Humans do have patterns of genetic variation. There are even components of human genetic variation that are expressed geographically. These patterns simply do not bear grouping people into any of our historically defined race groups.
These racial groupings (that the Harris/Murray didn’t outline) are clearly based on western society’s historical classification of people by superficial (but culturally significant) biological factors. Namely skin colour, hair form, eye shape.
The funny part is that even these groupings fail when held to any amount of self adhered rigour. This is why racialists never can agree on either the number/size/defining characteristics of their racial groups. So, when the most die-hard proponents of racial theory can’t come up with a stable model based on principals of their own choosing that’s a sign of bullshit. Since they can never get internal consistency/stability they simply refuse to do the work. People like Murray and Harris just rely on winks/nods/hand waving to get along for long enough to preach their old-timey gospel.
Without reading all the links etc, this comment seems reasonable to me. Note that Murray in The Bell Curve doesn’t say that genes are the final explanation. I think he says that it’s some combination of genes and environment, and we don’t know the details. Which I think aligns with what you are saying here.
I’ll respond to a third of it, since you listened to a third of the podcast. I will warn you that other than his questioning of whether the subject should be broached at all, you are likely to continue to be disappointed.
But Sam has a Ph.D. in neuroscience (a fairly salient field), and did end up reading Murray’s work after assuming for many years that it was pseudoscience. Meanwhile the people shouting Murray down seem mostly to be social scientists (whose attachment to the Blank Slate paradigm we both are well aware of) who haven’t read Murray anyway. If Sam says the science is sound, I’m inclined to believe him. And that’s what it ultimately has to come down to–which experts you trust–since I’m not personally qualified to evaluate it.
So, without further ado, here is a response to at least a third (probably more like 40%) of post #59:
If we are required to use only lay terminology, then you may be right that we are stuck. But something you may not have been aware of when you wrote this post is that the only reason I’m interested in digging up this discomfiting ground is that I’m beyond sick and tired of seeing hardworking, conscientious educators slammed as “failing” their students because the kids’ test scores lag behind national averages. And if I’m right about pale-skinned, light-eyed Northern European people being something like a legitimate race (or whatever you want to call it: “population”, whatever), and one with a leg up* in terms of IQ, then they are going to skew that national average significantly, by dint of their far outnumbering African Americans.
As Murray noted in the interview, this information is in the process of coming out, and will probably be completely out there within twenty years. At which point my expectation is that a lot of social scientists** are going to either have to be sheepish, or maybe we can finally just agree to sweep it under the rug (as long as the Murray side can suppress the urge to gloat).
But they also perform “poorly” (or, as I keep saying, maybe they should be the measure and thus they perform at the normal human level as a group) within sub-Saharan Africa. And yes, there was colonialism, but the same is true in places like South and Southeast Asia where IQs are significantly higher.
I assume also that you’d agree that Latinos/Hispanics have been treated poorly throughout our history? Yet check this out, from one of the *Freakonomics *transcripts I referenced upthread (emphases mine):
Is he truly that puzzled? Does he literally have no potential answer occurring to him inside his head, or just no answer that’s not too toxic to even mention? :dubious:
*Something else I think is important is that I do believe the aptitude tests used in schools are tilted toward rewarding the kind of intelligence that is strongest in that Northern European population. I absolutely believe in the validity of Gardner’s “multiple intelligences” paradigm (or something very much like it). He posited the following varieties of human intelligence: musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. If aptitude tests included musical-rhythmic and bodily-kinesthetic sections, I’m sure black kids would come much closer to achieving the same scores as white kids, or maybe even higher depending on how the tests were weighted. And I believe that would be far more fair, and completely legitimate, even if the usual FOX News suspects would roll their eyes all the way back into their heads.
**I don’t criticize social science with any relish, believe me. My father was an anthropology professor (got his bachelor’s and Ph.D. at Stanford, like Sam Harris), and my mother is a retired sociology professor. My wife has a master’s in sociology. I think those fields are absolutely valid and very useful, as long as they stay in their lanes and acknowledge that *both *nature and nurture play large roles in human behavior (as most all scientists on the so-called “nature” side do). But they are not content with that, for the most part, and try to just grab it all.
Even concluding that genes are part of the final answer is ludicrous, IMO. We just don’t know nearly enough about the genetics of high and low intelligence to make this kind of claim. And when we know that even within a population, average IQ test scores can change pretty damn rapidly due to changing nutrition, culture, and other factors, it seems awfully silly to insist that such differences can’t possibly be the entire explanation and genes must be involved. There’s a non-zero possibility that genes are involved, but that’s all we can reasonably say at this time regarding genes for intelligence and achievement gaps.
Nonsense. The Bell Curve was published twenty-three years ago. Murray’s claims have been widely discussed and examined. If there was any validity to Murray’s central argument it would have been found by now. There’s no more controversy there.
The only people still “debating” Murray’s work at this point are people who want to deny the evidence because it conflicts with their beliefs and people looking for ratings.
I’d go further than that: IQ test score for African Americans now exceed IQ test scores for white Americans in certain past decades. And African Americans seem to still be showing increases in IQ test scores, while test scores for white Americans have stalled.
I personally think it’s highly likely that genes play some role. But I would say that as a genetics scientist I suppose. In any case, it’s definitely not out of the mainstream to make this claim. Here is a quote that Charles Murray says is all The Bell Curve says about IQ and genetics:
This may be how you see yourself, but it doesn’t actually make any sense (like many self-conceptions). You have two competing explanations for test score outcomes, racism or genes. Neither of them blames educators. A decision to reject racism as the explanation actually has nothing to do with your desire to protect the work of hardworking, conscientious educators.
The other thing worth saying here is that Murray’s key claims aren’t even scientific claims. The science recording outcome disparities is perfectly valid, as far as it goes. What everyone rejects isn’t that part, it’s the part where Murray denies that racism is a sufficient explanation and speculates about what genetics might one day find. The claim about the effect of racism isn’t grounded in any scientific evidence and the speculation is just that, not a claim but a question.
If he was feeling generous, a skeptic would call that “speculative,” else, “talking out your arse.” If your speculation takes the form of classical race theory then it gets upgraded to “racist.”
I just don’t understand why people think it should be verboten to call ‘racialists’ who preach ‘racialism’ as ‘racists.’ It really is just a matter of connecting the dots here.
I’ll trust PZ Myers over Sam Harris (and they’re both very accomplished scientists). Not because I like Myers better, but because his explanations and criticisms strike me as much more rigorous and much more scientific, and don’t make all the mistakes that I’ve pointed out from Harris (like his very clearly false “race is primarily biological”).
And if you’re wrong (and there’s no actual genetic data that suggests you’re correct) you’re just assuming racial superiority. Why do that? Why not avoid making assumptions about average inherent genetic inferiority or average inherent genetic superiority, considering that we have no data about the genes actually responsible for high and low intelligence?
Or Murray’s wrong. You know, it’s possible. Maybe treating people like shit for centuries really does have some affect on achievement, even after they start to be treated less shitty.
Based on what? We don’t have significant IQ test score data in most of the third world, including most of Africa, and South/SE Asia. Bad data isn’t going to give us good conclusions about anything.
Not a fraction of as poorly as black and native Americans. No centuries of slavery; no near-genocide; no ethnic cleansing; no mass forced migrations.
You’re just throwing this stuff out there, with little/no support. And it just so happens to match racialist/slavers’ propaganda (especially the “musical-rhythmic” and “bodily-kinesthetic” stuff – any time your beliefs about race just so happen to match obvious stereotypes and decades-old myths you should take a step back and reconsider).
Consider that, on average, a black kid in America grows up with many fewer role models in academic/STEM fields; stereotypes that he/she can only succeed in athletics or entertainment; a high likelihood (a lot higher than a white kid, anyway) that a close relative (father/brother/uncle/cousin/grandfather/etc.) has been brutally mistreated by law enforcement; a higher likelihood of day-to-day racism/degradation; and much more challenges. Would it really be that surprising if, on average, that can lead to some difference in academic test score performance?
I’m not concluding anything, unlike Murray (and Harris, apparently). They shouldn’t be either.
This is asinine. We have a perfectly workable hypothesis of why rural working class whites have lower IQ scores - it’s cultural. They have less resources for education, less diversity, and a culture which values intelligence and education less, in no small part due to their religiousity. And yet, somehow, to save this unscientific, non-peer-reviewed hypothesis of Murray’s, we’re somehow inventing a genetic sieve that works absurdly well and extremely fast?
Wat.
Look, we know why results are worse for African-Americans. They generally go to worse schools, they face racism in many aspects of schooling, particularly discipline, they suffer from minority stress, they’re considerably more likely to be poor, with all the stresses this brings, and all of these things drive down academic achievement. There’s no longer any need to assert made-up racial categories to explain these things. We have a perfectly good working hypothesis for why black people do worse when it comes to IQ, and it’s pretty much the same reason they do worse on just about everything else. Not race, racism. The lingering effects of centuries of de jure racial discrimination, and the continuing effects of de facto racism.
Even if it weren’t for the academic drubbing that Murray’s book got after publication, it would be an unnecessary hypothesis. As is, there is just no fucking reason to go back through this. There’s especially no reason to go back through this with the kind of uncritical, “Okay, you’re right, but we shouldn’t talk about it” bullshit that Harris offers here.
And it gets worse. What was the main takeaway from Murray’s work? What was the number one thing people took from it, other than, “Wow, Murray’s kind of a tool.”? Well, tell me this - if the problem with African-Americans is genetic, what good is it to correct for past injustices? What good is it to try to help them at all? It’s not for nothing that Murray includes an argument against welfare in his book. And argues against affirmative action.
Must be involved in fusion too, it is always coming.
Nah, in reality you had to ignore what me and **iiandyiiii **already linked to. The assessment from many that nothing new was coming from Murray was spot on.
There were some people in that thread gullible enough to still give you credit for your original prediction. But I’m far from the only one who laughed at you. To sum up:
In the OP you predicted Trump would win.
Then in post #246, a couple weeks before the election, you posted this:
Then you posted nothing further in the thread until post #250, after the election:
Which, I will say again, is ludicrous and you should be embarrassed. As Chief Pedant noted in response to your whining that just because you reversed yourself in post 246, it doesn’t change what you wrote in the OP:
And in searching for those posts, I see you have been at it again, and deservedly got called out for it:
If this makes me the liar, I don’t want to be the truthteller! :rolleyes:
First, we agree that genetics has some influence on IQ within a population, right? Otherwise we can start there. It doesn’t necessarily follow from this that genetics is related to IQ differences within populations; I agree with that. (It definitely doesn’t mean the opposite either, though.) I think it’s extremely difficult to distangle genetics and environment between populations. I would be interested in hearing what research has made this attempt, and where it indicated that genes played no role. I am not familiar with such research.
My own reason for believing that genetics plays a role in IQ differences between populations, is that I think that genetics plays a role in more or less all differences between populations. Genes do this. It would be unlikely if everyone ended up on exactly the same level in every trait. I also think genetics plays a role in people from west africa being among the best sprinters, and people from Tibet being able to extract more oxygen from thin air, Bushmen being short, etc.
It’s a podcast, plenty of people listen to longer talks in their car or on commutes. It’s not like the average time spent on television and other entertainment each week dwarfs the time spent on this talk.
the dopers board is still filled with science deniers I see. Because environment plays a role all populations are identical above the neck and we expect to see virtually zero differences in aptitude.
OK. I see that this fool narrative is alive and well.
It would, however, be perfectly likely for large populations to have no statistically significant difference in average levels of a trait that’s among our species’ traits most significant in survival and reproduction.
I will warn you that other than his questioning of whether the subject should be broached at all, you are likely to continue to be disappointed.