Interesting podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame)

[Bryan_Ekers]

@SlackerInc

Sure, I don’t see why not. Yes, absolutely.

Yes.

I’ve said over and over that for me at least, this is not about some insistence that dark skin and high IQ are inherently mutually exclusive. And since sub-Saharan Africans with dark skin are so much more genetically diverse than are whites or East Asians, I don’t think they are comparable as a single group. It’s highly plausible to me that there are populations within that larger group that have just as much IQ advantage as whites or Asians, maybe more so. They just didn’t expand out over a whole continent and become extremely numerous while developing outward characteristics that make them stand out in a crowd.

Then it seems external characteristics are a suspect, possibly useless indicator of intelligence, no?

[SlackerInc]

@Bryan_Ekers

Then it seems external characteristics are a suspect, possibly useless indicator of intelligence, no?

Sure. And in the podcast, Sam pointedly says none of this gives any reason to prejudge an individual. IIRC, Murray agrees with that point.
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[Measure_for_Measure]

@SlackerInc

Aren’t you neglecting what strikes me as an obvious possibility: that the people who left Africa were a self-selected group that already possessed higher than average IQ before they left, before they became “white” or “Asian”?

1. I am not an anthropologist.

2. I understand that a great deal of migration was inter-generational. Meaning that it wasn’t exactly purposeful.

3. There’s an hypothesis that hunter-gathering is far more cognitively demanding than farming. Farming I would guess puts more stress on the skeletal frame.

4. Specifically, Jared Diamond’s take was that the hunter-gatherers he encountered were smarter than the typical European. The latter were helped in the 1500s by strong immune systems, guns and steel as proximate causes. The ultimate cause involved latitude. Accidents of history described by Paul Kennedy (1987) also played a role not addressed in detail by Diamond.

5. Leave DeLong’s twitted feed alone!

[Bryan_Ekers]

@SlackerInc

Sure. And in the podcast, Sam pointedly says none of this gives any reason to prejudge an individual. IIRC, Murray agrees with that point.

So if this applies to traits other than intelligence, what use is “race” as a concept, scientifically or otherwise?

[octopus]

@Bryan_Ekers

Well, even accepting that it’s an arbitrary process, could the definition for “race” be made as specific as the one for “planet”?

I think the definition or classification can be made to any desired degree of specificity. How much utility is gained I’m not sure of.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@SlackerInc

Maybe one day you’ll learn not to doubt me, if only to avoid publicly being shown up by someone you are so invested in painting as a dunce.

x.com

Cited.

On the contrary, you cited the first part–the bleedin’ obvious part–but not the second part. To wit:

@SlackerInc

As Steven Pinker says, “races” are just large extended families.

Sure: this is, in a trivial and qualified sense, true.

If IQ has a large genetic component (and it clearly does), it would be a miracle for each of these extended families to have the same amount of collective genetic potential for high IQ.

This is not what Pinker said in that quote. If you meant your “As Pinker says” to apply to only the first sentence and not to the entire paragraph, then I misunderstood what you wanted to appeal to authority for. If you meant it to apply to the entire paragraph, then my doubt in you is ever more justified.

[SlackerInc]

You misunderstood (I am feeling charitable, so I’ll set aside any feeling that you might have just desperately backtracked). I would have said “And…” or “He goes on to argue…” had I meant the rest of that to be directly from Pinker.

The rest of the paragraph is something Sam Harris has said repeatedly, including in this podcast. If you think it is off base (or “nonsense” or whatever it was), maybe you could say why. Do you think all families have the same quantity of genes for intelligence? How would one even determine the heritability of intelligence, were this true (do I have to explain why I ask this question?).

@Measure_for_Measure

1. I am not an anthropologist.

2. I understand that a great deal of migration was inter-generational. Meaning that it wasn’t exactly purposeful.

3. There’s an hypothesis that hunter-gathering is far more cognitively demanding than farming. Farming I would guess puts more stress on the skeletal frame.

4. Specifically, Jared Diamond’s take was that the hunter-gatherers he encountered were smarter than the typical European. The latter were helped in the 1500s by strong immune systems, guns and steel as proximate causes. The ultimate cause involved latitude. Accidents of history described by Paul Kennedy (1987) also played a role not addressed in detail by Diamond.

5. Leave DeLong’s twitted feed alone!

1. Neither am I, although my dad was one (Stanford Ph.D.) and we talked a lot about human origins.

2. It obviously wasn’t purposeful in the sense of “we’re going to establish the great populations of Europe and Asia”. But are you saying they did not purposefully move to areas not previously inhabited by humans?

3. I’m open to the possibility that nonwhites are more intelligent in ways that are not measured by aptitude tests. But keep in mind that the “Out of Africa” migration occurred roughly 60,000 years ago, while agriculture has only been around for 12,000 years or less (and more like 5,000 in a more intense, modern form).

4. I read GG&S. It came across to me as a book with an almost panicked agenda of countering any “Bell Curve” type narrative.

5. LOL…link a tweetstorm to a guy with his Twitter in his sig, and you have to know what is going to happen.

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[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@SlackerInc

You misunderstood (I am feeling charitable, so I’ll set aside any feeling that you might have just desperately backtracked).

That feeling you have shows your terrible reading comprehension across all domains, so don’t worry about setting it aside.

I would have said “And…” or “He goes on to argue…” had I meant the rest of that to be directly from Pinker.

Poor writing, but that’s fine.

The rest of the paragraph is something Sam Harris has said repeatedly, including in this podcast. If you think it is off base (or “nonsense” or whatever it was), maybe you could say why. Do you think all families have the same quantity of genes for intelligence? How would one even determine the heritability of intelligence, were this true (do I have to explain why I ask this question?).

Note the difference. From Pinker:

@Pinker

In theory, some of the varying genes could affect personality or intelligence (though any such differences would at most apply to averages, with vast overlap between the group members). This is not to say that such genetic differences are expected or that we have evidence for them, only that they are biologically possible.

(Emphasis added)
with your stupid claim:

@Your stupid claim

If IQ has a large genetic component (and it clearly does), it would be a miracle for each of these extended families to have the same amount of collective genetic potential for high IQ.

(emphasis added)

There is no reason whatsoever to believe that different “extended inbred families” would have different heritable genetic traits for intelligence. The default expectation would be for traits with universal adaptability to appear in roughly equal measures across all populations.

As I suspected, you took a trivially true thing Pinker said and flew it like a dollarstore kite in the winds of your smarmy racism. Perhaps you’re flying it in the winds blown by this Harris asshole; I don’t doubt that he leads you toward your cretinous racist conclusions. My only beef was with your risible appeal to Pinker’s authority to back up your claim. Now that it’s clear that you were only appealing to him for the trivially true part of the claim, that beef is gone, and I’ll continue laughing at your faux-intellectualism.

[Evil_Economist]

@SlackerInc

As I did respond to him on Twitter:

Aren’t you neglecting what strikes me as an obvious possibility: that the people who left Africa were a self-selected group that already possessed higher than average IQ before they left, before they became “white” or “Asian”?

This seems like a pretty stupid theory. Groups generally move in response to food needs, or environmental issues. I can’t think of a reason those would primarily affect the more intelligent. The reverse seems more likely.

You start out thinking that whites are more intelligent and then try to backward rationale why that might be the case. Basically the opposite of the scientific process. And, no offense, but your theories are stupid.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@SlackerInc

4. I read GG&S. It came across to me as a book with an almost panicked agenda of countering any “Bell Curve” type narrative.

Panicked? How so?

[SlackerInc]

@Evil_Economist

You start out thinking that whites are more intelligent and then try to backward rationale why that might be the case.

I start off OBSERVING that they (and Asians) significantly outperform blacks on IQ tests (not the be-all, end-all of intelligence) “and then try to backward rationale why that might be the case”. Which is exactly what you and your allies also do. So pot, meet kettle.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

There is no reason whatsoever to believe that different “extended inbred families” would have different heritable genetic traits for intelligence.

An absurd claim that, if true, would make speciation nigh unto impossible.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

The default expectation would be for traits with universal adaptability to appear in roughly equal measures across all populations.

Universal adaptability? Pfffft. Survival and successful navigation of sexual selection in an established population, living in a tropical climate, is far different from surviving and propagating in a new frontier, with unfamiliar flora and fauna, and SEASONS. You are forced to invent various kinds of engineering to survive a single cold winter.
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[iiandyiiii]

Apparently the massive continent of Africa, which includes locales with climate similar to almost every non polar region on earth (including some of the harshest and most difficult for humans to survive), is entirely tropical.

Huh. I’ll be sure to to tell my buddy, who was briefly a skiing instructor in South Africa. It will probably blow his mind.

[Morgenstern]

@SlackerInc

…
Universal adaptability? Pfffft. Survival and successful navigation of sexual selection in an established population, living in a tropical climate, is far different from surviving and propagating in a new frontier, with unfamiliar flora and fauna, and SEASONS. You are forced to invent various kinds of engineering to survive a single cold winter.
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Yes, that was a major consideration for our ancestors. The women wouldn’t go during the off seasons, and the men didn’t want the crowds. So they told them there were sales every Wednesday at Macy’s and that was it, they migrated.
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[Evil_Economist]

@SlackerInc

Universal adaptability? Pfffft. Survival and successful navigation of sexual selection in an established population, living in a tropical climate, is far different from surviving and propagating in a new frontier, with unfamiliar flora and fauna, and SEASONS. You are forced to invent various kinds of engineering to survive a single cold winter.

You seem to have forgotten your argument, which is that it was the more intelligent group that left Africa. So the climate outside Africa has no bearing on your argument.

How difficult can it be to remember your own argument, and stick to that argument?

[GIGObuster]

@Evil_Economist

You seem to have forgotten your argument, which is that it was the more intelligent group that left Africa. So the climate outside Africa has no bearing on your argument.

How difficult can it be to remember your own argument, and stick to that argument?

What it is clear is that the tactic of pseudo-scientists is being adopted by the Slacker, toss everything to the wall and see what sticks. No different indeed than creationists and climate change deniers. He still has the same obliviousness that Murray has when thinking that his racist conclusions are not that.

The Real Problem with Charles Murray and “The Bell Curve” - From Scientific American

The Real Problem with Charles Murray and "The Bell Curve"

“The Bell Curve” endorses prejudice by virtue of what it does not say. Nowhere does the book address why it investigates racial differences in IQ. By never spelling out a reason for reporting on these differences in the first place, the authors transmit an unspoken yet unequivocal conclusion: Race is a helpful indicator as to whether a person is likely to hold certain capabilities. Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use. The net effect is to tacitly condone the prejudgment of individuals based on race.

Strangely, “The Bell Curve” falsely promises that it will recommend specific uses for these racial trends in the form of public policies. If you weather the storm and make it through this lengthy book, you’ll find that, by the end, it has never done so. In the final chapter (Chapter 22), when it finally delivers a few much-anticipated policy prescriptions, they don’t relate to race in any explicit way (and how could they?). The suggested policies include simpler tax codes, decreasing government benefits that could incentivize childbearing among the low-income, and increasing competency-based immigration screening. Did the authors mean to imply that immigration screening could be based in part on race? Much to the book’s disgrace, that’s at least a reasonable interpretation. More so since, earlier in the book, they say, “Latino and black immigrants are, at least in the short run, putting some downward pressure on the distribution of intelligence.”

It’s worth pointing out an astonishing slip-up where the authors appear to have inadvertently admitted that treating black people differently is copacetic (I felt I’d caught them red-handed). Ironically, it’s within a section warning the reader that a genetic interpretation of the racial trends should not mean [more] prejudgment of individuals. When suggesting a thought experiment in which the reader imagines IQ differences were known to originate entirely genetically, they suggest you ask yourself, “If it were known that the black/white difference is genetic, would I treat individual blacks differently from the way I would treat them if the differences were environmental?” This plainly implies that one may already be treating individual black people differently in the first place.

With a certain eerie silence on the matter, “The Bell Curve” spurs readers to prejudge by race. Astonishingly, this tome’s hundreds of pages never actually specify what one is meant to do with the information about racial differences, and never attempt to steer readers clear of racial prejudgment. That’s an egregious, reckless oversight, considering this is a pop science bestseller that comprehensively covers great numbers of subtopics and caveats, maintaining a genuinely proficient and clear writing style throughout. So we must call this book what it is: racist.

[octopus]

@GIGObuster

What it is clear is that the tactic of pseudo-scientists is being adopted by the Slacker, toss everything to the wall and see what sticks. No different indeed than creationists and climate change deniers. He still has the same obliviousness that Murray has when thinking that his racist conclusions are not that.

The Real Problem with Charles Murray and “The Bell Curve” - From Scientific American

The Real Problem with Charles Murray and "The Bell Curve" | Scientific American

So political utility is the motivation for science and research? Seems odd.

[GIGObuster]

@octopus

So political utility is the motivation for science and research? Seems odd.

Of course it was, but that was what Murray and others made it so. You are still dumb enough to follow their path.

And you still read post #789 and #792 to get a clue.

[SlackerInc]

@iiandyiiii

Apparently the massive continent of Africa, which includes locales with climate similar to almost every non polar region on earth (including some of the harshest and most difficult for humans to survive), is entirely tropical.

Huh. I’ll be sure to to tell my buddy, who was briefly a skiing instructor in South Africa. It will probably blow his mind.

Are you under the misapprehension that any significant proportion of the population of Africa lived in cold conditions 60,000 years ago?

Thanks for the information, though. I don’t know how I missed that when I crossed a glacier to get to the summit of Mt. Kenya (which is in fact in the tropics). :rolleyes:

@Evil_Economist

You seem to have forgotten your argument, which is that it was the more intelligent group that left Africa. So the climate outside Africa has no bearing on your argument.

How difficult can it be to remember your own argument, and stick to that argument?

Not as difficult, apparently, as for you to remember all the nuances of my argument:

@SlackerInc

I’m at a loss to understand why he thinks all of those things make such a greater difference in survival than does intelligence when pushing out into a new frontier with unknown plants and animals and a generally hostile climate. But arguing over that is ultimately fruitless and I think unnecessary.

So I did not make that my only argument—just the argument that had not been raised, and struck me as less murky than the other one.

Furthermore, let’s say that was my sole argument. Are you familiar with the anthropic principle? A similar idea applies here. If those who made the exodus weren’t smart enough to adapt, they would not have become the ancestors of billions of Asians and Europeans, and they would be forgotten. Maybe there were in fact other attempts that fizzled out for just that reason.
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[SlackerInc]

@GIGObuster

The Real Problem with Charles Murray and “The Bell Curve” - From Scientific American

The Real Problem with Charles Murray and "The Bell Curve" | Scientific American

I have not read The Bell Curve, but I have not been impressed by Murray’s politics. I think this is a valid critique, much more so than the ones that insist he has no facts on his side. As I’ve said repeatedly, if there were no important policy considerations in play, I’d be all for purposely avoiding shining any light on racial differences in intelligence, and shaming those who do shine such a light.

But even if Murray does not, I DO have a reason to not be able to sweep this stuff under the rug. I’ve pointed this out any number of times, but I will now do so again. I am married to a public school teacher, and I’m goddamned sick and tired of seeing public school educators (including administrators as well) and teachers’ unions used as punching bags. They get attacked on the right flank, but whatever: no surprise there, and this would be nothing more than a compliment, if the left had their back.

But no: instead, the powerful coalition of “school reformers” includes those anti-union forces on the right, but also a big contingent of left wingers who blame “failing schools” for the fact that black kids score significantly lower on aptitude tests than do white kids. They begin with the axiom that if they were properly educated, black kids would score just as high—therefore it’s the schools’ fault. This is bullshit, and I’m sick and fucking tired of it.

My conception of “winning” this debate is not what you all seem to imagine. I don’t want black kids to be tarred with the label “genetically inferior” and be jeered as such on the regular. I want us to go back to a mode where we teach them as best we can, put extra resources into their education and enrichment, and at the same time care for their self esteem. Which very much does not involve constantly giving them tests that are too hard for them, and wringing our hands over the results.

You may think this is not harmful to them because the handwringing is expressed as the schools failing them rather than being about their own failure, but I guarantee you, those kids and teachers take it personally. And quite often the teachers and administrators that are chided (or fired) for “failing” are black themselves. So what is the message there?

Mother Jones embedded a reporter in a “failing” school for 18 months in 2011-2012. This school was targeted by the federal regulations reformers have pushed through to either be closed completely, or to fire its principal and at least half its teachers. Here’s what the reporter saw:

Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong

Judging from what I’d read about “troubled” schools, I’d expected noisy classrooms, hallway fights, and disgruntled staff. Instead I found a welcoming place that many students and staff called “family.” After a few weeks of talking to students, I failed to find a single one who didn’t like the school, and most of the parents I met were happy too. Mission’s student and parent satisfaction surveys rank among the highest in San Francisco.[…]

Most days Maria did well and felt good about her progress. She met with Velez after class to review her grammar and plan for college. He urged her to write more complex sentences. By the end of 10th grade, she was writing essays that didn’t fit on one page. She earned an A in Mr. Velez’s modern world history class.

Then one morning, over breakfast, she found an envelope on her mother’s kitchen table. Inside were the results of the standardized tests she’d taken a few months before. Her stomach tilted. She’d done much worse than she’d anticipated. In history her score was “far below basic,” the lowest ranking.[…]

MIDWAY THROUGH MARIA’S SENIOR year in 2012, she was watching Waiting for “Superman” in Mr. Velez’s college expository writing class. They were learning about achievement gaps, test scores, teacher unions, charter schools, and different solutions offered to “fix” schools like Mission. In one scene, DC’s Michelle Rhee was shown firing the principal of a low-scoring school, and then the film cut to scenes of teachers and parents protesting school closures.[…]
“Will they close Mission like those schools in DC?” Maria asked.
The shouting stopped.
“We won’t let them,” another kid responded, and the class burst out laughing.

Now stop and think for a second. What if you’re wrong, and these kids really can’t reasonably score any higher than they do already? Yet the law and the “reform” movement refuses to recognize this fact. Isn’t this exactly what we’ll see? Things will get shaken up over and over regardless of how good the school staff is, regardless of how happy the kids and parents are. It will be endless handwringing, endless turmoil, to try to wring blood from a turnip. Does that not give you any pause? “What if we’re the baddies?” (Bonus points to anyone who catches that reference.)
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[MrDibble]

@SlackerInc

Are you under the misapprehension that any significant proportion of the population of Africa lived in cold conditions 60,000 years ago?

People who are ignorant of the decidedly temperate context for the South African portion of human evolution should shut their fucking ignorant DK-holes.