their ancestors through force. But I want us to boost outcomes through direct means like cutting checks, providing nutritious food, etc. Not by insisting that teachers produce the same test results in Camden as other teachers produce in Morris County. Nor by insisting on some set percentage of high-IQ jobs (engineers, “quants”, etc.) be set aside for African Americans. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/330 "2017-04-26T19:06:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But I will just point out that if race is make-believe, the same must needs be true of rac_ism_. You can’t have it both ways. This does not even make sense. Racism is based on a belief regarding the existence of race. If the belief is wrong, it remains an actual belief. Taking actions based on one’s beliefs is pretty much the standard of behavior for humans, whether it is based on religious or philosophical views, political views, or any other competing views that are not objectively right or wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/331 "2017-04-26T19:11:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But then you would need to explain why even affluent (not middle class, but wealthy) African American kids, raised all their lives in privilege, still lag behind (again, on average). You’d need to explain why the intervention described in Freakonomics, that was so carefully designed and had such dramatic effects in improving the scores of poor white and Latino kids, utterly failed to work for black kids even though their families were said to have participated just as enthusiastically. All this shit is trivial to explain, and has in fact been explained to you multiple times in this thread alone by multiple people. Maybe you should spend less time typing and more time reading? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/332 "2017-04-26T19:15:34Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This does not even make sense. > > Racism is based on a belief regarding the existence of race. If the belief is wrong, it remains an actual belief. Taking actions based on one’s beliefs is pretty much the standard of behavior for humans, whether it is based on religious or philosophical views, political views, or any other competing views that are not objectively right or wrong. He used to get it and now he doesn’t. Perhaps there was a blow to the head in the meantime. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/333 "2017-04-26T19:16:32Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You are right, at least in part. It is possible that the populations who seem to have the highest average IQ actually inherited fewer of the genes that advantage IQ than did the average member of the various dark-skinned ethnicities back in the more diverse gene pool of sub-Saharan Africa, but these light-skinned European and Asian populations have benefited so much from their wealth and hegemony, and have so oppressed sub-Saharan Africans, that the end results in terms of aptitude scores come in “upside down”. It’s possible. > > But then you would need to explain why even affluent (not middle class, but wealthy) African American kids, raised all their lives in privilege, still lag behind (again, on average). You’d need to explain why the intervention described in Freakonomics, that was so carefully designed and had such dramatic effects in improving the scores of poor white and Latino kids, utterly failed to work for black kids even though their families were said to have participated just as enthusiastically. Or why 20 years of funding Camden schools at levels far higher than the national average has still failed to budge test scores (although I want to be clear, again, that I agree with the Camden superintendent that it has had many positive effects not measured by tests). > > In short, Ockham’s razor cuts pretty sharply against that hypothesis. But sure, it’s _possible_. My particular axe to grind, as you must know by now, is the assumption behind massive amounts of federal funding and policy: that your hypothesis is not only possible but axiomatically true, and therefore that schools that don’t achieve 95% “proficiency” on standardized tests are, _ipso facto_, “failing” and must be reorganized or shut down. We already have studies, like the Scarr study that I linked to earlier, that show directly contrary evidence to your supposed Occam’s razor hypothesis – the Scarr study demonstrates that black Americans with more African ancestry score the same on IQ tests as black Americans with less African ancestry. In their case, ancestry didn’t matter – what mattered was whether they were black or not – i.e. how they were treated by society, and how they viewed themselves. But further, we only have a few decades, if that, of non-brutal and non-oppressive treatment at large of black people in America. Even of wealthy black people. We have no time in history in which black people weren’t portrayed differently in the media and culture at large – black kids, wealthy or not, really do have different role models to look up to in society. We have no time in history in which black people were treated equally by institutions like law enforcement. If this sort of ‘background racism’ is significant, as I think it is, and if it has a significant effect on how children see both themselves and society around them, then there’s no budget or school programs that can close this gap – the problem is society itself. That would entirely explain your Camden example, your Freakonomics article, the struggles of some wealthy black kids, etc. I posit that, growing up, black children experience dozens or hundreds or thousands of signs and signals each day, most of them very subtle, that they are inferior and second-class citizens in our society. This might be how they’re addressed by adults, by authority figures, by merchants and retail managers, by educators, how black people are portrayed in TV shows and movies, how they’re described in journalism, written about in books, and much more. I posit that similar signals are sent to Native American children in our society, and possibly Hispanic children, LGBTQ children, and girls, to varying degrees in both quantity and quality. And I posit that all of this has a significant effect on how these children view themselves and their hopes and expectations for the future. I think our society has improved a lot, but it’s still massively unequal in opportunity, and needs a whole lot of improvement. I’ll note that this is just a hypothesis, but I think it fits all the facts, unlike your hypothesis, which is directly contradicted by data like the Scarr study. Further, this hypothesis doesn’t rely on the specialness of outcomes _now_ like yours does – there were times in the past in which various other groups were “on top” in a particular time and place. Black Nubians conquered and ruled non-black Egypt for a century, for example. I don’t think those broad outcomes and gaps were determined by genes rather than characteristics of culture and society, and I don’t think outcomes and gaps are now either. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/334 "2017-04-26T19:21:46Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Further, this hypothesis doesn’t rely on the specialness of outcomes _now_ like yours does – there were times in the past in which various other groups were “on top” in a particular time and place. Right. What is allegedly making the outcomes completely correct and genetic now where they weren’t before? It’s the same problem prescriptivists have with language changes. Nothing about April 26, 2017 makes it the point where everything is completely sorted out and reflective of genetic truths. People in the past have been just as convinced that they understood genetic truths. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/335 "2017-04-26T19:24:48Z")
I’ll add that my hypothesis wouldn’t limit such signals to certain minority kids and women – Asian boys might be subtly signaled every day that they are supposed to be technically capable and disciplined, but socially less desirable; white boys might be signaled that they will be business or political leaders, or blue collar ‘salt-of-the-earth’ family men; etc. I posit that our society may be subtly sending signals to kids of all types that tends to steer them towards certain outcomes and levels of achievement, increasing the likelihood of wealth and success for some, and the likelihood of crime and failure for others. Such signals could totally swamp any genetic potential, on average, whether or not it varied between groups. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/336 "2017-04-26T19:46:34Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This does not even make sense. > > Racism is based on a belief regarding the existence of race. If the belief is wrong, it remains an actual belief. Taking actions based on one’s beliefs is pretty much the standard of behavior for humans, whether it is based on religious or philosophical views, political views, or any other competing views that are not objectively right or wrong. This looks like a good argument in isolation; but if this is the standard you are going to hew to, you will have to throw out any civil rights enforcement based on [protected classes](https://www.archives.gov/eeo/terminology.html#p) (for race-based classes) or [disparate impact](http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Disparate+Impact) (based on race). Right? If you don’t think so, I’ll be very interested to see how you square this circle. :dubious: > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > But further, we only have a few decades, if that, of non-brutal and non-oppressive treatment at large of black people in America. Even of wealthy black people. We have no time in history in which black people weren’t portrayed differently in the media and culture at large – black kids, wealthy or not, really do have different role models to look up to in society. We have no time in history in which black people were treated equally by institutions like law enforcement. > > If this sort of ‘background racism’ is significant, as I think it is, and if it has a significant effect on how children see both themselves and society around them, then there’s no budget or school programs that can close this gap – the problem is society itself. That would entirely explain your Camden example, your Freakonomics article, the struggles of some wealthy black kids, etc. I posit that, growing up, black children experience dozens or hundreds or thousands of signs and signals each day, most of them very subtle, that they are inferior and second-class citizens in our society. This might be how they’re addressed by adults, by authority figures, by merchants and retail managers, by educators, how black people are portrayed in TV shows and movies, how they’re described in journalism, written about in books, and much more. I posit that similar signals are sent to Native American children in our society, and possibly Hispanic children, LGBTQ children, and girls, to varying degrees in both quantity and quality. And I posit that all of this has a significant effect on how these children view themselves and their hopes and expectations for the future. I think our society has improved a lot, but it’s still massively unequal in opportunity, and needs a whole lot of improvement. Yet Hispanic kids were helped markedly by the Freakonomics intervention, while black kids were not (I just don’t believe you would have predicted this). Male same-sex couples, regardless of race and living in major metro areas, are [significantly less likely to be poor](https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/LGB-Poverty-Update-Jun-2013.pdf) than are different-sex couples in those metros. Women have gone in just the past few decades from much less likely to have advanced degrees to [much more likely](https://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/u137/Z_Appendix-Figure-1.gif). Young women in urban metros [earn more](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/genevieve-wood/what-pay-gap-young-women-out-earn-men-cities-gop-p/) than their male peers. These are all groups that faced a sickening level of discrimination in the very recent past (not that it’s all gone). Just take a look at _Mad Men_. So are women and gay men somehow more resilient than African Americans (leaving aside the obvious intersectionalism)? Even though we got our first black president before our first female or (openly) gay president? (Doesn’t that black president go a long way in counteracting the “signs and signals” you are talking about?) And your explanation seems especially strained as it pertains to affluent black families. These are people who _have already made it_ despite the headwinds you are referring to. And very few of them have won the lottery or made it big in entertainment or sports. We’re talking mostly about black professionals and their kids. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/337 "2017-04-26T19:58:56Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I’ll add that my hypothesis wouldn’t limit such signals to certain minority kids and women – Asian boys might be subtly signaled every day that they are supposed to be technically capable and disciplined, but socially less desirable; white boys might be signaled that they will be business or political leaders, or blue collar ‘salt-of-the-earth’ family men; etc. I posit that our society may be subtly sending signals to kids of all types that tends to steer them towards certain outcomes and levels of achievement, increasing the likelihood of wealth and success for some, and the likelihood of crime and failure for others. Such signals could totally swamp any genetic potential, on average, whether or not it varied between groups. Not just that, but physical impacts. African-American women have a higher incidence of low birth weight babies than white women. Studies took out income and habits and location and all of that and still African-American women had a higher incidence of low birth weight babies. So some people thought it was obvious that meant it was something in those African genes. Further studies upended that theory. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/338 "2017-04-26T20:06:02Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Not just that, but physical impacts. African-American women have a higher incidence of low birth weight babies than white women. Studies took out income and habits and location and all of that and still African-American women had a higher incidence of low birth weight babies. So some people thought it was obvious that meant it was something in those African genes. Further studies upended that theory. Upended it how, exactly? If that’s right, it’s definitely an interesting finding, but it would still probably mean the lower IQs are _congenital_ even if not _genetic_, since birthweight is [strongly correlated with IQ](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iq-and-birthweight-linked/). There’s another factor in here I neglected to mention earlier (not discussed on the podcast), which is lead exposure. For reasons not clearly understood (and perhaps genetic themselves), African American children are more likely to suffer from high blood levels even if you control for other factors like poverty and location of residence. And this is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to lower IQ. So even if these kids are coming to school just having been affected by lead and low birth weight, even if those reasons are not at all genetic, it’s still not on the teachers to magically overcome this and get their aptitude up to 95% proficiency. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/339 "2017-04-26T21:25:52Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > [Most Jamaicans are descended from West African slaves.](http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-12-24#) Can you cite your claim that West Africans have a genetic advantage in sprinting that Jamaicans don’t share? > > In line with previous findings, the matriline of Jamaica is almost entirely of West African descent. > > … > > The great majority of the profiles observed in Jamaica could be allocated to L sub-Saharan haplogroups (97.5%), a result echoing past studies showing very few non-African maternal lineages in Jamaica. I was quoting verbatim from **BPC** ’s source in [Post 243](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20160825&postcount=243) of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/340 "2017-04-26T21:36:56Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > For example, let’s take Yo Yo Ma. I think it’s beyond dispute that he’s the world’s most acclaimed cellist. Whether he is \*the \*best living cellist is, I’m sure, hotly disputed, but few would argue that he’s not at least \*one \*of the best. He was a child prodigy, playing at the White House at age 5, and a quick Google search finds people who sound knowledgeable saying he’s gotten even better after age 40 which is apparently unusual. > > I’m not going to be able to produce the ironclad proof that only a small percentage of the world’s population has the genes that allow them to reach this level of mastery. But I strongly believe it to be overwhelmingly likely: that no matter what kind of family environment and no matter how much practice, the vast majority of the people in the world would not be able to get there. > > However, I would also bet that there are scores or hundreds of others, **particularly in China** , who have pretty much those same genes (or equivalent ones) and thus were born with the potential to be as good as Yo Yo Ma or better at the cello. But they were born in some rural village, have maybe never even seen a cello, and have toiled away at plowing fields in total obscurity. Everything you posit up until the last paragraph warrants little quibbling from me. It’s the last paragraph where you lose me. If we’re talking about a rare gene (or gene combination), then why should we assume the Chinese would be more likely to have it than other peoples? It seems just as likely that this gene could be circulating at low levels everywhere. Just because one individual of a certain ethnicity _might_ have a certain gene, it doesn’t mean others in this ethnicity have a higher likelihood of having it. This seems to be an assumption you’re making throughout this thread. If there are prodigy genes that Yo Yo’s ancestors carried to China as they migrated out of Africa, then guess what? Those genes are still gonna be in Africa. They are also going to be in the Americas and Europe. Which means China might not be any more likely to have these genes than any other region. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=18)