If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Dak]

Klein is doing Harris and Murray a courtesy by saying "racialist" instead of "racist." He knows that "racist" carries connotations of intentionality and bigotry (e.g. "I don't like black people"). "Racialist," by contrast, signals the unintentional and entirely historical dimensions of Harris's and Murray's comments.

Also, I'm sure Klein would love to have a conversation that featured Sowell. He would also probably prefer that it featured Henry Louis Gates, John McWhorter, and Cornell West. In fact, a conversation comprised mostly of black intellectuals is probably the ideal.

Unfortunately Sowell is ~15-30 years older than the other 3 (probably would be exhausted by a contentious forum), but is the only one who has been educated in and studied the actual material nature/science of disparities, and the only one to actually spend time growing up poor in the Jim Crow era South. I would that he were somehow 30 years younger, Walter Williams as well, although his experience is of the northern and Californian like West and McWhorter. McWhorter is too young and grew up in the North, West was privileged and grew up in the West, and Gates is just a literary critic from the North. Funny how those who grew up facing more adversity but studied actual economics disagree about the economics with those with no economic training. Dem Uncle Toms (which isn't racist to say!).

Harris's comment about anti-semitism is confusing. Sheer physical performance necessitates a very different kind of endurance test than intellectual performance. A test of mental performance, or intelligence, cannot limit itself to the parameters of a particular task; intelligence can be assessed by the questioning of cognitive tasks, since questioning is itself a cognitive task.

The same can't be said for physical tasks; questioning the parameters of the hundred-meter dash doesn't qualify as a test of physical endurance.

I actually think Harris's anti-semitism comment is pretty damn condescending, when you really consider what he's saying.

Well if Harris has a fault besides his focus on religion as the worst thing ever, he can be extremely condescending (which would be less of a problem if he didn't take so much affront to it). But if anyone deserves it it is Klein.

You are wrong about "sheer physical performance", as rms roughly pointed out. There are all sorts of measures of physical performance, which insofar as we can measure appear to have less in common than mental performance. Sprint vs short vs long vs marathon vs ultra marathon. Latarel vs straight line agility. Jump height. Bench Press. Squat. Deadlift. Clean&Press. Etc Etc. For all weight lifts max vs reps. On and On. Physically, specialization involves far more tradeoffs than mental, as far as we can currently tell. For instance, great sprinters make poor marathoners and deadlifts. great deadlifters make poor runners period. Great marathoners make poor lifters (all these things being competitively measured). HOWEVER: If we test any of these athletes against the population mean, almost all will be better than the mean at anything except maybe the 99.9999%tile.

Differentially, g contributes regardless of intellectual pursuit, where the divide between "creativity" and "systems" sort of specialties has more to do with right vs left hemisphere dominance rather than total g. Which is currently most aptly tested via "IQ tests". It is not g that would inhibit the 99.9999%ile in creativity vs systems against the mean, but rather this divide.

 

[rms]

You believe people are genetically different in mathematics but not poetry?

 

[Einherjar86]

Unfortunately Sowell is ~15-30 years older than the other 3 (probably would be exhausted by a contentious forum), but is the only one who has been educated in and studied the actual material nature/science of disparities, and the only one to actually spend time growing up poor in the Jim Crow era South.

The former (i.e. "material nature/science of disparities") is untrue and the latter is largely inconsequential.

But if anyone deserves it it is Klein.

That sentiment is part of the problem, in my opinion.

You are wrong about "sheer physical performance"

No, I'm not--as I specified in response to his comment.

Harris is making a judgment on physical versus mental performance based on the results of physical and mental exams. There's nothing to be gained from contemplating the parameters of a physical endurance test (whether running, lifting, cycling, etc.). There is something to be gained from contemplating the parameters of an intelligence test. Harris assumes the transparency of results, but they're not transparent.

I do acknowledge the biological prerequisites for being good at physical tasks. I'm saying the basis for measuring physical ability ends at the fulfillment of the specified task. By contrast, the basis for measuring intellectual/cognitive ability does not end at the fulfillment (or lack thereof) of the specified task.

You believe people are genetically different in mathematics but not poetry?

I believe that the propensity for analytical thought/practice is largely positivist. In other words, mathematics is creative only insofar as one adheres to particular axioms.

Poetic thought/practice is totally different, and can't be predicted genetically. In fact, there are a lot of poets who are mathematically (or scientifically) inclined. Poetry is something that anyone, even the most non-intellectual individual, can practice, because it has quite little to do with conceptual complexity of any kind (mathematical or philosophical). It has to do with an unorthodox and inventive approach to language. Of course, that's not to say that poets can't be intellectual.

Now, do I think there might be a genetic predisposition between those who practice mathematics and those who practice literary criticism? Sure, I'm open to that suggestion. But literary criticism isn't poetry. In fact, literary critics usually write pretty bad poetry.

 

[Dak]

The former (i.e. "material nature/science of disparities") is untrue and the latter is largely inconsequential.

That sentiment is part of the problem, in my opinion.

So we may as well take the uneducated white, modern, opinion as equally valid amirite? Your illogical sentiments show.

No, I'm not--as I specified in response to his comment.

Harris is making a judgment on physical versus mental performance based on the results of physical and mental exams. There's nothing to be gained from contemplating the parameters of a physical endurance test (whether running, lifting, cycling, etc.). There is something to be gained from contemplating the parameters of an intelligence test. Harris assumes the transparency of results, but they're not transparent.

I do acknowledge the biological prerequisites for being good at physical tasks. I'm saying the basis for measuring physical ability ends at the fulfillment of the specified task. By contrast, the basis for measuring intellectual/cognitive ability does not end at the fulfillment (or lack thereof) of the specified task.

I can't even quite claim you contradict yourself here directly because you make multiple claims. Results aren't transparent, but measurement ends at fulfillment, but only for physical tasks, and you never address my information about left/right differences vs g. You aren't even wrong, simply all over the place.

 

[-CC-]

I'm not sure if you're still talking about Jordan Peterson, but I can't stop laughing at this video of some interviewer trying to corner Peterson on Pepe the Frog and the "OK" hand emoji

 

[Einherjar86]

So we may as well take the uneducated white, modern, opinion as equally valid amirite? Your illogical sentiments show.

I don't see much logic to this statement either, if I'm being honest. Why does including educated black scholars justify the inclusion of uneducated whites...? I'm saying you're wrong that Gates and West are unfamiliar with the "actual material nature/science of disparities."

I can't even quite claim you contradict yourself here directly because you make multiple claims. Results aren't transparent, but measurement ends at fulfillment, but only for physical tasks, and you never address my information about left/right differences vs g. You aren't even wrong, simply all over the place.

I'm actually just making one point, but it may not have been relevant. All I'm saying is that the correlation between body type and physical performance yields a higher degree of predictability than does the correlation between SAT scores and grades in college. The analogy assumes a pretty symmetrical relationship between physical performance and cognitive performance. I didn't comment on your left/right brain comment because I don't disagree with it.

Klein isn't incorrect to accuse Murray's position as being part of a "racialist" pattern that goes back centuries. He's also not wrong in pointing out that modern scientific interpretations of statistical variation re. intelligence differ widely, and the majority of geneticists disagree, or at least have major problems with, Murray's work. In the sciences, "intelligence" isn't a one-dimensional phenomenon, which is how Murray treats it. He also reduces its correlation to real-world application so that "intelligence = success," but this also isn't necessarily true.

The biggest problem with Murray and Herrnstein's book isn't its scientific findings, which aren't all that controversial; it's that the book serves not only as a scientific investigation, but as a blanket apology for the disparate treatment of racial difference despite high performance. For example, Murray and Herrnstein associate intelligence with wage earnings but fail to note that in scenarios where a black worker and white worker perform the same job and exhibit comparable intelligence, the black worker more often makes less. Their book is an effort to sweep racism under the rug by declaring the modern marketplace a meritocracy, and that's simply not the case.

It wouldn't be so bad if they just stuck with the data and suggested that there appears to be some link between intelligence and heritability, but that's not what The Bell Curve does, and it's not the extent of Murray's position.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I'm actually just making one point, but it may not have been relevant. All I'm saying is that the correlation between body type and physical performance yields a higher degree of predictability than does the correlation between SAT scores and grades in college. The analogy assumes a pretty symmetrical relationship between physical performance and cognitive performance. I didn't comment on your left/right brain comment because I don't disagree with it.

Body type isn't genetic for the most part. A naturally gifted Kenyan can immigrate to America and choose to eat doughnuts and watch television all day, and he will be a lardass. People with slow metabolisms or asthma can still exercise, stay in good shape, and be athletically competitive on some level (though they will never become Usain Bolt). Body type is more the exercise analog of knowledge or intellectual talent, which can be easier or harder to gain based on one's biological potential. Obviously a muscular body, the product of work towards attaining physical strength, will correlate better than IQ will to college grades, when IQ measures potential.

 

[Einherjar86]

Then I used the wrong term. I'm just referring to whatever Harris means when he suggests that there are more "naturally gifted" Africans than Jews in the hundred-meter dash (for example). So not body type, but whatever genetic trait predisposes someone to physical endurance training. He's making the provocative point that if black people can claim socioeconomic injustices as an explanation for lower IQ, then it makes sense that Jews could claim anti-semitism as an explanation for why they don't perform as well (on average) in the Olympics. There are multiple problems with this analogy, of course.

 

[rms]

He's making the provocative point that if black people can claim socioeconomic injustices as an explanation for lower IQ, then it makes sense that Jews could claim anti-semitism as an explanation for why they don't perform as well (on average) in the Olympics.

but his analogy was merely to counter Klein at a basic level. Representation does not necessarily equal discrimination. This tangent was to highlight that both him and Klein, two jews as he repeats often at the end there, do not/would not see any evidence of anti-semitism. he asks Klein there why does a lack of representation for blacks automatically call into question racial discrimination for blacks but not jews.

 

[Einherjar86]

Completely fair, and I would agree that representation does not necessarily equal discrimination, as in the case of Jews in athletics, for instance. But in the case of African Americans and intelligence, there's overwhelming evidence for the influence of discrimination on representation. Harris is ignoring a bunch of other evidence and making the logical claim that representation =/= discrimination. This is true, but in this particular context it's not the case.

Also, accounting for the histories of both blacks and Jews in the West (even including the Holocaust), it's a misleading comparison. Even during the Middle Ages, anti-semitism wasn't reflected in widespread disenfranchisement of Jews; they still owned businesses and could earn money. In fact, they arguably were better off than Christian (economically speaking) since they could provide financial services from which Christians were religiously prohibited (namely, money-lending). Although the Christian stigma against Jews persisted, Jews were permitted into systems of education and financial literacy. Over centuries, they built a strong base for themselves socially and economically (and of course, the stigmas persisted, hence jokes today about Jews and money), including here in America.

By contrast, Africans in America were overwhelmingly prohibited until the nineteenth century from earning money and getting an education. Many slaves taught themselves to read by studying the Bible (since good Christian slaveowners couldn't deprive their property of the word of god). I often encounter an argument that the slaves, who were "liberated" in the mid-nineteenth century, haven't managed to build themselves up to the status of modern Jews, who suffered the Holocaust in the mid-twentieth century. The problems with this comparison are manifold, but perhaps the most egregious has to do with the fact that the relatively good quality of life for Jews in America today stems primarily from their ancestors' participation in American society prior to Holocaust, which was also largely unaffected by the Holocaust. Meanwhile, African Americans were permitted little to no productive roles in society until after the Civil Rights Movement.

That anti-semitism has been violently disruptive for some Jews is absolutely true. But overall, anti-semitism hasn't had the same effects that slavery and Jim Crow had for blacks; and in some ways, anti-semitism actually contributed to the economic and intellectual foundation of Jews in the Western world.

So Harris's point is really just pointless, in my opinion. Yes, it's true that representation (or lack thereof) doesn't necessarily equal discrimination--the key word being necessarily.

 

[Dak]

I don't see much logic to this statement either, if I'm being honest. Why does including educated black scholars justify the inclusion of uneducated whites...? I'm saying you're wrong that Gates and West are unfamiliar with the "actual material nature/science of disparities."

They aren't economists and West in particular has lived an incredibly privileged life. West's perspective from the Ivy tower looks quite different than the working class blacks I have lived around and have talked to.

Klein isn't incorrect to accuse Murray's position as being part of a "racialist" pattern that goes back centuries. He's also not wrong in pointing out that modern scientific interpretations of statistical variation re. intelligence differ widely, and the majority of geneticists disagree, or at least have major problems with, Murray's work. In the sciences, "intelligence" isn't a one-dimensional phenomenon, which is how Murray treats it. He also reduces its correlation to real-world application so that "intelligence = success," but this also isn't necessarily true.

The biggest problem with Murray and Herrnstein's book isn't its scientific findings, which aren't all that controversial; it's that the book serves not only as a scientific investigation, but as a blanket apology for the disparate treatment of racial difference despite high performance. For example, Murray and Herrnstein associate intelligence with wage earnings but fail to note that in scenarios where a black worker and white worker perform the same job and exhibit comparable intelligence, the black worker more often makes less. Their book is an effort to sweep racism under the rug by declaring the modern marketplace a meritocracy, and that's simply not the case.

It wouldn't be so bad if they just stuck with the data and suggested that there appears to be some link between intelligence and heritability, but that's not what The Bell Curve does, and it's not the extent of Murray's position.

I would need to see where Murray supports differential treatment by race despite high performance. All of his positions that Vox writers et al take issue with is differential treatment due to differences in performance. Murray's two main policy thrusts are reducing welfare spending and reducing immigration from Central and South America and Africa down to only high performing persons. The irony of the irrational hate on Murray by Vox (https://www.vox.com/2018/4/10/17182692/bell-curve-charles-murray-policy-wrong), for example, is that they demonize him supporting the UBI (which Vox is typically pro) in lieu of all other welfare programs, because he supports it if it would cut overall Federal spending, and mean that single people have less aid than married (or at least cohabiting) persons. Perhaps even more interesting is that Yglesias is outraged with Murray when he provides a hypothetical bum (waste money, not working, poor health behaviors) as an example as someone who will lack excuses with a UBI, which Yglesias characterizes as "being meaner to someone in need." Yeah, in need why? This apparently is irrelevant to Yglesias. These issues can be connected to discussions about intelligence, but also can be had completely separately, and Yglesias fails to adequately connect them. Probably because Yglesias sees his own position as common sense (and refers to it as such indirectly).

Like you said, there's no certain intelligence = success relationship (eg 100% causation), and there's something to be said about culture, incentives, traits, etc. I'll skip over the athletics thing since you and HBB sort of resolved that. I want to address the discussion specifically about the failure of blacks to "raise themselves up" in comparison with other minorities. Not that this is something you haven't heard, but part of the argument against the welfare state, which Murray hits on a little, but which Sowell et al hit on a lot is that it is the welfare state along with all its rhetoric of victimhood (and then the drug war) which has arrested the economic (and intellectual) rise of blacks for a variety of reasons. Murray very clumsily points out welfare disproportionately subsidizes reproduction of low IQ women (which also irritates Yglesias), but this is in fact an incentive and cultural issue. Yglesias chooses to focus on "but what about the kid?" rather than considering the bigger picture, which is what Murray (or Sowell) is/have been doing.

Yglesias also makes the common error of justifying government spending by pointing out "hey look at this limited improved outcome", without considering opportunity cost and incentives. In other words, the Broken Window Fallacy and not seeing how subsidizing poor behaviors just multiplies the poor behaviors (so you improve some limited outcome for the original 10 people but A. Didn't fix all the problems and B. Now you have 20 more people to deal with). This is how Fannie/Freddie can lend money to tons of minorities for housing yet the black home ownership rate won't budge. This is how the Fed and State governments can spend trillions of dollars and not meaningfully budge the overall poverty rate. How healthcare coverage and quality continues to expand but lifestyle disease rates continue to rise. We can't spend a problem away (or if we can, the money is pulled away from something else), and the expense incentives a variety of responses which are typically unconsidered by the Ivy tower types. Sometimes you have to let people touch the proverbial burner for learning to occur, but this violates the overfocus on "care/harm" which Haidt has identified in US liberals and which Yglesias and Klein demonstrate to a great degree.

 

[Einherjar86]

They aren't economists and West in particular has lived an incredibly privileged life. West's perspective from the Ivy tower looks quite different than the working class blacks I have lived around and have talked to.

Not being an economist doesn't disqualify an African American scholar from speaking on African American issues of material disparity. If you're looking for black academics that led non-privileged lives in segregated schools, then why not bell hooks and Angela Davis? I'm still not sure why my suggestion of Gates and West prompted your comment about non-educated whites.

I would need to see where Murray supports differential treatment by race despite high performance.

I didn't mean to imply that Murray personally supports differential treatment. I'm saying that, by and large, his statements constitute an apology for such treatment by appealing to intelligence: i.e. intelligence factors into individual income; and since blacks are generally less intelligent than whites, this explains why they generally earn less. But I've read responses to his work that suggest it overlooks data in which black workers of similar intelligence to whites still tend to earn less. I don't own a copy of The Bell Curve, this is based on an anthology of essays that consists of responses to The Bell Curve (several of which aren't entirely oppositional). One essay quotes this excerpt on wages:

What then is this [wage] residual, this X factor, that increasingly commands a wage premium over and above education? It could be a variety of factors... but readers will not be surprised to learn that we believe that it includes cognitive ability.

The language is vague, but the insinuation is a meritocratic one; i.e. greater general intelligence leads to higher wage earnings, on average. The essay that discusses this aspect of The Bell Curve argues that "ability is unequally rewarded among demographic groups, which is inconsistent with Herrnstein and Murray's claim that the labor market is meritocratic."

I realize that these are selections, and again I'm not saying that Murray himself advocates for differential treatment. I'm saying his work offers an incomplete explanation for differential treatment and ignores certain data.

part of the argument against the welfare state, which Murray hits on a little, but which Sowell et al hit on a lot is that it is the welfare state along with all its rhetoric of victimhood (and then the drug war) which has arrested the economic (and intellectual) rise of blacks for a variety of reasons.

See, I don't see this as "the bigger picture." I think it's a small, incomplete, insufficient fraction of the picture.

Here's my question: why has the rhetoric of victimhood and entitlement been so detrimental to the advancement of African Americans, but the rhetoric of racism and segregation hasn't been? The latter has been far more prevalent in our country's history and far more vitriolic. Why is it that victimhood is to blame and not generations of black fear stoked by white vocabularies, policies, and literatures crammed with images of prejudice and dehumanization?

I'm willing to admit that the rhetoric of victimhood has had some negative degree of impact on the mentality of contemporary black culture (and I saw a talk with Henry Louis Gates where he admitted this too). I'm not willing to say that it has been more influential than the rhetoric of racism and segregation.

As a final point, arguing that welfare is to blame for the plight of black Americans today doesn't strike me as concomitant with the argument that the plight of black Americans is due to their intelligence. The argument against the welfare state (as I understand it) is that white politicians (read: democrats) have convinced blacks that they've been the victims of racist social policies and that they're too dumb to help themselves, so they need the government to assist them. The argument here isn't that black Americans are less intelligent than whites, but that they've been told they're less intelligent because of racism as a ploy to disenfranchise them further.

Even granting that politicians have promoted the idea that blacks are less intelligent because they're victims of extensive social injustice, I don't see this as the more influential component in economic disparity today than the fact that black Americans have undoubtedly been the victims of extensive social injustice for centuries. As far as I'm concerned, this is the bigger picture--not the more recent phenomenon of welfare programs and policies, which only date back to post-Depression America (and more recently insofar as they applied to black individuals/families).

 

[rms]

So Harris's point is really just pointless, in my opinion. Yes, it's true that representation (or lack thereof) doesn't necessarily equal discrimination--the key word being necessarily.

Then it had a use, as Klein was incredibly dense over the course of the conversation

the rest of the post is unwarranted and unneeded, as Harris, you and I all have agreed it was intended to be a ridiculous claim and is.

 

[Dak]

Not being an economist doesn't disqualify an African American scholar from speaking on African American issues of material disparity. If you're looking for black academics that led non-privileged lives in segregated schools, then why not bell hooks and Angela Davis? I'm still not sure why my suggestion of Gates and West prompted your comment about non-educated whites.

Because if the opinion givers were uneducated and a different race, people would be less likely to mis-attribute significance to them.

I didn't mean to imply that Murray personally supports differential treatment. I'm saying that, by and large, his statements constitute an apology for such treatment by appealing to intelligence: i.e. intelligence factors into individual income; and since blacks are generally less intelligent than whites, this explains why they generally earn less. But I've read responses to his work that suggest it overlooks data in which black workers of similar intelligence to whites still tend to earn less. I don't own a copy of The Bell Curve, this is based on an anthology of essays that consists of responses to The Bell Curve (several of which aren't entirely oppositional). One essay quotes this excerpt on wages:

The language is vague, but the insinuation is a meritocratic one; i.e. greater general intelligence leads to higher wage earnings, on average. The essay that discusses this aspect of The Bell Curve argues that "ability is unequally rewarded among demographic groups, which is inconsistent with Herrnstein and Murray's claim that the labor market is meritocratic."

I realize that these are selections, and again I'm not saying that Murray himself advocates for differential treatment. I'm saying his work offers an incomplete explanation for differential treatment and ignores certain data.

See, I don't see this as "the bigger picture." I think it's a small, incomplete, insufficient fraction of the picture.

What I see here is the common issue with social sciences providing group findings, and someone pointing to an example of someone in one of the tails as proof that the curve doesn't exist. It's like saying the average male height is 5'9" and then someone points to Lebron James as proof otherwise, or saying the average male basketball player is 6'7 and height helps in basketball then someone trots out muggsy bogues as an example that short people can be good at basketball too. That racism persists doesn't carry enough water, particularly in light of all of the government spending and affirmative action policies. Not that it doesn't explain any variance, but a trivial amount. Racism was far worse, opportunities vastly more restricted prior to 1964, and a variety of health and social outcomes looked better for blacks. Just looking at poverty, you can see the flatlining right around the time of the Great Society programs (also the same for whites).

Here's my question: why has the rhetoric of victimhood and entitlement been so detrimental to the advancement of African Americans, but the rhetoric of racism and segregation hasn't been? The latter has been far more prevalent in our country's history and far more vitriolic. Why is it that victimhood is to blame and not generations of black fear stoked by white vocabularies, policies, and literatures crammed with images of prejudice and dehumanization?

I'm willing to admit that the rhetoric of victimhood has had some negative degree of impact on the mentality of contemporary black culture (and I saw a talk with Henry Louis Gates where he admitted this too). I'm not willing to say that it has been more influential than the rhetoric of racism and segregation.

Segregation and racism did have negative effects, but there are two parts to a stress-response relationship. Prior to ramping up of the welfare state, the response was, to put it briefly, try harder. This is what you see in Sowell's autobiography. This situation was unjust but not insurmountable once racist laws were struck down. Then, very quickly, the incentives and the message went from needing to outhustle to not needing to hustle at all, and we see the flatline of improvement in relative poverty, fatherless homes, increases in crime, etc. The combination of the drug war and the welfare state did far more to wreck the socioeconomic state of US blacks than random employers who won't hire Daquon.

As a final point, arguing that welfare is to blame for the plight of black Americans today doesn't strike me as concomitant with the argument that the plight of black Americans is due to their intelligence. The argument against the welfare state (as I understand it) is that white politicians (read: democrats) have convinced blacks that they've been the victims of racist social policies and that they're too dumb to help themselves, so they need the government to assist them. The argument here isn't that black Americans are less intelligent than whites, but that they've been told they're less intelligent because of racism as a ploy to disenfranchise them further.

Even granting that politicians have promoted the idea that blacks are less intelligent because they're victims of extensive social injustice, I don't see this as the more influential component in economic disparity today than the fact that black Americans have undoubtedly been the victims of extensive social injustice for centuries. As far as I'm concerned, this is the bigger picture--not the more recent phenomenon of welfare programs and policies, which only date back to post-Depression America (and more recently insofar as they applied to black individuals/families).

It's intertwined. We do know that poverty and a lack of education does have a downward effect on IQ and to bring up Murray's point, the welfare state subsidizes the breeding of the dumbest. The white population in the US is slowly bifurcating into educational and economic extremes of inequality, but because of starting farther behind already, the bifurcation for blacks is even more one sided. That is, the number of [my neighbors] vs the number of Cornell Wests is far higher than the number of my stepdad (poor, rural, no college education handyman) vs Bryan Caplans.

 

[Einherjar86]

Because if the opinion givers were uneducated and a different race, people would be less likely to mis-attribute significance to them.

I don't understand, but I don't think it's a huge deal.

What I see here is the common issue with social sciences providing group findings, and someone pointing to an example of someone in one of the tails as proof that the curve doesn't exist. It's like saying the average male height is 5'9" and then someone points to Lebron James as proof otherwise

Isn't this what you're doing...

Prior to ramping up of the welfare state, the response was, to put it briefly, try harder. This is what you see in Sowell's autobiography.

...right here? In other words, Sowell is an example of a black American pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. But he's one of the exceptions.

Also, the evidence that the essay is citing isn't doing that, because it suggests that when blacks and whites demonstrate the same cognitive ability, the white individual overwhelmingly earns more. If intelligence dictates earnings, this shouldn't be the case.

It's intertwined. We do know that poverty and a lack of education does have a downward effect on IQ and to bring up Murray's point, the welfare state subsidizes the breeding of the dumbest.

Otherwise they would just die off, I presume? I'm seriously trying to understand the alternative of the welfare state, which I can only imagine is "do nothing."

 

[Dak]

Isn't this what you're doing...

...right here? In other words, Sowell is an example of a black American pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. But he's one of the exceptions.

Also, the evidence that the essay is citing isn't doing that, because it suggests that when blacks and whites demonstrate the same cognitive ability, the white individual overwhelmingly earns more. If intelligence dictates earnings, this shouldn't be the case.

I'm was referencing Sowell because of the culture he describes, not his success. He was an outlier in his own family in terms of the level of success achieved, but then he's an outlier across races too.

I went back through the posts and maybe I'm missing it but I can't find a link to the essay you're referring to so it's hard to directly refer to it. I did find this and this:
https://www.epi.org/publication/black-white-wage-gaps-expand-with-rising-wage-inequality/
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/statistics_that_hurt

The kind of racial bias that drives this effect, says Spenkuch, is called “statistical discrimination”—“which has nothing to do with any emotional distaste for working with minorities,” he adds. “In our model, employers are purely profit-seeking. The employer says, ‘I don’t care why blacks are less productive on average; I know that they are, because of the lower SAT scores and other data that are observable. Therefore, if I don’t know anything else about the candidate, I have to treat him as I would the average candidate in that racial group—that is, less favorably. Of course, by law employers are not allowed to do that. But the data show that it’s happening.”

This is where someone could argue for the application of "white privilege", but it's only privilege relative to blacks (or maybe Hispanics), not Asians or Jews. Instead, I would say that productive, intelligent blacks are essentially being taxed for all of those who are not smart and productive and/or live on the dole. As Spenkuch notes, as the individual proves themself, the gape shrinks by around 60%, but doesn't completely erase, probably as an artifact of pay and promotion structure often being based on where you started.

Returning to your comment about intelligence not dictating earnings, that's only true in a 100%, every individual case basis. Above is an explanation on how the group average has an affect on compensation, which reinforces group connections between income and intelligence. Of course, groupings can be created in different ways, and I would expect to see more intelligent blacks earning more than less intelligent blacks. More intelligent whites make more than less intelligent whites (using +1 vs -1SD potentially is stark intelligence differences.

Going back to the culture aspect, some recently publiscized research showed that generational transmission of wealth is practically non-existent among blacks, which locks them into cycles of perpetually starting over. Some of this is blamed on home-ownership issues, but that really just shifts the question. It's hard to have intergenerational transmission of wealth when you have less stable families (no father, multiple fathers, etc).

Otherwise they would just die off, I presume? I'm seriously trying to understand the alternative of the welfare state, which I can only imagine is "do nothing."

I don't have any good answers that don't involve social pain, since the welfare state is so ingrained into the functioning of the economy (~50 years!) that to begin to roll it back would be a shock to both recipients and the places they patronage. This is a similar issue Caplan notes with the current systemic issue we have with educational signaling spirals. Everyone is incentivized to continue the process, even as it provides total social productivity losses, and even selfish losses to many past a point, but to end subsidization would be a painful shock. I think we could start a weaning process with a UBI but eliminating all of the federal and state make-work desk jobs in the various agencies it would replace would be a new shock to the system, never mind the new incentive issues. But those are merely economic responses. How do you change a culture? Not just a culture of a responsibility to "grab your bootstraps", but to save, and responsibility to help others rather than offload it to government.

Incidentally I think Caplan is accurate in suggesting that the broad push for college or bust that we push as a society is contributing to essentially, the welfare state problem.

Different topic:
Going back to that Smith article on the minimum wage, here's a response by Scott Sumner. He's an economic blogger I recently started following as someone who seems to be able to explain things in an understandable way and is not very libertarian (but not Keynesian either). He's a big supporter of Fed wrangling of the economy, but in different ways from someone like Krugman. Anyway:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/04/should_we_trust.html

To summarize, the empirical evidence on the effect on minimum wages on employment is mixed. The empirical evidence on the effect of minimum wages on prices is pretty clear---it raises prices. That means that, on balance, the empirical evidence is more supportive of the competitive labor market model than the monopsony model.

This doesn't mean that firms have no monopsony power---they almost certainly have some. The question is how much, and whether the short and long run labor demand elasticities differ.

I would add that the question of whether higher minimum wages are desirable is very different from the question of whether they affect employment levels. There are other important issues to consider, such as the impact of minimum wage laws on working conditions.

 

[Einherjar86]

The essay I was citing is from a book I own--Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve--not a link I shared. Not sure if it's available online.

I'll let that be the last word, and will take all those comments as good counterpoints to an issue that is more complex than either Klein's or Harris's comments make clear. I look forward to eventually looking at the "different topic."

 

[Dak]

In an interview with Tyler Cowen, Agnes Callard said Jordan Peterson reminds her of Xenophon's Socrates. I'm not sure if that was meant as a slight by Callard, but I found this which both suggests that it might be but in the piece offers a defense:

http://www.blackwellreference.com/s...node?id=g9781405108638_chunk_g978140510863810

• a) The very fact that this criticism was never formulated before the beginning of the nineteenth century should provoke some reflection. What conception of philosophy does this criticism presuppose? Apparently one which sees philosophy as an essentially critical and speculative activity; so, since Xenophon's Socratic writings are not especially critical or speculative, it is concluded, as if the inference were automatic, that they are of negligible philosophical interest. But if philosophy is understood as a way of life-and so the ancients understood it5-what right do we have to refuse the title of philosopher to SocratesX, who strives to make his life and his logoiconsistent,6 and, above all, to make other people better?7
• b) If SocratesX is not a philosopher, as is claimed on the basis of an anachronistic conception of philosophy, it would be hard to explain how he-SocratesX, not just Socrates in general-could have had so much influence on many ancient authors, notably the Stoics, as is shown by the testimonies of Diogenes Laertius (7.2) and Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors 9. 92–101), among others.
• c) By no means all modern and contemporary philosophers have accepted Schleiermacher's criticism. Nietzsche, in particular, did not hide his admiration for the Memorabilia, calling it “the most attractive book of Greek literature”:8

Xenophon's Memoribilia give a truly faithful image [of Socrates], just as intelligent as their model; but one must understand how to read this book. The philologists at bottom believe that Socrates has nothing to tell them, and they get bored with reading it. Other people feel that this book both wounds you and makes you happy.9

 

[Einherjar86]

Alright, so I know I said your last post would be the last word, but I have one more thing I want to say--not for the sake of argument, but in order to (hopefully) convey my suspicions toward Murray.

The essay I was citing is from a book I own--Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve

I went back and revisited this text last night, particularly the opening essay, which has been instrumental in my understanding and skepticism of The Bell Curve. I know the best practice would be to actually read the book itself; but lacking the time to really do so, I've relied on this collection of essays. Many of them are admirably measured, including the opening essay, "Reexamining The Bell Curve," by Stephen E. Fienberg and Daniel P. Resnick. I wanted to quote excerpts from one section in particular, which inform my comments about the history of Murray and Herrnstein's argument:

Taylor succinctly summarizes the main themes of the The Bell Curve via the following syllogism:

First premise: Measured intelligence (IQ) is largely genetically inherited.
Second Premise: IQ is correlated positively with a variety of measures of socioeconomic success in society, such as a prestigious job, high annual income, and high educational attainment; and is inversely correlated with criminality and other measures of social failure.
Conclusion: Socioeconomic successes (and failures) are largely genetically caused.

As corollaries, Herrnstein and Murray claim that because IQ is in large measure genetically determined, it is therefore resistant to educational and environmental interventions. They argue that American society is becoming increasingly stratified into a cognitive caste system, with the cognitively disadvantaged trapped at the bottom of society. This lower caste includes a large portion of the African American population. They believe money spent and laws aimed to ameliorate this inequity will be wasted because IQ is largely genetically determined. Moreover, the "genetic capital" determining IQ is eroding, in large part due to the greater reproduction of low IQ individuals and, to a smaller extent, due to immigration.

The Bell Curve's pessimistic argument about declining intelligence in society, isolated ruling castes, and over-reproduction of the least able is not new to Western social thought. These concerns were first voiced in an age of emerging mass democracy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Because Murray and Herrnstein are more interested as social scientists in testable hypotheses than in historical and cultural context, they present little of this history.

The emboldened text informs my interpretation that Murray doesn't support any kind of targeted action to help those "trapped at the bottom." If all money and laws are a waste, then presumably there's nothing to be done. I don't share that opinion. Additionally, their views are inextricable from emergent race science in twentieth-century America, an overlap that at the very least needs to be addressed and qualified. This overlap is itself an exacerbated practice of nineteenth-century European eugenics, which helped give birth to modern statistics as we know it.

Continued:

The roots of Herrnstein and Murray's argument can be traced back to Francis Galton in Hereditary Genius, Its Laws and Consequences. Galton was the central figure in the founding of the eugenics movement and the study of the relationship of heredity to race and talent. For Galton, reputation was an index of ability, independent of social background. From his analysis of biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias, he became convinced that talent in science, the professions, and the arts ran in families, so that it would be "quite practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations."

Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883 in Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, defining it as "the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally." Influenced in his thinking about evolution by his cousin Charles Darwin, whose Origin of Species appeared in 1859, Galton believed that man's evolution would be accelerated through eugenics: "...What Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly." Through statistics, he tried to understand the laws of inheritance. Assuming a normal distribution of talent, he tried from limited data to establish the distribution of talent in the British population. To go further, he needed more data.

[...]

In recent years, much has been written about the eugenics movement and the evils it fostered. A recent report from the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy at the National Academy of the Sciences, in discussing values in science, states: "The history of science offers a number of episodes in which social or personal beliefs distorted the work of researchers. The field of eugenics used the techniques of science to show the inferiority of certain races." While in part true, this critique of eugenics as a field ignores the commitment to public health and progressive causes of those who supported "positive" eugenics. It essentially equates British views to the much cruder American and German race-thinking and does an injustice to Galton [...]

Modern readers need to recognize that they were social progressives, as were most of those in the early English eugenics movement. Thus to label their eugenics views as racist as we now use the term, with today's sensitivities, misses the mark. Galton did believe, however, that group differences, familial and racial, could be studied scientifically, and he set about doing so in a systematic fashion. Not only was he looking to improve the breed of mankind, but when he attempted to look at racial differences scientifically, he was reluctant to see differences when they did not appear to exist in clear and convincing form.

[...]

The modern history of statistics, even with these qualifications, remains intertwined with that of eugenics. The eugenics goals of Galton, [Karl] Pearson, and [Ronald Aylmer] Fisher clearly influenced them in the development of new statistical methods. Their statistical work and their scientific investigations are admirable, even if we do not share their passion for eugenics.

The essay goes on to distinguish British eugenics research from that of America, in which social scientists took to the statistical variation with more, let's say, racial vigor. Murray and Herrnstein come out of this tradition, and their work is inextricable from it even if they don't profess prejudice personally. In my opinion, the biggest issue with their findings aren't the findings themselves, but the implications (often insinuated) that their findings have for social policy, set against a historical background of unpleasant eugenicist applications.

Again, I'm not posting this for argument's sake, but simply to give a bit more information as to where my stance on Murray is coming from.

 

[rms]

hen white people threaten to call the police on black people—out of anger, out of spite, out of pure vindictiveness—they are effectively saying, “I’ll kill you!” They’re just using a legal extension of white supremacy to do it. It’s high time we start considering these bigots just as much a threat as the police they summon to do their bidding.

hello fellas

https://www.theroot.com/from-starbu...hy-w-1825284087/amp?__twitter_impression=true