More Bold Truthsaying

We've seen this particular movie before, Ross.

Like abortion or Social Security (or the squabbles over the Bell Curve), raising the issue will not end with consensus and a good faith debate on "what is to be done." It will end with name calling and further division.

Now, of course, that's generally the way politics works, but it's worthwhile to realize at the outset that you will not be able to bring everyone over to your version of the facts.

Posted by southpaw | November 22, 2007 11:11 AM

what would be more correct is that there is a burgeoning scientific debate, a debate that our political and social taboos have tried mightily to stifle, or at least hide from public view.

That isn't actually true, though.

Posted by Toadmonster | November 23, 2007 12:31 AM

Well well well Ross, this certainly is a hot topic now. Isn't it?
Why has this become a trendy topic? Why is it that people with the higher IQs so often doubt IQ validity, whilst those with more middling minds seem to want to believe in all that stuff?

Posted by Comment | November 23, 2007 6:24 AM

Maybe it's because average IQ people have more experience of living with low IQers. Your typical high IQ IQ-denier (let's call him a white liberal, for short) has very little experience of interacting, socially or professionally, with low-IQers, especially blacks.

Posted by Rimlid | November 23, 2007 12:50 PM

Maybe it's because average IQ people have more experience of living with low IQers. Your typical high IQ IQ-denier (let's call him a white liberal, for short) has very little experience of interacting, socially or professionally, with low-IQers, especially blacks.

Whether that is true or not, such white liberals need only go to comments threads to interact with racists who equate "low IQ" and "blacks".

And this, to my mind, is exactly what is wrong with the Steve Sailer / Andrew Sullivan view of this issue. I am all for doing whatever research we can into differences in intelligence. But there are many people who seem blissfully unaware that there are huge psychological and cultural biases that will cause a certain type of person to jump all over this and proclaim the existence group differences-- and proclaim that they are material-- long before a conclusion is warranted. And that there are many people out there who are still racists and will jump on any such proclaimation as confirmation of their own stereotypes about racial minorities.

I think Sailer and Sullivan and those folks assume that any attempt to say "calm down, we need to be very cautious about this sort of thing" must be motivated by some type of political correctness that says we can never tell "the truth" about racial issues. But that really isn't the political correctness at issue; rather, it is a recognition that given the history and the biases and the cultural presumptions related to these issues, it is important to proceed cautiously and to really make sure the burden of proof-- not just a study here and there-- is satisfied before jumping to conclusions.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 23, 2007 1:26 PM

Actually, among people who actually study this stuff, the Jensen/Rushton/Lynn/Murray position does seem to be emerging as the consensus. It is just taking its time reaching the general scientific community.

I think Sailer and Sullivan and those folks assume that any attempt to say "calm down, we need to be very cautious about this sort of thing" must be motivated by some type of political correctness that says we can never tell "the truth" about racial issues.

The problem with this is that the left has been recklessly blaming the lack of black achievement on white racism since forever, when it is far from clear that white racism actually is the problem. Where is the restraint when it comes to throwing around accusations of racism, or holding off on policies like affirmative action until the data is in.

Something from blogger TGGP is apt:

Among the charges leveled by both the saddened and angry is that we take joy in news that brings them down. I think there is some confusion there. It is not so much a case of schadenfreude as relief. There is certainly a good bit of anger at those who insisted we were despicable, who ruined the careers of respected academics that were good liberals to boot, and on a less serious but informative level chose to dump buckets of water on their colleagues heads rather than hear them out. When we get notice that they may be having second thoughts and our despised contentions are being vindicated, of course we are more pleased than we would be otherwise. What we are not rejoicing in is the existence of a problem that admittedly bears the hardest on others (there are people do so, and we don’t like them either). We are not happy that obvious remedies will be ineffective, only that their ineffectiveness be recognized so that better ones may be sought. We recognized these things in the past, and it was not a pleasant realization, so of course our reaction will not be the same as those who are comparatively late in their acceptance.

Posted by Thursday | November 23, 2007 1:53 PM

The link is here:
http://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/human-biodiversity-joy-and-despair/#more-41

Posted by Thursday | November 23, 2007 1:58 PM

Whether that is true or not, such white liberals need only go to comments threads to interact with racists who equate "low IQ" and "blacks".

I sense you're using racist as a pejorative term, but I've no problem with embracing it. Indeed, some of my best friends are racists.

But there are many people who seem blissfully unaware that there are huge psychological and cultural biases that will cause a certain type of person to jump all over this and proclaim the existence group differences-- and proclaim that they are material-- long before a conclusion is warranted.

And who gets to decide such a thing? For some, the case is already closed. For others, they never needed the imprimatur of science - they relied on their own experience.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Posted by Polizei | November 23, 2007 3:41 PM

TGGP writes as if someone stuck a poker up his arse. Lighten up, dude.

Posted by Ritalin-deficient | November 23, 2007 4:53 PM

And who gets to decide such a thing? For some, the case is already closed. For others, they never needed the imprimatur of science - they relied on their own experience.

And they are equally content in their beliefs that Asians can't drive, Mexicans are lazy, Italians criminal, Jews greedy, and foreigners too stupid to learn English.

Posted by Mike | November 24, 2007 1:14 AM

Ritalin-deficient, it has been my experience that attempts to be humorous do not go over as well as I intend over the internet. The issue I was discussing is an upsetting one for a great many people so I tried not to be flippant.

Posted by TGGP | November 24, 2007 1:59 AM

Sailer and the other IQ revisionists are not the consensus. Quite the contrary.

Posted by Comment | November 24, 2007 8:34 AM

Actually, among people who actually study this stuff, the Jensen/Rushton/Lynn/Murray position does seem to be emerging as the consensus. It is just taking its time reaching the general scientific community.

Pretty weasely paragraph. Care to work it out a little?

Posted by perianwyr | November 24, 2007 12:03 PM

Actually, among people who start out assuming this stuff is true, and only look at evidence that supports their assumption, such as Jensen/Rushton/Lynn/Murray, the Jensen/Rushton/Lynn/Murray position has never ceased being the consensus.

Among people who study real genetics, the issue is not actually seriously considered, because real geneticists understand that race and races are not genetic phenomena, but social attributions of meaning to physical appearances.

During the entire period of time when "race" seen as a biologistic phenomenon was widely accepted as explaining many features of human life, scientific racialists could never agree even on what "races" there were. Today's scientistic racialists (those who seek to claim the mantle of science for methodologically corrupt views rejected by the vast majority of serious scientists because it is bad science) still cannot.

Read the writings of geneticist and physical anthropologist Jonathan Marks for one. _What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People and Their Genes" (1998) is a good place to start. He has a more recent book as well, reference not to hand.

Posted by Chris Lowe | November 24, 2007 12:35 PM

So, because not all relevant scientific researchers have been, or are in uniform agreement over a precise definition of race, this necessarily invalidates the very concept.

Does Chris Lowe extend this sceptical view to the theory of evolution? Are creationists then the only real scientists?

I further wonder whether Chris Lowe thinks that an artificial breeding program applied to humans would be unable to re-create the scale of differentiation associated with other species.

Posted by Luka | November 24, 2007 2:45 PM

The problem with this is that the left has been recklessly blaming the lack of black achievement on white racism since forever, when it is far from clear that white racism actually is the problem. Where is the restraint when it comes to throwing around accusations of racism, or holding off on policies like affirmative action until the data is in.

But the difference is that affirmative action hurts a few whites and asians who are trying to get into college or get government contracts, i.e., fairly well-off people. Racial discrimination that might be produced by people bandying about theories of race discrimination will disproportionately hurt the poor, who will be profiled, kept out of better opportunities, etc.

I have a lot of problems with affirmative action that takes the form of preferences. But the idea that it is some big outrage that some smart rich white kid has to go to Brown rather than Yale is silly.

And this is what it may come down to. Those who want to trumpet this research before the verdict is in fundamentally think that stamping out nonexistent invidious discrimination against whites is more important than avoiding the promotion of actually existing invidious discrimination against blacks. That's not too far removed from a base desire to promote white supremacy.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 24, 2007 2:49 PM

And they are equally content in their beliefs that Asians can't drive, Mexicans are lazy, Italians criminal, Jews greedy, and foreigners too stupid to learn English.

From Deborah Lipstadt's witness statement to the so-called Irving trial:

I often tell my students a joke which, it is claimed, was told by Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. An ardent Nazi was giving a speech in which he accused Jews of the worst crimes against Germany. As he reached the crescendo of his diatribes someone cried out from the audience "and the bicyclists." The Nazi turned to the person and asked, "Why the bicyclists?" The person responded, "Why the Jews?". In learning about antisemitism, students must understand the nature of all prejudices: they are irrational sentiments.

No, Ms. Lipstadt, I respectfully disagree. Popular prejudices are not irrational. Notions about lazy Mexicans, greedy Jews and less intelligent blacks must, I contend, have some basis in shared popular experience. More problematic is when these prejudices assume an essentialist cast.

Posted by Kipling | November 24, 2007 3:04 PM

But the difference is that affirmative action hurts a few whites and asians who are trying to get into college or get government contracts, i.e., fairly well-off people. Racial discrimination that might be produced by people bandying about theories of race discrimination will disproportionately hurt the poor, who will be profiled, kept out of better opportunities, etc.

Following this logic, the police should not seek to arrest the perpetrators of certain burglaries or car thefts, because the victims tend to be fairly well-off, and theories of criminal responsibilty disproportionately affect the poor black people who end up in the clink.

Posted by Tyler | November 24, 2007 3:20 PM

Nowadays it is popular to say that races do not exist but are purely social constructions. Though that is certainly true of bureaucratic pigeonholes such as "colored," "Hispanic," "Asian/Pacific Islander," and the one-drop rule for being "black," it is an overstatement when it comes to human differences in general. The biological anthropologist Vincent Sarich points out that a race is just a very large and partly inbred family. Some racial distinctions thus may have a degree of biological reality, even though they are not exact boundaries between fixed categories. Humans, having recently evolved from a single founder population, are all related, but Europeans, having mostly bred with other Europeans for millennia, are on average more closely related to other Europeans than they are to Africans or Asians, and vice versa. Because oceans, deserts, and mountain ranges have prevented people from choosing mates at random in the past, the large inbred families we call races are still discernible, each with a somewhat different distribution of gene frequencies. 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.

Who wrote that!? Steve Sailer? No, Steven Pinker!

Posted by Schindler's Lisp | November 24, 2007 3:37 PM

Ernst Mayr, who came up with the commonly used biological definition of species, says race is just as valid a scientific concept.

During the entire period of time when "race" seen as a biologistic phenomenon was widely accepted as explaining many features of human life, scientific racialists could never agree even on what "races" there were. Today's scientistic racialists (those who seek to claim the mantle of science for methodologically corrupt views rejected by the vast majority of serious scientists because it is bad science) still cannot.
"By looking at the varying frequencies of these polymorphisms, they were able to distinguish five different groups of people whose ancestors were typically isolated by oceans, deserts or mountains: sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans and Asians west of the Himalayas; East Asians; inhabitants of New Guinea and Melanesia; and Native Americans. They were also able to identify subgroups within each region that usually corresponded with each member's self-reported ethnicity."
Robert Lindsay attempts to enumerate the races here. It should be noted that there is also imprecision in how many species there are in many a genus.

Posted by TGGP | November 24, 2007 4:42 PM

Pretty weasely paragraph. Care to work it out a little?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyderman_and_Rothman_%28study%2

Thats in 1987, before The Bell Curve. Evidence for an at least partially genetic explanation has only grown since.

actually existing invidious discrimination against blacks.

Again the assumption that large amounts of invidious discrimination really exist. This is disputed. Controlling for IQ, the difference in income among groups almost completely disappears. I.e. blacks with the same IQ make over 95% of what whites with the same IQ make.

The black-white IQ differences shows up as soon as children are old enough to be tested, so in order to believe that racism is the culprit you have to believe that racism cannot keep black adults from earning the same amount as whites with the same intelligence, but somehow it magically keeps IQ down apx. 15 points among black children. (Nutrition does not seem to be much of a factor in the U.S.)

No one denies that there is racism left in the U.S., but please, stop casually throwing around accusations of massive, substantial racism.

That's not too far removed from a base desire to promote white supremacy.

Because we all know those East Asians and East Indians at gnxp.com are just a front for the Klu Klux Klan.

Again the attack isn't on the facts that Murray, Jensen et al. use to make their argument, but on their motives. Again the assumption that only a racist would come to these conclusions. What if they are only following the evidence where it leads?

Posted by Thursday | November 24, 2007 7:06 PM

Following this logic, the police should not seek to arrest the perpetrators of certain burglaries or car thefts, because the victims tend to be fairly well-off, and theories of criminal responsibilty disproportionately affect the poor black people who end up in the clink.

Not really, unless you posit that by fighting those burglaries and car thefts, it will actually make it impossible or extremely difficult to police crime against the poor. And if that were true, it would be a perfectly rational decision to protect the poor. Big city police departments make tradeoffs in enforcement policies all the time.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 24, 2007 8:14 PM

Again the attack isn't on the facts that Murray, Jensen et al. use to make their argument, but on their motives.

Thursday, you are taking what I said out of context. I was responding to a post that indicated that there was no reason to be cautious in this area because doing so would prop up affirmative action policies, as if that was a greater wrong than discrimination against poor minorities.

If you look at my original post, I make quite clear that there's nothing wrong with doing this research. What I object to is the people who jump all over every study result, no matter how preliminary, to prove the alleged inferiority of blacks.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 24, 2007 8:17 PM

"Race" is term of limited value. It's silly to think testing people matters that much. Environment factors play such a huge role, even at the earliest ages. IQ only matters at the extremes. Most of this "debate" is meaningless.

We know some people with high IQs who can barely tie their own shoes, but they are all smart enough to know that IQ is barely better than phrenology.

That's why the consensus among the experts is that IQ is of limited value. Not much better than LSATs.

Posted by Comment | November 24, 2007 10:41 PM

Re: The problem with this is that the left has been recklessly blaming the lack of black achievement on white racism since forever

Given the historical reality of slavery and Jim Crow (the reality of which is not in dispute, I assusme), this is hardly some wild-eyed, radical notion. In fact I would say that it's the simplest explanation and to be preferred under Occam's Razor.

Posted by JonF | November 25, 2007 8:18 AM

"Race" is term of limited value.

Well, we're making progress. Yesterday, it was term of no value. Tomorrow, you may yet appreciate its true significance.

Environment factors play such a huge role...

Of course, environment plays a major role. As if any hereditarian had ever denied it. The problem comes with those who refuse to acknowledge the heritability of intelligence.

...even at the earliest ages

Especially at the earliest ages. And it's important to stress that environmental factors which promote intelligence are often positively correlated with the intelligence of the parents and the wider culture. Intelligent kids typically benefit from both better nature and nurture.

IQ only matters at the extremes.

Intelligence as measured by IQ tests is the single most effective predictor known of individual performance at school and on the job. It also predicts many other aspects of well-being, including a person's chances of divorcing, dropping out of high school, being unemployed or having illegitimate children.

Posted by Rex Garrison | November 25, 2007 11:07 AM

Given the historical reality of slavery and Jim Crow (the reality of which is not in dispute, I assusme), this is hardly some wild-eyed, radical notion.

If black failure was simply a feature of the American experience and one could point to other nations in which blacks, whether as a majority or minority, were thriving, then you might have a serious point. But I doubt you can. Of course, you could blame that on racism elsewhere in the Western world or on the lingering legacy of colonisation, but the pattern is uniformly depressing.

Posted by Lester | November 25, 2007 11:28 AM

IQ is not a good predictor save for the people at the extreme ends. People who make scientific discovery often have hig IQ - They are at the top one percent of the top one percent.

People who are retarded have low IQs - That's what IQ tells people.

Posted by Comment | November 25, 2007 10:45 PM

I suspect Comment has a low IQ. That or he prefers to wallow in ignorance.

Posted by Riddler | November 26, 2007 7:24 AM

Riddler must be a genius - Thanks for showing us your witty and wise suspicions. "Race" is mostly a social construct. Heritage DNA is now showing that in a way that everyone can understand. Even geniuses. LOL.

Posted by Comment | November 26, 2007 9:41 AM

"Race" is mostly a social construct. Heritage DNA is now showing that in a way that everyone can understand.

Not really, as far as I can tell -- see for example Pinker's TNR article on kinship, and consider the implications. That "everyone" has ancestors of all races doesn't deal with the kind of statistical properties we're dealing with here. We're talking frequencies not determinism.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | November 27, 2007 12:36 PM

"Race" is mostly a social construct.

Well, that's progress too. Yesterday it was purely a social construct. Someday it will be partially a social construct. Of course, if we ever get to not at all a social construct then we will have gone too far in the opposite direction.

Posted by keypusher | November 27, 2007 9:44 PM

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