# 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:** 22
**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 29, 2017, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/421 "2017-04-29T03:54:16Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > SAME race, but NOT the same population. ONE population had a stacked deck when it comes to iq and aptitude as it related to genetics. > > If the effect of that is near zero, we ought to expect to see little to no difference. Do ANY of you expect to see no difference? This is the key. I expect to see a difference, because I assume that the portion of aptitude and iq that is influenced by genetics, is transmitted and heritable. > > I do not know how to make my assumptions any clearer. And they are clearly wrong. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html) > [@](#): > > Although racially mixed children are culturally black in America, and are almost always raised by black parents in black communities, this is not true everywhere. Klans Eyferth studied the illegitimate children of black and white soldiers stationed in Germany as part of the army of occupation after World War II. All these children were raised by their German mothers. There was considerable prejudice against blacks in Germany at the time, and any child of a German mother who looked black was also presumed to be illegitimate, which carried additional stigma. But mixed-race German children did not attend predominantly black schools, live in black neighborhoods, or (presumably) have predominantly black (or mixed-race) friends. When Eyferth gave these children a German version of the Wechsler IQ test, children with black fathers and white fathers had almost identical scores. > > ``` > Taken in isolation, none of these studies would carry much weight. The samples are small, and the comparisons could be distorted by unmeasured genetic or environmental influences. But Nisbett argues that their consistency gives them far more weight that they would have if taken one by one. We agree. We read these studies as supporting three tentative conclusions: > > --When "black" genes are not visible to the naked eye and are not associated with membership in a black community, they do not have much effect on young children's test scores. > > --Growing up in an African-American rather than a European-American family substantially reduces a young child's test performance. > > --When black Americans raised in white families reach adolescence, their test scores fall. > > These studies do not prove that blacks and whites would have exactly the same test scores if they were raised in the same environment and treated the same way. But we find it hard to see how anyone reading these studies with an open mind could conclude that innate ability played a large role in the black-white gap. > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/422 "2017-04-29T10:36:42Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > We do not have identical genomes. And different populations of people do not have identical genomes. No one disagrees with that, so they say, until we go towards the genes that contribute to our intelligence. Then, nothing can be said, more than that, we expect virtually zero differential between different populations. I have made no such claim regarding zero differences. You pointed out differences regarding one disease, comparing the people of one continent to people in one not particularly large island. I simply noted that your comparison ignored well over half the continent you selected, ignored the several regions in different locales where the same disease occurs, and failed to note the explicit, disease related trigger for the differences. As to the genes: we have actual information regarding what genes are responsible for Sickle Cell and the physical situation that has allowed/promoted the changes to those genes. Where are the genes that affect intelligence and what are the physical conditions that allow/promote changes to them? Your assertion is a “what if” scenario that lacks a reason to exist. > [@Salvor](#): > > I have given examples of this NOT being explicitly about different races. The American Indian population is higher iq than the general Indian population back in india due to the selection pressures that filter for higher skill level. Evidence that North and South American native populations have a higher IQ than people on the Indian sub-continent? Evidence of selective pressures on one region or the other that requires an adaptation of higher IQ? Evidence that IQ actually measures anything beyond the ability to score well on an IQ test? This claim simply floats on suppositions that do not even relate to the real world. The same is true of your hypothetical adoption scenario. Why should I speculate on the intelligence of adopted children when I have no genuine information regarding their situations. Even your hypothetical fails with your assumption that all the adopted children were placed into relatively equal homes without providing any evidence that such would be the case and without any evidence that the IQ chimera actually existed. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/423 "2017-04-29T14:25:06Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Evidence that North and South American native populations have a higher IQ than people on the Indian sub-continent? It’s confusing, but I assume he is using “American Indian” to mean “Indo-Americans”, not Native Americans. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/424 "2017-04-29T16:08:55Z")
So, I listened to the first 2/3rds of the podcast before making my post above and it’s still accurate. Unless he is being dishonest and actually introduced known bias while selecting his data, his results fall out from the statistics of this data. This is something a machine could do, right? But, listening to the later 1/3rd, I realized he goes from looking at his results to supporting social change based on them, to “quit treating people as groups and start treating them as individuals”, and that policies such as Affirmative Action are actually causing more problems than solving. I think once he moves past his study’s results into the field of social policy, he goes off the rails and I can see why people tend to denounce this. But to deny the results without pointing out specific errors that were made in his analysis (and probably this has been done but I haven’t had the motivation to look for it) is very unscientific. To me, it’s akin to global warming deniers that deny the evidence because they don’t want the social policies that a responsible society would implement to combat the warming. Denying evidence because you don’t like the results is a cognitive bias that we all have and none of us are above it. The best we can do is accept the inconvenient evidence and then debate what to do about it, if anything at all, but don’t mix the two. Even though it’s not my personal belief, I’d much rather someone accept the evidence for man-made global warming and state that we shouldn’t do anything about it rather than attack the evidence itself. Skepticism is good but denialism is harmful to our progress. ---
**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 29, 2017, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/425 "2017-04-29T16:31:01Z")
> [@nate](#): > > So, I listened to the first 2/3rds of the podcast before making my post above and it’s still accurate. Unless he is being dishonest and actually introduced known bias while selecting his data, his results fall out from the statistics of this data. This is something a machine could do, right? But, listening to the later 1/3rd, I realized he goes from looking at his results to supporting social change based on them, to “quit treating people as groups and start treating them as individuals”, and that policies such as Affirmative Action are actually causing more problems than solving. I think once he moves past his study’s results into the field of social policy, he goes off the rails and I can see why people tend to denounce this. > > But to deny the results without pointing out specific errors that were made in his analysis (and probably this has been done but I haven’t had the motivation to look for it) is very unscientific. To me, it’s akin to global warming deniers that deny the evidence because they don’t want the social policies that a responsible society would implement to combat the warming. Denying evidence because you don’t like the results is a cognitive bias that we all have and none of us are above it. The best we can do is accept the inconvenient evidence and then debate what to do about it, if anything at all, but don’t mix the two. > > Even though it’s not my personal belief, I’d much rather someone accept the evidence for man-made global warming and state that we shouldn’t do anything about it rather than attack the evidence itself. Skepticism is good but denialism is harmful to our progress. Good thing that me and many others are not doing what you claim here. Indeed the focus is on how assholes Murray and others are for reaching conclusions not based on their findings or previous research that was ignored to allow them to reach their sorry conclusions. And researchers in the other fields where Murray and others decided to jump foolishly found how misleading Murray and others are. [But in any case the findings of Murray are also very debatable and likely misleading…](http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Heritability.html) In the end you can not really call it science anyhow, Murray avoided publishing in scientific journals and dealing with peer review. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/426 "2017-04-29T17:15:32Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s confusing, but I assume he is using “American Indian” to mean “Indo-Americans”, not Native Americans. Yes, talking about actual indians and not native americans. But to the above so called issues with the hypothetical, we can turn the dial up of implausibility to hone in on what to test. Say we keep the same parameters above, but each child from the American indian population and random sample of the indian population in India is placed into the same home in the same time, one by one. How? A Time machine. A Hundred children from one population, tested over time one by one, and then the other hundred from the other population. 200 trips in a time machine, back to the same family to raise them all. Is that hypothetical constant enough on the environment? Regarding that one study with mixed race kids in Germany, if that study is replicated, that is the kind of study and piece of evidence that suggests it’s much less about any genetic differences between groups. After doing some digging it seems that study is a bit of an outlier. I’ve heard about far more studies that show something very different, so this seems like a case of a cherry picked study that goes against what is typically seen. This entire topic reminds me of the pre copernican explanations of the heavens, before the heliocentric view there were assumptions that the earth was the center of the universe, and so all the motions of planets and their relationship to the earth had to have these incredibly complex explanations as to why they did not behave as if they actually circled the earth. Then Copernicus comes along and is like, hey guys, if you go with a model where the sun is the center and all the other planets revolve around that, the models and explanations fall out much more naturally. And this model fits the data we see much better than the rest of yours. Not everyone wanted to adopt that model, to some of them, they thought that not having the earth as the center of the universe would undermine church doctrine. And this is what I keep seeing as it relates to iq and group differences that are related to genetics. Some have even offered their personal high iq scores up as an argument that their opposition ought to have extra weight compared to my ramblings. Clearly I’m the rube here. But even there, I remember that article on ars talking about how higher intelligence coupled to ideology made people better equipped to come up with objections to reality. It turns out, being smarter often just makes it easier to come up with plausible reasons to stick to one view rather than another, even if another view would be a more likely fit with the standards of Occams razor applied. > **[Education plus ideology exaggerates rejection of reality](https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/education-plus-ideology-exaggerates-rejection-of-reality/)** > > The higher your education, the better equipped you are to question accurate info. This really is an interesting case study, since I see most of the posters here deeply afflicted with a case of using their higher than average reasoning ability put to use to discredit what I see as accurate data and information about group differences. And then bend themselves and their arguments into pretzels to maintain the view that we can’t yet say it is any more likely that genetics are some of the cause of the group differences we see in iq vs environmental influences. We can’t say. There was this one study decades ago, that has not been replicated, you see? But what about all the other studies that show persistent gaps? It’s amazing to watch. I feel like I am in a zoo observing the primates reason taken over by their own preferences for reality. They can’t let their own church doctrine of nature itself being completely egalitarian when it comes to group differences fall away, and so any threats to that religious belief that we are all equal in our abilities, or at least all populations have equal average iq, must be terminated and not accepted. We really are broken things, so easily distorted by our own desires for reality. And I’m not immune, I think it’s partly due to my own affinity for and belief in the capacity to alter nature, and even humanity, that I am more open to the idea of group differences, and it is not seen as some hill that must be fought to the death over where a loss will be some eternal end of… what exactly? To me it’s not an end, it’s just a temporary setback and inequality, one we can hopefully fix soon. But to others, focused on the here and now, this is an absolute terror, and dark visions of what they think would follow must haunt them. ---
**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 29, 2017, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/427 "2017-04-29T17:26:28Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > Then Copernicus comes along and is like, hey guys, if you go with a model where the sun is the center and all the other planets revolve around that, the models and explanations fall out much more naturally. And this model fits the data we see much better than the rest of yours. “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan > [@Salvor](#): > > But even there, I remember that article on ars talking about how higher intelligence coupled to ideology made people better equipped to come up with objections to reality. It turns out, being smarter often just makes it easier to come up with plausible reasons to stick to one view rather than another, even if another view would be a more likely fit with the standards of Occams razor applied. > > [Education plus ideology exaggerates rejection of reality | Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/education-plus-ideology-exaggerates-rejection-of-reality/) > > This really is an interesting case study, since I see most of the posters here deeply afflicted with a case of using their higher than average reasoning ability put to use to discredit what I see as accurate data and information about group differences. Actually the case study was set early,\*\* And you are the subject here. \*\* (See how you do not have an explanation either when all the items mentioned in the ars technica article are reported the same in the busting ignorance groups and sites I pointed at. Yes, they even bust the bias with subjects that you and others think are followed by the left. They are equal opportunity dogma offenders. \*\*And they all agree, independent from each other, also that Murray and others are cads. \*\* And that is even before talking about what other scientists and experts reported about how Murray is not the right person to follow on that subject. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/428 "2017-04-29T18:05:28Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > Yes, talking about actual indians and not native americans. > But to the above so called issues with the hypothetical, we can turn the dial up of implausibility to hone in on what to test. Hypothetical experiments don’t prove anything. They are best at re-enforcing your biases. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2017, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/429 "2017-04-29T21:36:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Hypothetical experiments don’t prove anything. They are best at re-enforcing your biases. It was not a proof. It was done to clear the mental decks and environmental variables and leave only random chance and differences between populations. And from that springboard I ask what people expect to see as a result. No difference between populations or some difference in average iq? Few above will answer that question, they will fall back on the warm blanket of imperfect knowledge, of not knowing the precise mechanistic details of the thousands of genes that contribute to intelligence. Dogma preserved, for now. Every group is equally intelligent is left as the baseline assumption. Equality of aptitude, which is clearly not built into the natural world between individuals, magically appears when it comes to different populations. And no amount of measurements to the contrary will be accepted so long as the tiniest sliver of environmental degrees of freedom can creep in to the rescue. ---
**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 29, 2017, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/430 "2017-04-29T21:58:25Z")
Oh boy, as if that would change what biologists do think about the issue. > [@](#): > > Murray relies on baffling his audiences with the arcana of statistical analysis which neither he nor most of his readers understand, but which earns him the love and appreciation of racists who don’t really care how he gets to his conclusions, as long as those conclusions support their prejudices. > > I’m only competent enough in those arcana to see the flaws in his arguments, but not to explain them well. For that, I recommend the invaluable Cosma Shalizi, who made the case against g: > > > [@](#): > > > > To summarize what follows below (“shorter sloth”, as it were), the case for g rests on a statistical technique, factor analysis, which works solely on correlations between tests. Factor analysis is handy for summarizing data, but can’t tell us where the correlations came from; it always says that there is a general factor whenever there are only positive correlations. The appearance of g is a trivial reflection of that correlation structure. A clear example, known since 1916, shows that factor analysis can give the appearance of a general factor when there are actually many thousands of completely independent and equally strong causes at work. Heritability doesn’t distinguish these alternatives either. Exploratory factor analysis being no good at discovering causal structure, it provides no support for the reality of g. > > And also argued against misinterpretations of heritability: > > > [@](#): > > > > To summarize: Heritability is a technical measure of how much of the variance in a quantitative trait (such as IQ) is associated with genetic differences, in a population with a certain distribution of genotypes and environments. Under some very strong simplifying assumptions, quantitative geneticists use it to calculate the changes to be expected from artificial or natural selection in a statistically steady environment. It says nothing about how much the over-all level of the trait is under genetic control, and it says nothing about how much the trait can change under environmental interventions. If, despite this, one does want to find out the heritability of IQ for some human population, the fact that the simplifying assumptions I mentioned are clearly false in this case means that existing estimates are unreliable, and probably too high, maybe much too high. > > Once you knock those two props out from under Murray’s claims, he flops down into a disreputable heap. > > But he keeps getting invited to speak at universities. I don’t know why. Stanger claims that the protest was a result of people not reading Murray’s book, but I think the real problem is people who read Murray’s book and don’t understand what a pile of garbage it is. - Paul Zachary “PZ” Myers. American associate-professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris. ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/431 "2017-04-30T04:24:52Z")
I don’t understand the resistance to acceptance that different populations that have similar genetic backgrounds have differing IQs. We can see obviously see other traits that indicate a person’s heritage, so why is it that intelligence (as measured by an IQ test) would not also differ between populations? I guess I see a lot of backlash against something that people don’t want to be true, for good reasons, and unconsciously use their visceral reactions to protest the results. To me, and I may be way off base, but there really shouldn’t be a statistical trick to this, no correlation test is necessary to say that populations that self-identify as a certain race have this mean IQ test score of x, and other populations that self-identify as another race have a mean IQ test score of y and that x \> y. I think a 2nd grader could do that. So is Murray trying to define race and that’s where the backlash forms? Or is it from his interpretation of the results? I guess I’m asking if there is data manipulation accusations or is the critique mainly of his hypothesis of what may lead to the IQ differences? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/432 "2017-04-30T04:36:11Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > It was not a proof. It was done to clear the mental decks and environmental variables and leave only random chance and differences between populations. And from that springboard I ask what people expect to see as a result. No difference between populations or some difference in average iq? > Few above will answer that question, they will fall back on the warm blanket of imperfect knowledge, of not knowing the precise mechanistic details of the thousands of genes that contribute to intelligence. The point is that they are imaginary. Any one of us could imagine a totally different scenario with utterly different results. It does not “clear the decks,” it simply points out how you would like the world to be. > [@Salvor](#): > > Dogma preserved, for now. Every group is equally intelligent is left as the baseline assumption. Equality of aptitude, which is clearly not built into the natural world between individuals, magically appears when it comes to different populations. And no amount of measurements to the contrary will be accepted so long as the tiniest sliver of environmental degrees of freedom can creep in to the rescue. Never having made any claim that every group is equally intelligent, I note the straw man nature of your argument. While there may be persons who claim that every group is “equally intelligent,” my particular position would be that we do not have sufficient information regarding the definitions of the various intelligences on an individual level to make any odd claims regarding the intelligences of groups. And I note that the tortured methods which people have used to identify “groups” further renders such evaluations to be less than useful. Without buying into Howard Gardner’s hypothesis of Multiple Intelligences, I have seen sufficient nonsense promoted by believers in the simplistic evaluations of _g_ and IQ to consider them well meaning, (or not), but extremely flawed attempts to understand phenomena that we are still not sufficiently prepared to address. ---
**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 30, 2017, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/433 "2017-04-30T04:36:57Z")
> [@nate](#): > > I don’t understand the resistance to acceptance that different populations that have similar genetic backgrounds have differing IQs. We can see obviously see other traits that indicate a person’s heritage, so why is it that intelligence (as measured by an IQ test) would not also differ between populations? Who says they can’t? The problem was that Murray and others think that genetics are the most important driver of that, but that is not what the evidence points at. BTW I forgot the link on my last post: > **[Mutual harm at Middlebury](https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/03/16/mutual-harm-at-middlebury/)** > > Tristero strikes exactly the right note in this letter to the professor who was injured in the protests against Charles Murray at Middlebury. There is no excusing the harm done to Professor Stanger… And here is the link PZ Myers had when citing Cosma Shalizi: [http://bactra.org/weblog/523.html](http://bactra.org/weblog/523.html) ---
**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 30, 2017, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/434 "2017-04-30T04:44:37Z")
Ran out of edit, what I wanted to quote from Cosma Shalizi was: > [@](#): > > Summary > > Building factors from correlations is fine as data reduction, but deeply unsuited to finding causal structures. The mythical aspect of g isn’t that it can be defined, or, having been defined, that it describes a lot of the correlations on intelligence tests; the myth is that this tells us anything more than that those tests are positively correlated. It has been known for almost as long as factor analysis has been around that positive correlations can arise in many ways which involve nothing remotely like a general factor of intelligence. Thomson’s ability-sampling model, with its myriad independent causes rather than a single general cause, is the oldest and most extreme counter-example, but it is far from the only one. **It is still conceivable that those positive correlations are all caused by a general factor of intelligence, but we ought to be long since past the point where supporters of that view were advancing arguments on the basis of evidence other than those correlations. So far as I can tell, however, nobody has presented a case for g apart from thoroughly invalid arguments from factor analysis; that is, the myth.** > > In primitive societies, or so Malinowski taught, myths serve as the legitimating charters of practices and institutions. Just so here: the myth of g legitimates a vast enterprise of intelligence testing and theorizing. There should be no dispute that, when we lack specialized and valid instruments, general IQ tests can be better than nothing. Claims that they are anything more than such stop-gaps — that they are triumphs of psychological science, illuminating the workings of the mind; keys to the fates of individuals and peoples; sources of harsh truths which only a courageous few have the strength to bear; etc., etc., — such claims are at present entirely unjustified, though not, perhaps, unmotivated. They are supported only by the myth, and acceptance of the myth itself rests on what I can only call an astonishing methodological backwardness. > > The bottom line is: The sooner we stop paying attention to g, the sooner we can devote our energies to understanding the mind. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/435 "2017-04-30T04:50:29Z")
> [@nate](#): > > I don’t understand the resistance to acceptance that different populations that have similar genetic backgrounds have differing IQs. We can see obviously see other traits that indicate a person’s heritage, so why is it that intelligence (as measured by an IQ test) would not also differ between populations? I guess I see a lot of backlash against something that people don’t want to be true, for good reasons, and unconsciously use their visceral reactions to protest the results. To me, and I may be way off base, but there really shouldn’t be a statistical trick to this, no correlation test is necessary to say that populations that self-identify as a certain race have this mean IQ test score of x, and other populations that self-identify as another race have a mean IQ test score of y and that x \> y. I think a 2nd grader could do that. So is Murray trying to define race and that’s where the backlash forms? Or is it from his interpretation of the results? I guess I’m asking if there is data manipulation accusations or is the critique mainly of his hypothesis of what may lead to the IQ differences? When actual mathematicians, statisticians, and people in related fields had the opportunity to review Murray’s book, (which he had deliberately published in a way so as to avoid their reviews), they universally condemned his poor understanding of statistics and the flawed, (often dishonest), ways in which he discussed his topic. As to simply handing out IQ tests and rating who produced higher scores, there are multiple valid objections. Everything from choosing what to measure in order to discover the hypothetical _g_ to identifying which person should be slotted into which group to be compared throws huge problems into the situation. There are people who have done what you want, but it does not help that they have tended to be explicitly dishonest in how they have gone about doing it. (Not all have been quite as dishonest as Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen with their demonstrably dishonest IQ and the Wealth of Nations, but that has been the trend.) ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/436 "2017-04-30T09:47:48Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Who says they can’t? The problem was that Murray and others think that genetics are the most important driver of that, but that is not what the evidence points at. Cite? (That this is what Murray thinks.) ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/437 "2017-04-30T09:49:28Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > When actual mathematicians, statisticians, and people in related fields had the opportunity to review Murray’s book, (which he had deliberately published in a way so as to avoid their reviews), they universally condemned his poor understanding of statistics and the flawed, (often dishonest), ways in which he discussed his topic. You really believe this? “Universally”? ---
**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 30, 2017, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/438 "2017-04-30T09:50:42Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > It was not a proof. It was done to clear the mental decks and environmental variables and leave only random chance and differences between populations. And from that springboard I ask what people expect to see as a result. No difference between populations or some difference in average iq? > Few above will answer that question, they will fall back on the warm blanket of imperfect knowledge, of not knowing the precise mechanistic details of the thousands of genes that contribute to intelligence. > > Dogma preserved, for now. Every group is equally intelligent is left as the baseline assumption. Equality of aptitude, which is clearly not built into the natural world between individuals, magically appears when it comes to different populations. And no amount of measurements to the contrary will be accepted so long as the tiniest sliver of environmental degrees of freedom can creep in to the rescue. So you’re saying every single group, no matter how they are divided, will necessarily differ in inherent intelligence due to genetics? There’s no two groups that are the same, among the hundreds or thousands of human populations? Every single one can be arranged in a hierarchy from smartest genes to dumbest genes? I’ll note that even if we all accepted this, it would still say absolutely nothing about the genetics for intelligence among black people, or any other specific group. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/439 "2017-04-30T15:13:21Z")
> [@mr.jp](#): > > You really believe this? “Universally”? I have never encountered a statistician who failed to condemn Murray’s methodology, (or incompetence), as he manipulated the numbers to arrive at the conclusion that he started out with the intent to find. ---
**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 30, 2017, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/440 "2017-04-30T16:04:11Z")
> [@mr.jp](#): > > Cite? (That this is what Murray thinks.) > [@](#): > > IQ is substantially heritable, somewhere between 40 and 80 percent, meaning that much of the observed variation in IQ is genetic. -The Bell Curve: 298. More than once I have noticed that indeed Murray does equivocate trying to pretend that his book then becomes ok because he told us also in the book that “The impulse to think that environmental sources of difference are less threatening than genetic ones is natural but illusory.” Of course if you had read what critics were saying you would had found out that what Murray and others do is that they do not follow their own advice, and I have seen that maneuver with many climate change deniers too. The move is to deny not only what they are trying to do. But to equivocate to a misguided audience while also reaching for a more “sophisticated” conservative\* one. The idea is to make articles that do sound plausible. In the Climate Change denier subject I have seen such moves. Like when a scientist that has connection with deniers publishes an article about how there is an explanation of how warming is paradoxically causing more snow to fall in the middle of Antarctica and that passes peer review. \*\* But then, because the researcher has a lot of buddies among deniers the researcher later forgets to mention that warming was a reason and conveniently “forgets” to tell their denier buddies that the coastal areas are still continuing to melt like a motherfucker. So it is with Murray because he knows he will be heard by the extremists they are pandering they “expand” on what they do think about what is the most important factor. > **[Charles Murray](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/charles-murray)** > > Charles Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has become one of the most influential social scientists in America, using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic... > [@](#): > > “You want to have a job training program for welfare mothers? You think that’s going to cure the welfare problem? Well, when you construct that job training program and try to decide what jobs they might qualify for, you had better keep in mind that the mean IQ of welfare mothers is somewhere in the 80s, which means that you have certain limitations in what you’re going to accomplish.” > —Interview on race and IQ, “Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg,” PBS, 1994 The position he has is that race is a very significant part on the “dysgenic pressures” that gives us the differences in intelligence. Now, since “race” has not been established as giving special genes of intelligence to just a few “races” the argument Murray is claiming later is that he was not talking about how much genes influenced the differences. To me it is like if Murray found a way to be paid for becoming a professional at batting his eyelashes with false innocence. > [@](#): > > “The professional consensus is that the United States has experienced dysgenic pressures throughout either most of the century (the optimists) or all of the century (the pessimists). Women of all races and ethnic groups follow this pattern in similar fashion. There is some evidence that blacks and Latinos are experiencing even more severe dysgenic pressures than whites, which could lead to further divergence between whites and other groups in future generations.” > —The Bell Curve, 1994 As critics point out, since the evidence Murray and others used was flimsy then it was really a dick move (like the climate change deniers) to continue to use “dysgenic pressures” when Murray was not being clear on how much genes were not supposed to be as influential (his fig leaf to researchers and misguided interviewers) when the term actually does includes genetics (what the extremists wanted to hear from the likes of Murray, they get the conclusion that genes are the most important part). > **[In Response to "Race, Genes and I.Q."](https://newrepublic.com/article/120890/responses-new-republics-bell-curve-excerpt)** > > From the archives. > [@](#): > > Base Data, Dante Ramos > > Murray and Herrnstein raise and dismiss analyses that say tests can be valid, but can still be affected by other environmental factors. One such analysis is John Ogbu’s distinction among autonomous, immigrant and castelike minorities; the third type, Ogbu suggests, score low on tests because of intense discrimination. In these pages, Jeff Hoffman and Ray Hammond suggested a mechanism: expectations of failure hamper intellectual competition and development, among blacks (see “Rumors of Inferiority,” September 9, 1985). > > Murray and Herrnstein introduce Ogbu’s theory as another notion easily punctured by reality. But the authors’ choice of contrary data is bizarre. While the black I.Q. mean of 85 falls far below the average for whites, black Africans, who suffer from no caste status, have, according to Murray and Herrnstein, an average I.Q. of at most 75. Think about what this means. If black African I.Q.s are distributed in a bell curve similar to that among Americans, there are as many certifiably retarded African blacks as there are African blacks with the same intelligence as an average American white. Are they kidding? The ridiculousness of this should lead anyone to question at least the interpretation and probably the data themselves. Surely one key piece of The Bell Curve’s logic – that by process of elimination, we can rule out most environmental sources of I.Q. differences among races – collapses. > > Granted, the caste explanation isn’t savory. But caste explains why the difference between environmental and genetic factors does matter deeply, and why Murray and Herrnstein’s clan pride is a perfectly destructive recommendation. Even if they’re right about a substantial genetic component of the black-white difference, the environmental component is still large; a clan pride based on revering Michael Jordan – and rejecting intellectual role models – would only increase the environment-based black-white differential. (If you consider how the existence of genetic differences would intensify caste status, the environmental piece would grow even more.) Worse, if the genetic component is small, Murray and Herrnstein’s conservative multiculturalism would make the black-white difference skyrocket. Empirically minded neoliberals should cringe at a cultural construct that would produce more perverse effects than the worst work disincentive ever devised. Talk about losing ground. - After years of noticing that many climate change deniers are also bigots I do have my doubts about how sophisticated that audience is. \*\* And again: Murray has avoided peer review like the plague. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=23)