There is nothing that students at top schools love more than (a) denouncing Charles Murray for purportedly writing about a correlation between race and IQ, and (b) celebrating the merits of studying among a diverse student body (therefore we need affirmative action programs). Yet “Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago” (nytimes) shows that they have chosen to attend schools where (a) the admissions officers behave as though they agree with the race-IQ thoughtcrime, and (b) they are unlikely to see a non-white/Asian student.
If these good-hearted young people are as passionate about diversity as they say, why didn’t they choose to save a ton of money and attend a state-run school whose student body is more representative of the American population (which leaves open the question, still, of whether to count up all Americans and sort by skin color or to look at the population of 18-year-old Americans)?
>Charles Murray for purportedly writing
>about a correlation between race and IQ
I haven’t read The Bell Curve, but I did listen to Murray on a recent podcast. He claimed that that there is a significant and meaningful correlation between race and IQ and that genetic factors were the most compelling explanation for those group differences. Did he say something different in The Bell Curve?
He said that both genetic and environmental reasons contributed to the racial differences, and he still says that. He hasn’t changed. But that isn’t what the book “The Bell Curve” was ABOUT. What it was about was how our society has changed in ways that make it increasingly difficult for people in the left half of the bell curve, because our “cognitive elites” like it that way, and the only time he talked about racial differences was to note “minorities hardest hit”. Although “minorities hardest hit” is an approved trope to get your social science prescriptions taken seriously, in this case it was used to demonize Murray, because they didn’t like his message.
The further problem with the Bell Curve is that it raises some rather uncomfortable questions about immigration, legal and illegal, and its eventual consequences.
No-one votes the way they feel, but it’s next level with millenials. Suspect if they ever have to put their money where their ballot is, there’s going to be a big shift right. The electoral college shift which is supposed to give democrats a huge majority in 2020 may happen too late.
There is nothing that students at top schools love more than (a) denouncing Charles Murray for purportedly writing about a correlation between race and IQ, and (b) celebrating the merits of studying among a diverse student body (therefore we need affirmative action programs).
There have to be plenty of things that students enjoy more, such as drinking beer or looking at Facebook, or whatever kids are into these days. In fact, it’s quite possible that most undergraduates have never heard of Charles Murray. The Bell Curve was published before they were born.
they have chosen to attend schools where (a) the admissions officers behave as though they agree with the race-IQ thoughtcrime, and (b) they are unlikely to see a non-white/Asian student.
Don’t worry, there are no thought crimes in America. Also, you’re assertion is false. Just stroll down the infinite corridor at 10 AM on Monday morning and you’ll see many faces that are neither white or Asian.
Setting aside all of that, the answer to your question is probably pretty obvious. Most of the students in question want to attend a top school.
Joe Shipman: A preponderance of correct/useful/good ideas does not necessarily mean that one should overlook a single incorrect/harmful/bad idea or that it is unfair to characterize the book by the single incorrect/harmful/bad idea if that single idea is important enough. Furthermore, “both genetic and environmental reasons contributed to the racial differences” does not accurately summarize what I heard in the podcast. In the podcast, Charles Murray claimed that there is no compelling evidence that environmental factors play a significant role in the significant and meaningful difference between the mean IQ scores of Black Americans and Caucasian Americans and that the most likely explanation for the difference is genetic factors. This idea is important not just because it is incorrect/harmful/bad but because it has historically been used to help justify genuinely horrific laws, government policies and social attitudes which continue (in attenuated form) to this day. It is not surprising that people strenuously object to an idea which has helped to cause massive suffering in the past with continuing impacts to the present day and which helps to justify additional harmful actions by government/individual/society today.
Why do I consider this idea incorrect as well as “harmful” and “bad”? Let’s set aside the fact that Charles Murray ignores at least one environmental factor (in utero/early childhood lead exposure) which is known to signiciantly impact IQ and to which American Blacks are known to have significantly higher exposure than Causasian Americans; this one factor by itself explains only a fraction (perhaps 10%) of the difference in mean IQ scores. Instead, let’s look at at the huge performance gap between Black and Causcasian Americans in basketball. This is a sport where a single highly heritable characteristic (height) dominates an individual’s potential for performance. However, in this case, genetic differences between Black and Caucasian Americans cannot explain the performance gap: Blacks Americans are not taller than Caucasian Americans on average. There must be some environmental factor (in this case probably a social factor) which accounts for the performance difference. Now the difference of mean IQ scores between Black and Caucasian Americans is much smaller than their basketball performance gap so it stands to reason that environmental factors could easily explain most or all of the smaller IQ gap since they clearly explain the larger basketball gap. In fact, the gap between the mean IQ scores of Black and Caucasian Americans is roughly the size of the mean IQ gap between Americans and their grandparents, and the fact that there is a gap between generations (who tend to share genetic makeup) by itself weakens the idea genetics is driving the difference in mean IQ scores.
@paddy
“uncomfortable questions about immigration, legal and illegal, and its eventual consequences.”
Exactly.
Whilst the right curvers are generally protected in the modern economy due to their benefiting from their genetic lottery luck, the left curvers are the hardest hit because there are fewer and fewer opportunities for more or less decent life for them, firstly their skills are less in demand and secondly they compete with cheap illegal immigrant labor. Plus the willfully hypocritical or accidentally ignorant “progressive” right curvers enjoys the fruits of the cheap labor and in reality do not care much about lower classes plight. Who cares about deplorable nazies anyways ?
Both Krugman and Borjes commented on that problem (impact of low skilled immigration on blue collar workers), the former when it was politically expedient for him during the reign of Bush Jr.
@Neal
“mean IQ gap between Americans and their grandparents”
That is unlikely. I am not aware of any peer reviewed publication claiming that. The recent generations have experienced dysgenic selection pressures rather than otherwise (they are dumber at about minus 0.3 SD a generation):
1. Smarter people have fewer children
2. Low skill immigration.
3. Relaxed selection for IQ.
Hi Ivan,
first, I appreciate all the Soviet insights and other insights you have provided on this blog, having said that, I surprisingly must agree with Neal, I did think there is an IQ improvement of about 3 points per decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
I am sure this is despite the dysgenic pressures that undoubtedly exist, meaning absent dysgenic pressures, the Flynn effect would have been stronger.
Viking Ivan, and Neal,
John Walker (AutoCAD) discusses the Flynn effect far more eloquently than I could link
@Viking
The Flynn effect is rather weak in the the sections that matter for STEM: arithmetic, vocabulary, comprehension. The arithmetic part has increased only by about 0.2SD over 54 years/ 0.4 point per decade:
https://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/beyond-the-flynn-effect
Given that there has been marked improvement in environment (better nutrition, medical care, lead paint removal, etc), and given the narrow sense heritability of between 0.64 and 0.8 (Jensen), the remaining 0.36 -0.2 variation in IQ arguably due to the environ, that’s not much of a success.
There is some indications that the Flynn effect no longer works in developed societies because the most harmful environment offences have already been removed.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000463
On the other hand, there is recent evidence of IQ degradation of about 0.3 points per decade based on Icelandic population study:
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727.full
They do hope that the Flynn effect may compensate for the decline, but there’s no hard data (in the Icelandic sample) to corroborate that hope.
Neal,
“There must be some environmental factor (in this case probably a social factor) which accounts for the performance difference.”
Couldn’t it be that another highly heritable characteristic (proportion of fast twitch muscle fibres) is involved, and that for a given height a basketball player will have an advantage if they can sprint really fast/jump really high?
“Now the difference of mean IQ scores between Black and Caucasian Americans is much smaller than their basketball performance gap so it stands to reason that environmental factors could easily explain most or all of the smaller IQ gap since they clearly explain the larger basketball gap.”
Would you consider the results of twin/adoption studies proof one way or the other regarding environmental factors in determining basketball performance/IQ?
The idea that both environment and genes influence an inter-ethnic IQ gap has been researched extensively and has support in the data collected. Do you perceive any risk associated with ignoring the data and assuming that groups of people should have the same average performance at everything (and if it turns out they don’t, then hidden biases must be responsible for the average differences). Do you believe that, absent any bias/environmental factors, black Americans would only make up 12.1-14% of the NBA?
I used to consider environmental factors for what makes a society excel while others don’t. But then when I look at the Middle East, specifically Israel, and immediately give up on that theory when I ask myself: why the Jewish are better off compared to the Palestine? They both live on the same land that has the same environment and they both get tones of foreign aids and support.
why the Jewish are better off compared to the Palestine? They both live on the same land that has the same environment and they both get tones of foreign aids and support.
Israel conquered and occupied Palestine with the assistance of the world’s greatest superpower.
>Couldn’t it be that another highly
>heritable characteristic (proportion
>of fast twitch muscle fibres) is involved
I suppose then that rapid evolution of the proportion of fast twitch muscle fibres among African Americans accounts for the change in racial composition among NBA players since its formation.
>Would you consider the results
>of twin/adoption studies proof
>one way or the other regarding
>environmental factors in determining
>basketball performance/IQ?
Twin studies are very useful, especially for simple characteristics controlled by one or two genes, but by themselves cannot tell you anything about the heritability of a characteristic. For example, a twin study could help establish the genetic basis for a characteristic caused by the co-occurrence of three rare recessive genes. However, by itself, that study could not establish the heritability of that characteristic which in this example would be non zero but quite low. By themselves, twin studies tell you virtually nothing about average differences between large groups, especially for the complex set of characteristics which is being measured by an IQ test.
>The idea that both environment and
>genes influence an inter-ethnic IQ
>gap has been researched extensively
>and has support in the data collected.
>Do you perceive any risk associated with
>ignoring the data and assuming that
>groups of people should have the
>same average performance at everything
We know that genes affect individual characteristics which in turn affect performance, and we also know that the frequency of some genes varies between groups of people. In that sense we know that absent environmental differences large groups of people probably don’t have the same average performance at everything. We also know that IQ tests measure a complex set of characteristics influenced by at least hundreds of genes. The presence of so many input factors, many of which are likely to vary independently, would tend to reduce the average difference between large groups. We know that environmental factors also significnalty affect performance on IQ tests and that there are huge differences in the “average” environment to which different groups of people have been exposed. It may be that these issues have been “researched extensively”, but they are exceedingly complex and our scientific understanding of them is, at best, in its infancy. There is presently no scientific technique known which can tease out the relative contribution of genes and environment to a phenomena like the difference in average IQ scores between Black and Caucasian Americans. The reality is that the magnitude AND DIRECTION of the contribution of genetic factors to the observed difference between average IQs between Black and Caucasian Americans is unknown. There is no particular reason based on the data or first principles to think that genetic factors are responsible for a large fraction of the currently observed difference.
>(and if it turns out they don’t, then
>hidden biases must be responsible
>for the average differences).
Here you seem to be arguing that the only possible environmental factor which differs between Black and Caucasian Americans is “hidden biases”. Really?
Neal
Are you saying that blacks have the basketball incubators on lockdown?
Sam: I haven’t made any great study, but I think it’s simply the relative popularity of the sport among African Americans. On my fourth grade playground even an average African American kid could outplay the most athletic Caucasian kids at basketball. Carry that forward a decade and you end up with something like the NBA. I guess I can’t claim my fourth grade experience is directly related to the current makeup of NBA players (since none of them had been born when I was in the fourth grade), but I’ll stick with that explanation until someone provides a better one.