# 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:** 40
**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:** [March 31, 2018, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/781 "2018-03-31T23:03:53Z")
Also from that article > [@](#): > > But mothers have also been found to play an extremely significant role in this non-genetic part of intelligence, with some studies suggesting a secure bond between mother and child is intimately tied to intelligence. > > Researchers at the University of Washington found that a secure emotional bond between a mother and child is crucial for the growth of some parts of the brain. After analysing the way a group of mothers related to their children for seven years, the researchers found children who were supported emotionally and had their intellectual needs fulfilled had a 10 per cent larger hippocampus at 13 on average than children whose mothers were emotionally distant. The hippocampus is an area of the brain associated with memory, learning and stress response. So an obvious alternative hypothesis is that women who have higher IQ tend to create a more intellectually stimulating and chllenging environment for their children and resulting in an increased ability to succeed at standardized tests. Other than basic demographic characteristics it doesn’t look like they corrected for the effect of being raised by a high IQ parent. To do so would have reuired a very difficult study involving adopted children which would open a whole new set of confounding variables, since adopted children and adoptive parents are not a representative subgroup. ---
**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:** [March 31, 2018, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/782 "2018-03-31T23:12:46Z")
I find it highly coincidental that the one characteristic that people point to that apparently divides people into distinct genetic groups of differing intelligence, also happens to be the genetic characteristic that is most immediately obvious to the eye, is strongly correlated with differences in culture and which has been the basis of discrimination for generations, rather than say, blood type, dislike of cilantro, or the ability to roll ones tongue. Nope, it all comes down to skin color. ---
**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 1, 2018, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/783 "2018-04-01T00:01:33Z")
Where did Ale and Novelty Bubble go? It would be nice to have them back in the mix again. Evil Economist, are you familiar with economists John List and Steve Levitt of the University of Chicago, and Harvard’s Roland Fryer? List and Levitt discussed the trio’s $1 million educational intervention pilot project on the Freakonomics podcast: > **[Does “Early Education” Come Way Too Late? (Replay) - Freakonomics](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-early-education-come-way-too-late-rebroadcast/)** > > Does “Early Education” Come Way Too Late? (Replay) - Freakonomics > [@](#): > > LIST: Let’s jump right into the results. > LEVITT: These are huge, huge gains. > That is to say, incentivizing and teaching parents how to teach their kids really worked. > LIST: So, a first thing to note is we have huge differences across kids. Now, what I mean by that is that our program really, really helps Hispanic and white students and it doesn’t help blacks at all. > DUBNER: How disappointing was it to see that Hispanics and whites moved a lot and blacks didn’t? > LIST: Yeah, I think it’s a mixed bag. I think that when we started down this research agenda, part of our mission was, first of all, to learn about the racial achievement gap and learn about how we can lower that gap. Most of the time we lump Hispanic and African-American kids together, and we say, “What is the solution for minorities in public education?” And I think this particular result teaches us that the education production function across these two groups is very different and the solution will not be the same across African-American and Hispanic families. > DUBNER: Do you have any ideas for African-American families? > LIST: We have a few things boiling, but nothing that has popped up that moves African-American families. > LEVITT: And to be honest, we have no real theory for why that is. The two sets of parents were equally engaged in the program and we can control for all sorts of background characteristics and nothing really explains it. So to me that’s really a puzzle, and a puzzle that I don’t have an answer for. Yup. Total mystery. No possible explanation I could think of, that’s for sure. :dubious: Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/784 "2018-04-01T00:23:52Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yup. Total mystery. No possible explanation I could think of, that’s for sure. :dubious: If you think the answer is obvious, you are a bigot, not a scientist. Right? Bigots are _committed_ to a narrow and specific narrative, not accepting any other. Anyway, from your link: [INDENT][INDENT][INDENT] So, kids could be really high achievers in terms of math and reading but gain nothing from our program if they didn’t have these sort of sit-still skills. But on the other hand if you were above average on these non-cognitive skills, you got huge benefits from our program. So what does this mean? Well, for one thing, I think it intuitively makes sense — that there’s a threshold for being able to learn. If the kids can’t concentrate, it’s hard for them to learn and no matter how hard the parents try it’s going to be hard to make gains. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT] Ok, so some kids have trouble sitting still and focusing. Two things off the top of my head relate to that. They are a) being male rather than female and b) [disproportionate exposure to lead](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/). If I was principle investigator, I’d order bloodtests. But hey, just an hypothesis. ---
**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 1, 2018, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/785 "2018-04-01T00:51:50Z")
Are you under the mistaken impression that I have not repeatedly referenced lead exposure in this thread? Furthermore, I thought I had also made clear that I am not invested in this argument for its own sake. If we could go back to the so-called “soft bigotry of low expectations”, I would be glad to abandon the topic and frown disapprovingly at anyone who raised it. My dog in this fight is educators like my wife, and teacher unions. My bete noire is the “educational reform” movement that has succeeded in getting predominantly black public schools labeled as “failing”, and penalized or broken up, because their students do not perform as well as those at predominantly white or Asian schools. If “reformers” would acknowledge that significantly raising black kids’ test scores is something we as a society simply do not know how to do—at least not in schools or associated programs—I’m perfectly happy for them to blame it all on lead, or whatever they want. As long as they take the pressure off educators (including administrators) and teacher unions, I’m more than satisfied. But that’s not the lay of the land right now, and has not been for well over a decade. And still, a truly unbiased scientist who is open to all possible explanations would consider in light of this outcome that there might be something inherently different about black kids. To declare it a mystifying “puzzle” does in itself show that they are not treating it as a purely scientific question. Which is understandable! But it makes your objection a particularly misplaced one. > [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > I find it highly coincidental that the one characteristic that people point to that apparently divides people into distinct genetic groups of differing intelligence, also happens to be the genetic characteristic that is most immediately obvious to the eye, is strongly correlated with differences in culture and which has been the basis of discrimination for generations, rather than say, blood type, dislike of cilantro, or the ability to roll ones tongue. It’s not coincidental. That this correlation is so much easier to notice is precisely why people notice it. It’s very plausible that there’s a tribe in Uganda or someplace that has the same genetic distinctness and same average high aptitude as East Asians, outpacing whites—but because they are far less numerous, far less powerful, and are carelessly lumped into the catchall category “black”, we don’t know about them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/786 "2018-04-01T01:02:37Z")
I’m gonna hit your post narrowly: > [@SlackerInc](#): > > To declare it a mystifying “puzzle” does in itself show that they are not treating it as a purely scientific question. No worries, but that’s not the case. The word “Puzzle” is core to scientific rhetoric, 2nd only perhaps to “Falsification”. Thomas Kuhn I believe brought that familiar word into common usage within science. The idea was that normal science consisted of a sequence of puzzles to be solved. He furthermore theorized that when puzzles accumulated to a certain point, there would be a change in intellectual framework (or paradigm). Then normal science could begin again. So when you read the word “Puzzle”, that’s a shorthand for, “Fodder for further research.” On your broader point, no I haven’t read the entire thread. Also, my knowledge of school reform is spotty. Except insofar as I understand that despite a great deal of research we don’t have a strong grip in what works in schools in general. My prime irritation is reading facile treatments of race and IQ by internet warriors who wouldn’t know a standard deviation if it bit them in the nose. ---
**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 1, 2018, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/787 "2018-04-01T01:08:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Are you under the mistaken impression that I have not repeatedly referenced lead exposure in this thread? Are you under the mistaken impression that that helps your genetics case? Indeed, that was pointed many time before by me and others in previous discussions. ---
**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 1, 2018, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/788 "2018-04-01T01:52:34Z")
No, lead doesn’t help the genetics case. But again, as long as they stop blaming educators, I’m good. Measure, you can play semantic games about “puzzle”, or you can acknowledge that the clear reading of the last paragraph I quoted was “we’ve eliminated every conceivable possibility, and right now we don’t have any idea what we could even investigate.” IOW, implicitly: “It’s axiomatic that it could not possibly be an inherent limitation of black kids not found in white or Hispanic kids, so we are stuck.” That axiom is not based on strict adherence to the scientific method—but it is, again, understandable. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**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 1, 2018, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/789 "2018-04-01T02:03:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > No, lead doesn’t help the genetics case. But again, as long as they stop blaming educators, I’m good. > > Measure, you can play semantic games about “puzzle”, or you can acknowledge that the clear reading of the last paragraph I quoted was “we’ve eliminated every conceivable possibility, and right now we don’t have any idea what we could even investigate.” IOW, implicitly: “It’s axiomatic that it could not possibly be an inherent limitation of black kids not found in white or Hispanic kids, so we are stuck.” That axiom is not based on strict adherence to the scientific method—but it is, again, understandable. IMHO they have not looked hard enough. > **[One Man’s Millions Turn a Community in Florida Around (Published 2015)](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-florida.html)** > > The once-troubled community of Tangelo Park has become an education success story with the financial backing of a hotel executive who grew up in Manhattan. > [@](#): > > ORLANDO, Fla. — Two decades ago, Harris Rosen, who grew up poor on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and became wealthy in the Florida hotel business, decided to shepherd part of his fortune into a troubled community with the melodious sounding name of Tangelo Park. > > A quick snap from the city’s tourist engine, this neighborhood of small, once-charming houses seemed a world away from theme park pleasures as its leaders tried to beat back drugs, crime and too many shuttered homes. Nearly half its students had dropped out of school. > > Twenty-one years later, with an infusion of $11 million of Mr. Rosen’s money so far, Tangelo Park is a striking success story. Nearly all its seniors graduate from high school, and most go on to college on full scholarships Mr. Rosen has financed. > > Young children head for kindergarten primed for learning, or already reading, because of the free day care centers and a prekindergarten program Mr. Rosen provides. Property values have climbed. Houses and lawns, with few exceptions, are welcoming. Crime has plummeted. > > “We are sitting on gold here now,” said Jeroline G. Adkinson, president of the Tangelo Park Civic Association and a longtime resident of the mostly black community. “It has helped change the community.” > [@](#): > > Sitting with his feet propped up on his old, weathered wooden desk, Mr. Rosen, 75, fit, trim and not given to formalities (his shelter dogs are known to wander about the room), said the program was rooted in an element absent in many American neighborhoods. > > “Hope,” Mr. Rosen said. > > Why devote countless hours to school if college, with its high cost, is out of reach? > > “If you don’t have any hope,” he added, “then what’s the point?” > > The Tangelo Park Program succeeds in large part because of its simplicity. There is no charter school for its children — about 900 under the age of 18 — no large bureaucracy, no hunt for money, no staff to speak of. It is run almost entirely by volunteers, mostly community leaders. > > In all, Mr. Rosen now spends about $500,000 a year, less than when he began the program, he said. > > Mr. Rosen’s plan gives no money directly to the schools, directing it instead to help preschool children and provide scholarships for high school graduates. > > A details man, he prefers to show up: to every monthly board meeting but two for 21 years and to many scholarship and graduation ceremonies, including those for day cares, all while running seven hotels and carving out time for his four children. > > “This program is drastically different from others because it wraps both arms around the community and says we are here to serve you and help you become the best person that you can be,” said Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the director of the King Center in Atlanta, which gave Mr. Rosen an award in January. “A lot of these programs, they have only one piece here and one piece there.” > Photo > Mr. Rosen’s office at the Rosen Inn International, where he lived for 16 years while building his hotel business. Credit Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times > > Mr. Rosen, who heads Rosen Hotels and Resorts, provides college scholarships each year to all Tangelo Park seniors headed for Florida public colleges and trade schools. The scholarships pay tuition, room and board, books and travel costs. > > For the youngest children, he created a system of free day care centers in Tangelo Park homes, ensuring that the certified providers, who are also the homeowners, instruct children as young as 2. He also started and finances a prekindergarten program in the local elementary school and offers parents training through the University of Central Florida on how to support their children. > > “This has been so good for the children of Tangelo Park,” said Diondra Newton, the principal at Tangelo Park Elementary, speaking about the day care centers. “You see a huge difference between kids who did the program and those who come from elsewhere.” As in the “What to do when the robots take over peacefully” thread, I have to say it again: IQ is not destiny. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/790 "2018-04-01T02:15:35Z")
Well, I listened to it. I admit being prone to distraction throughout, but Harris and Murray sound reasonable enough. This is not an endorsement of their theses, just that I didn’t hear anything I thought was obviously wrong. SlackerInc, however, is quite clearly a dumbass. ---
**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 1, 2018, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/791 "2018-04-01T02:47:50Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > IMHO they have not looked hard enough. > > [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-florida.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-florida.html) That’s great, but what is your hypothesis for why the Chicago intervention got such strong results with Hispanic (and white) kids? BTW, it seems to me that a positive spin on that program’s results could be that the black kids’ teachers did a fantastic job teaching them. All this intervention, proven to make a big difference with other matched families, but their teachers had already maxed them out to the peak of their potential. Quite the opposite of the reformers’ portrayal. And indeed, the average black kid in a school district gets more money spent on them than their white classmates, due to special education teachers with small class sizes, paras, Title 1 reading specialists, etc. Although then you get some activists complaining that it’s racist to have a disproportionate share of black kids assigned to special ed, which is just so maddening. Really? The school district is expressing its prejudice against black kids by devoting the lion’s share of limited resources to them? Gaahhh. :smack: Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**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 1, 2018, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/792 "2018-04-01T02:49:17Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, I listened to it. I admit being prone to distraction throughout, but Harris and Murray sound reasonable enough. > > This is not an endorsement of their theses, just that I didn’t hear anything I thought was obviously wrong. > > SlackerInc, however, is quite clearly a dumbass. That is because books like “the bell curve” had indeed items that were racist: like what to do with the evidence presented (social solutions that do not follow from the evidence presented) but a lot should had been OK, but his previous work and his focus later shows that indeed he is counting on many to ignore the ugly forest by just pointing at the nice tree he mostly produced. > **[Why Is Charles Murray Odious? ❧ Current Affairs](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/why-is-charles-murray-odious)** > > Less because of his empirical methods than because of his horrible moral values… _ **Why Is Charles Murray Odious?** _ > [@](#): > > From his earliest days, Charles Murray was—to put it charitably—a shockingly oblivious human being when it came to matters of race. As a teenager in the 1950s, he and some high school friends staged a cross burning on top of a hill. Murray claims he was stunned when the residents of his Iowa town instantly thought the flaming cross was somehow racist. “It never crossed our minds that this had any larger significance,” he insisted. Forty years later, with the publication of The Bell Curve, Murray would once again profess himself surprised that people could view him as a racist. “I’m befuddled by it… I don’t know what to make of it,” Murray said when even old acquaintances began calling his book dishonest and bigoted. Murray wondered why he was being “punished” for producing perfectly valid social science research on a matter of public import. > [@](#): > > It is crucial to distinguish between the things Charles Murray actually does argue, and the things he is said to have argued. Murray often gets the better of his opponents because they stretch the case against him beyond its limits, allowing him to correctly point out that they are misrepresenting him. Let us be clear, then: Charles Murray does not conclude that the black-white gap in IQ test scores must entirely be the product of genetic inferiority, nor that black social outcomes are entirely genetic in origin. The Bell Curve is not, strictly speaking, “about” race and IQ. And Murray does not argue in favor of a program of eugenics (though the error is easy to make, as Murray speaks positively of the work of previous eugenists and seeming to lament that the Nazi “perversion of eugenics… effectively wiped the idea from public discourse in the West”). Nor should Murray necessarily be called, as so many label him, a “pseudoscientist.” His writings are above-average in their statistical scrupulousness, and he uses no less logical rigor than many highly qualified social scientists do. The problem is far less in his use of the scientific method than in his normative values and conceptions of the good, which affect the uses to which he puts his science. > > However, having made clear what Murray does not say, let us examine what he does. The following claims are defended in Murray’s writings: > > [ol] > [li]Black people tend to be dumber than white people, which is probably partly why white people tend to have more money than black people. This is likely to be partly because of genetics, a question that would be valid and useful to investigate.[/li][li] Black cultural achievements are almost negligible. Western peoples have a superior tendency toward creating “objectively” more “excellent” art and music. Differences in cultural excellence across groups might also have biological roots.[/li][li] We should return to the conception of equality held by the Founding Fathers, who thought black people were subhumans. A situation in which white people are politically and economically dominant over black people is natural and acceptable.[/li][/ol] > > Taken together, these three claims show Murray to be bigoted, ignorant, and ignorant of his own bigotry. They more than justify the conclusion that he is a racist. And they make it extraordinary that anyone could be surprised that Murray’s acceptance as a legitimate mainstream scholar causes a reaction of raw fury and disgust. Charles Murray would likely dispute that the above three points are made in his work. But the textual evidence is conclusive. > [@](#): > > Note, however, that the agnosticism is on the amount of genetic contribution to ethnic IQ testing differences; the fact that there is a genetic contribution they find “highly likely.” Murray and Herrnstein attempt to bolster the case for a genetic component by offering evidence that the gap persists even controlling for socioeconomic status, and that people in Africa also have lower IQs than white Americans. > > But why did this claim actually make people so angry? It is, after all, an empirical hypothesis rather than statement about moral value. Murray and Herrnstein professed not to be able to understand what difference it would possibly make whether the gap was genetic or the result of environmental factors. As they wrote: > \* > “Imagine that tomorrow it is discovered that the B/W difference in measured intelligence is entirely genetic in origin. The worst case has come to pass. What difference would this news make in the way that you approach the question of ethnic differences in intelligence? Not someone else but you. What has changed for the worse in knowing that the difference is genetic?… We cannot think of a legitimate argument why any encounter between individual ethnicities and blacks need be affected by the knowledge that an aggregate ethnic difference in measured intelligence is genetic instead of environmental.”\* > > In this statement, one can see why many people felt The Bell Curve to be a “dishonest” book. Murray and Herrnstein suggested that nobody should be upset by the question of genes, race, and IQ, because unless we assign some normative worth to IQ, the answer should make no moral difference. (Leave aside the fact that Murray and Herrnstein did slip into normative language about IQ.) Why would a genetic answer make a difference, unless you were a racist? If you believe all people are equal, surely you believe that this would hold regardless of what their genes turned out to be. > > But this statement buries the fact that there are very important moral implications to the genetic question: the more the difference can be proven to be genetic in origin, the less responsible white people are for the disproportionate poverty affecting black communities. The massive black-white wealth gap, and the millions of black people in prison, aren’t the lingering effects of multiple hundred years of brutal oppression: they’re the inevitable and intractable results of something to do with black people themselves. > > This is the aspect of the book that makes me the angriest, and that I sense is responsible for a lot of people being unwilling to take Murray seriously: he pretends not to even realize that his thesis allows white America to feel exonerated for the condition of black America. He says that it would make no difference whether the IQ test differences (and therefore economic differences) were genetic. But it would make a massive difference: it would relieve white people who think intelligence means merit from having to feel guilty about reaping the benefits of living in a society built on racial discrimination. His thesis is not just an academic question about nature and nurture: it would also provide grist for the argument that slavery didn’t matter very much in the creation of present social outcomes; the reason black families have, on average, 1/10 of the wealth of white families, has little to do with the fact that they were prevented from accruing assets for over half the history of the United States, during which time they were kept in chains, beaten, raped, and murdered. Rather, it’s because of them and the fact that they just inherently lack the “cognitive ability” to catch up. And that lack of cognitive ability has little to do with the fact that for hundreds of years, if a black child was caught with a book, white people would whip them. (As they say, since “the African black population has not been subjected to the historical legacy of American black slavery,” and Africans are even less intelligent, “the hypothesis about the special circumstances of American blacks depressing their test scores is not substantiated by the African data.”) The question may be empirical, but there are potential social ramifications here, and anyone discussing the issue could at least try to demonstrate a marginal awareness of them. > > It’s Murray’s flippant treatment of this history that makes some scholars so angry at his work. He doesn’t even take the widespread existence of racism seriously as a hypothesis. After all, a black-white IQ score difference, combined with evidence that IQ is in some degree heritable, is actually consistent with the idea that black people are genetically superior to white people in intelligence, and that their scores are depressed by early exposure to a society that devalues them from the earliest years of their lives (recall Malcolm X’s teacher responding to his aspiration toward being a lawyer by telling him carpentry was more realistic). To put it differently: Black people could inherit average IQs of 110, while white people inherit average IQs of 100, but the disadvantages of living in a racist society from birth could mean that by a young age, black people end up with average IQs of 95 and white people stay at 100. As Ned Block explains, there is a hidden premise that a role for genetics must necessarily disadvantage blacks, but that’s not necessarily the case. > [@](#): > > I do not see, then, how if the word “racism” has any content, Charles Murray is anything other than a racist. He has argued: (1) that black people are dumber than white people, (2) that black culture is objectively less accomplished and worthwhile, and (3) that the Founding Fathers’ conception of social equality, an inherently racist vision in its every aspect, is worth reviving. Of course, I do not know whether Charles Murray knows he is a racist, just as I do not know what was in his mind when he burned a cross on a hill. But, when we put aside all of the distortions and exaggerations about his work, and examine its text closely, I do not see how we can escape the conclusion that Charles Murray thinks black people are inferior to white people, and that having them in socially, economically, and politically subordinate positions is acceptable. (And let me be clear: this is about black and white. Murray often praises Asians in order to prove that he is not a white supremacist. But with racism, the question is not: “Do you think you are the best race of all the races?” It is: “Do you hold bigoted and unfair perceptions of a particular race, and endorse their social subjugation?” There is a unique white bias against blacks in particular, as a result of the color line that has run through the entirety of American history.) Now, that was from a historical and sociological point of view, in the science front most scientists do not see the reasoning coming from Murray and others as convincing either: > **[How Science and Genetics are Reshaping the Race Debate of the 21st Century -...](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/)** > > by Vivian Chou figures by Daniel Utter Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States has been marked by the brewing storms of racial conflicts. A rise in racial incidents ensued in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s... > [@](#): > > New findings in genetics tear down old ideas about race > > Estimating our ancestral composition down to 0.1% seem to suggest that there are exact, categorical divisions between human populations. But reality is far less simple. Compared to the general public’s enthusiasm for ancestry testing, the reaction from scientists has been considerably more lukewarm. Research indicates that the concept of “five races” does, to an extent, describe the way human populations are distributed among the continents—but the lines between races are much more blurred than ancestry testing companies would have us believe (Figure 1B). > > A landmark 2002 study by Stanford scientists examined the question of human diversity by looking at the distribution across seven major geographical regions of 4,000 alleles. Alleles are the different “flavors” of a gene. For instance, all humans have the same genes that code for hair: the different alleles are why hair comes in all types of colors and textures. > > In the Stanford study, over 92% of alleles were found in two or more regions, and almost half of the alleles studied were present in all seven major geographical regions. The observation that the vast majority of the alleles were shared over multiple regions, or even throughout the entire world, points to the fundamental similarity of all people around the world—an idea that has been supported by many other studies (Figure 1B). > [@](#): > > However, even if scientists agree that race is, at most, a social construct, any cursory search of the internet reveals that the broader public is not convinced of this. After all, if an Asian person looks so different from a European, how could they not be from distinct groups? Even if most scientists reject the concept of “race” as a biological concept, race exists, undeniably, as a social and political concept. > > The popular classifications of race are based chiefly on skin color, with other relevant features including height, eyes, and hair. Though these physical differences may appear, on a superficial level, to be very dramatic, they are determined by only a minute portion of the genome: we as a species have been estimated to share 99.9% of our DNA with each other. The few differences that do exist reflect differences in environments and external factors, not core biology. > [@](#): > > Just as the alt-right is no longer an easily dismissed fringe group, their arguments have some factual basis, and cannot be swept aside as the babbling of the scientific illiterate. The alt-right is not clumsy in their use of science and genetics in their battle for their “ideals.” Those who oppose the alt-right, and other racist entities, must arm themselves with the same weapons: education, namely scientific and genetic literacy. > > Mounting scientific evidence has shown that humans are fundamentally more similar than different from each other. Nonetheless, racism has persisted. Scientific findings are often ignored, or otherwise actively misinterpreted and misused to further racist agendas of extreme political groups. Opponents of these forces must, through their own education and awareness, combat these misleading interpretations and representations of scientific findings. > > Today, the question of “race” is no longer merely a political and social issue: as science has rapidly advanced, it has become irrevocably intertwined. The genome contains powerful insights about our biology that could unite us as a species, but which could also be dangerous and divisive if used without understanding. As we look forward to 2017 and onwards, it becomes ever more important to understand what our DNA says about what it means to be human. > > Vivian Chou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard Medical School. ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/793 "2018-04-01T03:30:03Z")
That the “lines between races are blurry” is an incredibly pointless statement. So are the lines between people of low, medium, and high IQ! Or between tall and short, skinny and fat, strong and weak…etc. And “we as a species have been estimated to share 99.9% of our DNA with each other” sounds impressive…until you point out that chimps and humans have 99% of DNA in common. Vivian Chou, however, is talking more sensibly than most posters here. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/794 "2018-04-01T03:31:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That’s great, but what is your hypothesis for why the Chicago intervention got such strong results with Hispanic (and white) kids? I do think that was missed was that the vicious circle of not properly helping the parents too. (there are a lot of single parent families in the black community too and that is a strong reason for the failure of the intervention). In the example I found it shows what it should be done to prevent that circle of poverty [that also affects IQ](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/poverty-intelligence-aging-brain-low-income-inequality-a7333506.html). I have seen elsewhere that the effects of racism are less when there are organizations or places where black people are successful to give not only hope but also support to minorities. Other evidence also points to helping black families the proper way makes a difference, but what we have now is the idea that funding new bombers for defence is better than making a more safe and progressive society by helping not only the schools, but also the students and the families directly. > **[Breaking the Cycle of Poverty by Helping Kids and Their Parents Succeed](https://www.aecf.org/blog/breaking-the-cycle-of-poverty-by-helping-kids-and-their-parents-succeed)** > > Educare Atlanta, the Center for Working Families and Dunbar Elementary School in southwest Atlanta are developing a strong, more closely aligned partnership to ensure parents and children succeed together. In essence what the Chicago intervention did was to just educate the parents on how to teach their kids, but their poverty, prevalent racist attitudes against them and bit of bad cultural choices were not countered properly. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > BTW, it seems to me that a positive spin on that program’s results could be that the black kids’ teachers did a fantastic job teaching them. All this intervention, proven to make a big difference with other matched families, but their teachers had already maxed them out to the peak of their potential. Quite the opposite of the reformers’ portrayal. > > And indeed, the average black kid in a school district gets more money spent on them than their white classmates, due to special education teachers with small class sizes, paras, Title 1 reading specialists, etc. Although then you get some activists complaining that it’s racist to have a disproportionate share of black kids assigned to special ed, which is just so maddening. Really? The school district is expressing its prejudice against black kids by devoting the lion’s share of limited resources to them? Gaahhh. :smack: That is nice, but that is what Murray and their ilk are against. > **[There’s still no good reason to believe black-white IQ differences are due to...](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics)** > > Our response to criticisms. > [@](#): > > The other side of Murray’s repeated assertions that the black-white IQ gap is partially genetic is his claim that there is ultimately very little that can be done about average levels of IQ; even if the environment contributes to IQ, any inequalities are basically intractable. Murray again: > > > [@](#): > > > > There is this notion that if traits are genetically determined, that’s bad, and if traits are environmentally determined, that’s good, because we can do something about them if they are environmental. And if there is one lesson that we have learned from the last 70 years of social policy, it is that changing environments in ways that produce measurable results is really, really hard and we actually don’t know how to do it, no matter how much money we spend. [38:34] > [@](#): > > If Murray and Harris want to make a science out of their intuitions about how different groups of people have been “tuned” to behave, they will need to come up with a coherent biological account of what exactly genetic “tuning” of behavior entails and how it might be assessed empirically. It is, I acknowledge, a deeply complex question, both philosophically and scientifically. > > In fact, I will close by noting that not even the three of us are completely in agreement about it: I (Turkheimer) am convinced that the question is irredeemably unscientific; Nisbett accepts it as a legitimate scientific question, and thinks evidence points fairly strongly in the direction of the black-white gap being entirely environmental in origin; while Harden questions the quality of the existing evidence, but thinks more determinative data may be found in future genetic knowledge. > > We agree on this, however: Murray and Harris’s current endorsement of a genetic contribution to the black-white IQ gap is based on a weak brew of unexamined intuition and sketchy empirical evidence. In a free country and a free academy, scientists can speculate about whatever they want, but their speculations should not be mistaken for a scientific consensus or a legitimate basis for social policy. ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/795 "2018-04-01T03:37:49Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Evil Economist, are you familiar with economists John List and Steve Levitt of the University of Chicago, and Harvard’s Roland Fryer? List and Levitt discussed the trio’s $1 million educational intervention pilot project on the Freakonomics podcast: > > [Does “Early Education” Come Way Too Late? (Replay) - Freakonomics](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/early-education-rebroadcast/) > > > [@](#): > > > > LIST: Let’s jump right into the results. > > LEVITT: These are huge, huge gains. > > That is to say, incentivizing and teaching parents how to teach their kids really worked. > > LIST: So, a first thing to note is we have huge differences across kids. Now, what I mean by that is that our program really, really helps Hispanic and white students and it doesn’t help blacks at all. > > DUBNER: How disappointing was it to see that Hispanics and whites moved a lot and blacks didn’t? > > LIST: Yeah, I think it’s a mixed bag. I think that when we started down this research agenda, part of our mission was, first of all, to learn about the racial achievement gap and learn about how we can lower that gap. Most of the time we lump Hispanic and African-American kids together, and we say, “What is the solution for minorities in public education?” And I think this particular result teaches us that the education production function across these two groups is very different and the solution will not be the same across African-American and Hispanic families. > > DUBNER: Do you have any ideas for African-American families? > > LIST: We have a few things boiling, but nothing that has popped up that moves African-American families. > > LEVITT: And to be honest, we have no real theory for why that is. The two sets of parents were equally engaged in the program and we can control for all sorts of background characteristics and nothing really explains it. So to me that’s really a puzzle, and a puzzle that I don’t have an answer for. > > Yup. Total mystery. No possible explanation I could think of, that’s for sure. :dubious: You understand that this outcome is inconsistent with the genetic hypothesis, right? ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/796 "2018-04-01T03:40:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > All this intervention, proven to make a big difference with other matched families, but their teachers had already maxed them out to the peak of their potential. Quite the opposite of the reformers’ portrayal. You believe that the way current black students are taught is the best possible way to teach black students and cannot be improved in any way? No offence, but that seems like an extremely stupid assumption. ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/797 "2018-04-01T03:47:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That the “lines between races are blurry” is an incredibly pointless statement. So are the lines between people of low, medium, and high IQ! Or between tall and short, skinny and fat, strong and weak…etc. > > And “we as a species have been estimated to share 99.9% of our DNA with each other” sounds impressive…until you point out that chimps and humans have 99% of DNA in common. > **[National Geographic](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/)** > > Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration. Chimps, Humans \*\*96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds \*\* > [@](#): > > Despite the similarities in human and chimp genomes, the scientists identified some 40 million differences among the three billion DNA molecules, or nucleotides, in each genome. > [@](#): > > The vast majority of those differences are not biologically significant, but researchers were able to identify a couple thousand differences that are potentially important to the evolution of the human lineage. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > Vivian Chou, however, is talking more sensibly than most posters here. And as shown here and many times already, you are still not sensible about this subject. In fact you do really reach for debating tactics that are very similar to creationists or climate change deniers, this chimp item shows how you try to **stupidly** minimize the similarities we all humans have using the similarities that we have with chimps when indeed the differences are noted and not insignificant. That was just like climate change deniers attempting to make the increase in PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere as insignificant. ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/798 "2018-04-01T03:54:55Z")
No complex human endeavor is perfect and unable to be improved in any way. But I think schools, especially in blue states, do a much better job than they get credit for. GIGO, I don’t share Murray’s politics. And I agree with you that we should be financing far fewer bombers in favor of spending more on social programs. I think Sam would agree too, even if Murray would not. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**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 1, 2018, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/799 "2018-04-01T03:59:35Z")
My source was Scientific American: > **[Tiny Genetic Differences between Humans and Other Primates Pervade the Genome](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny-genetic-differences-between-humans-and-other-primates-pervade-the-genome/)** > > Genome comparisons reveal the DNA that distinguishes Homo sapiens from its kin > [@](#): > > [C]himps and bonobos in particular take pride of place as our nearest living relatives, sharing approximately 99 percent of our DNA, with gorillas trailing at 98 percent. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2018, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/800 "2018-04-01T04:18:44Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > No, lead doesn’t help the genetics case. But again, as long as they stop blaming educators, I’m good. > > Measure, you can play semantic games about “puzzle”, or you can acknowledge that the clear reading of the last paragraph I quoted was “we’ve eliminated every conceivable possibility, and right now we don’t have any idea what we could even investigate.” IOW, implicitly: “It’s axiomatic that it could not possibly be an inherent limitation of black kids not found in white or Hispanic kids, so we are stuck.” That axiom is not based on strict adherence to the scientific method—but it is, again, understandable. Not a semantic game. Nor is your characterization accurate. > [@](#): > > LIST: We have a few things boiling, but nothing that has popped up that moves African-American families. > LEVITT: And to be honest, we have no real theory for why that is. The two sets of parents were equally engaged in the program and we can control for all sorts of background characteristics and nothing really explains it. So to me that’s really a puzzle, and a puzzle that I don’t have an answer for. Seriously, they didn’t say they tried everything conceivable. They aren’t blithering morons. They know that IQ has increased over time, while [racial disparities in IQ have declined](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics). This basically destroys the genetic monocausal position as a determinant of IQ. Otherwise, IQ wouldn’t move around over time. So it’s understandable that Levitt would say what he did: to do otherwise would be pure bigotry substituting for careful thought. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=39) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=41)