The Bell Curve

[_EAllusion]

Their stronger argument, IMHO, is the predictability aspect. Assume the SAT was significantly biased against blacks and thus isn't a fair and accurate predictor of how well they'll do in college. If that were true, then you'd be able to see the results by how well they do in college. It turns out, according to what we both heard in that damned Harris podcast that started this discussion, that blacks with an SAT score of 480 do just as well in college as whites that get an SAT score of 480.

The counterargument would probably be that the college curriculum is biased against blacks in the same way that the SAT score is. Thus a black with a SAT score of 480 actually has a g than a white with an SAT of 480, but it doesn't translate into college performance because of the cultural bias in school.

But that doesn't negate the actual point. The actual point is that intelligence, as measured by standardized tests, is an excellent predictor of subsequent performance.

An SAT test isn't an intelligence test. It's a scholastic aptitude test. It is not even an attempt to measure intelligence and I'm not sure why you'd prop it up as a valid measure of intelligence. It's concordance (inter-test reliability) is decent with IQ measures, but not perfect, probably because if you're apt to have the abilities measured on something like a WAIS, you probably also did well-enough in school to perform well on the test.

If you grow up in a family that uses the language that you'll find on the exam, or had schooling that adequately prepared you for familiarity with such language, that's going to help you over someone who does not. Those same cultural differences obviously would creep into educational environments where such knowledge continues to be helpful.

For your argument to work, it would have to be the case that SAT scores are independent of scholastic demands in college so there is no need to "catch up" based on the SAT functioning as a proxy for prior socioeconomic and educational background. Does that seem plausible to you?

Also, the argument here is not even correct. I've read research on this and students with reduced SAT/ACT scores who are let into college on racial affirmative action do tend to catch up somewhat, though not entirely with higher scoring peers in terms of performance as measured by GPA.Further, merely knowing that you were the beneficiary of preferential selection can retard performance because of expectancy effect.

[Guest]

Thanks for finally getting to chapter four and sticking with it, I'm enjoying the summaries.

if you are a qualified actuary, nobody cares at all if you also have a Ph.D. Employers won't pay an extra nickel for those letters

vs.

The smartest kids are finding their ways to the best schools where they then get the best jobs,

?

I agree more with your first statement that if the market for intelligence is becoming efficient, college shouldn't matter -- at least not directly. The indirect value is to create a separating equilibrium. A smart/capable person could bear the cost of getting the Phd. But this is sort of an apologetic for college and direct approaches to getting a person harnessed in to the workforce seem more believable.

and then marry other people that did likewise

I don't expect thorough answers here as you're getting hit in several directions and also still trying to summarize, I'm just throwing out a few things that come to mind.

- humans live a long time. It seems like it would take a really long time for a master race (of genetically smart people) to congregate in a world-dominating way.

- Silicon Valley asperger communities show resistance to the idea that we can just breed smart people to quickly get smarter and smarter. And look at dogs. Highly bred dogs are less robust than mixed dogs. A coyote is smarter than a poodle and faster than a greyhound. In the long run nature wins.

- I thought in previous discussions around here we'd acknowledged that intelligence can't explain the acceleration of the top .1 percent leaving the top 1 percent in the dust.

- I wonder if measures of economic mobility could show a master race of inbreeding smart people as viable. A good hedge fund manager who accumulates billions, even if we attribute it to skill, is unlikely to produce children who will mix with other smart people to keep the billions coming in. Something like a ruling class of smart people to me would seem more viable if wealth was prohibited from being inherited. The fact that so much of the pie is in the hands of so few, too few to statistically have intelligence dominance, suggests a real resistance to the idea of the world stratifying by intelligence any time soon.

Among those of us fighting for the crumbs left over from the super rich? Perhaps there's an argument there...

[_Always Changing]

For your argument to work, it would have to be the case that SAT scores are independent of scholastic demands in college so there is no need to "catch up" based on the SAT functioning as a proxy for prior socioeconomic and educational background. Does that seem plausible to you?

That is what community colleges with transfer programs are for. And if the catching up proves too difficult, they have the vocational programs.

I just read the previous thread. Appears that the subject issues of my rants were already covered.

[_Analytics]

Section 1 Reflections
After reading Section 1 of this book, my inclination is to side with Sam Harris, Niall Ferguson (professor of history at Harvard), and Thomas Sowell (as interpreted by the editors of Wikipedia): it’s a good book so far. Now that I know something of the actual contents, I decided to circle back around and get a feeling for whether this book is uncontroversial, controversial, or “widely debunked pseudoscience.”

It turns out this was a hot topic 23 years ago when the book came out. To at least help illuminate the issue, if not settle it out right, the following experiment was performed by Dr. Linda Gottfredson, professor of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society.

First, she created a document that outlined what she considered to be the most basic, well-established conclusions in the field of Intelligence. It listed 25 bullet points. The draft was sent to half a dozen experts to review for accuracy and suggested revision, including to the editor of the journal Intelligence.

Next, a list of experts was compiled. The list was drawn from individuals elected as fellows of the APA in the relevant subdivisions, the editorial board members of Intelligence, and other academic authors and well-known and respected experts. 131 experts in total were selected.

The document was then sent to the list of experts, who were asked if they were willing to sign the document and have it published in the Wall Street Journal. The experts didn’t know who else had been invited to sign it. They were requested to either sign the document, or explain why they were unwilling to sign it. Regardless of whether they agreed, the experts were requested to respond. If they didn’t respond to the fax (wow, this was a long time ago), the researchers followed up with phone calls.

Of the 131 experts that were asked, only 100 responded either way. Of the 100 who responded, 52 people agreed with it and signed the document.

Of the 48 who refused to sign, 14 said they agreed with the statement, but didn’t want to sign because they disagreed with the mode of presentation, feared being associated with other potential signers, or feared that signing it would hurt their careers. Seven said the claims weren’t mainstream. The rest quibbled with a few points or vaguely disagreed or didn’t say why they wouldn’t sign. So in total, 62 fully agreed with the statement, 7 said it wasn’t mainstream, and everybody else was somewhere in-between, but probably closer to agreeing with the statement than disagreeing.

The document was entitled Mainstream Science on Intelligence and was published in The Wall Street Journal on December 13, 1994. An editorial on the whole thing was published in the journal Intelligence in 1997.

http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/r ... stream.pdf

As I write this, I haven’t actually read the points of “Mainstream Science on Intelligence”, and I don’t know how they compare to the uncontroversial/widely-debunked pseudoscience. I'm just looking for the truth here--not trying to take sides.

Here is a list of what Harris said in the podcast are noncontroversial facts and how it compares to the Mainstream Science on Intelligence (MSI):

Sam Harris: People don’t want to hear that intelligence is a real thing.

MSI: Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. (point 1)

Sam Harris: Some people have more of it than others

MSI: The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can be represented well by the bell curve (point 4)

Sam Harris: IQ tests really measure it.

MSI: Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments. (point 2) Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. (point 5)

Sam Harris: Differences in IQ matter because they are highly predictive of differential success in life

MSI: IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. (point 9)

Sam Harris: People don’t want to hear that Intelligence is due in large measure to his or her genes

MSI: Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to l), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a big- ger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals. (point 14)

Sam Harris: There is very little we can do environmentally to increase a person’s intelligence, even in childhood. It’s not that environment doesn’t matter, just that it appears that genes are 50% to 80% of the story

MSI: Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently. (point 17)

Sam Harris: Average IQ differs across racial and ethnic groups

MSI: The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85;

Note that I only quoted small snippets of the MSI that relate directly to what Harris said. The rest of the document has points that perhaps qualify these statements but generally explain how these points don’t establish what public policy should be, shouldn’t determine a person’s sense of self-worth as an individual, and explain what we still don't know. In the article in Intelligence on the subject, Dr. Gottfredson says:

The controversy over The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) was at its height in the fall of 1994. Many critics attacked the book for supposedly relying on outdated, pseudoscientific notions of intelligence. In criticizing the book, many critics promoted false and highly misleading views about the scientific study of intelligence. Public miseducation on the topic is hardly new (Snyderman & Rothman, 1987, 1988), but never before had it been so angry and extreme….

“Mainstream Science on Intelligence” is a collective statement that was first issued in order to inject some scientific rigor into an increasingly vitriolic and wrongheaded controversy concerning intelligence. That it garnered such immediate support from so many highly regarded scholars testifies to their confidence both that it represents the mainstream and that their joint testimony to that effect was needed in the public realm. No individual or group has systematically rebutted the statement.

At this point, it is clear to me that Sam Harris was right. The things that Sam Harris said are facts really are facts. They are not racist widely debunked pseudoscience.

[_Analytics]

Thanks for finally getting to chapter four and sticking with it, I'm enjoying the summaries.

if you are a qualified actuary, nobody cares at all if you also have a Ph.D. Employers won't pay an extra nickel for those letters

vs.

The smartest kids are finding their ways to the best schools where they then get the best jobs,

?

There is a lot of research that says education is a good thing. If you want to better your situation in life, get more education. A high IQ and education are correlated. So what's really driving what?

According to Murray, some professions require high intelligence and specialized training (e.g. Law, medicine). But of people who meet the basic qualification standards, it is the most intelligent ones who tend to do best, regardless of the job.

So you need to be pretty smart to get into law school. Then it's the most intelligent lawyers who do best.

With my example, it isn't the most educated actuaries that do the best, it's the most intelligent.

[_EAllusion]

Oh man. You aren't checking your sources at all (!). I wonder where you got your description from. You might want to do a little more research about Gottfredson and the editorial she penned and who the signatories are. You did not accurately represent it and, oh boy, you might want to reconsider who you are citing.

ETA: I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here. If you are claiming to have independently verified the claims you are citing and claiming that Gottfredson's editorial is a credible source and the signatories are an accurate representation of the state of academic opinion, I'd be happy directly reply to it with my understanding. The reality is you are citing a person somewhat infamously at the forefront of modern pseudoscience on race and IQ as evidence that it's not pseudoscience, and my suspicion is that you just got wrapped up in links without chasing down your sources. I do find it a little strange given your experience with similar "petitions" that you just took it for granted. But I suppose you're investigating now.

Otherwise, if you already did and think it checks out, I find this to be a weird moment for you to fall in with the alt-righters. I suppose you and ldsfaqs could now enjoy the same videos, though, which is fun. :p

[_Analytics]

Oh man. You aren't checking your sources at all (!). I wonder where you got your description from. You might want to do a little more research about Gottfredson and the editorial she penned and who the signatories are. You did not accurately represent it and, oh boy, you might want to reconsider who you are citing.

I just saw her bio at Southern Poverty Law Center. Ouch.

My description was based on what Gottfredson wrote in the journal Intelligence. That is my only source. Is that not a generally respected academic journal?

Reading about the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" on Wikipedia, one of the people she asked to sign the letter was Donald T. Campbell, a former president of the American Psychological Association. He refused to sign and said he wasn't terribly impressed with the list, saying, "Of the 52 signatories, there were 10 whom I would regard as measurement experts."

The article goes on to list 4 specific points that Campbell took issue with. However, his biggest problem with it is the same as yours, that "the rhetorical organization of points in the statement, inadvertently or deliberately, seemed to him to build up to the conclusion that the black-white racial gap had a genetic cause."

Wikipedia also quotes Henry Schlinger as saying:

"With a few exceptions, the list of cosigners reads like a Who's Who of those theorists (e.g., Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., John B. Carroll, Raymond B. Cattell, Hans Eysenck, Linda S. Gottfredson, Seymour W. Itzkoff, Arthur R. Jensen, Robert Plomin, J. Philippe Rushton and Vincent Sarich) who have continued Spearman's tradition of factor analyzing intelligence test scores to generate a theory of general intelligence — g — and some of whom (e.g., Thomas J. Bouchard, Robert Plomin) believe that behavior genetic research supports the conclusion that g is highly heritable, and others of whom (e.g., Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton, Seymour Itzkoff) have written highly emotionally charged articles arguing that the research supports the conclusion that group differences on intelligence tests reflect genetic differences."

[_Analytics]

The Intelligence paper was referenced by Wikipedia. It looked like a credible project that was supported by a legitimate editorial board of a legitimate journal. If I misjudged that then obviously I'm in left field.

Clearly different people have different opinions and "intelligence" is an incredibly abstract thing that can be thought about in different ways. That's what I think.

I am proving to be allergic to the argument form, "I don't like the implications of that train of thought therefore it must be wrong."

[_EAllusion]

My description was based on what Gottfredson wrote in the journal Intelligence. That is my only source.

I doubt you were just perusing copies of a mid-tier academic journal on intelligence studies from the 1990's. I meant the source you found the editorial on. The process for gathering signatures wasn't a random thought experiment based on randomly sampling well-regarded experts in the field. We know this because the list of signatories picks up a who's who of people who share Gottfredson's views on IQ and race even when they have little relevant expertise. You think she just so happened to pick up a ton of Pioneer Fund people? It's cherry-picked, in other words. The list functions more like the DI's "Dissent from Darwinism" list in that its thin on field-specific experts, picks up the notable scientists most apt to agree, and you're left to wonder about the thinking that went behind other signatures. Moreover, the description of acceptance/rejection as reported by Gottfredson is disputed by outside sources. There are better ways to assess the state of a field than a stunt like this.

(I'm guessing you think Donald T. Campbell is a hack, because every honest psychologist agrees with you that there are literally a gazillion psychologists who think this is 100% debunked pseudoscience and exactly zero that agree with any of it, much less who would sign a list like this, right? Claiming that 10 measurement experts would agree with this pseudoscience is blasphemy, right?)

I do not think there are zero people in the field like Hernstein anymore than I think John Gee is the only LDS apologist with solid academic credentials in some field that touches Book of Mormon historicity. I think, rather, that they are a disreputable minority. It's big deal that most of the people on the list don't have psychometric expertise when the editorial is about psychometrics.

The article goes on to list 4 specific points that Campbell took issue with. However, his biggest problem with it is the same as yours, that "the rhetorical organization of points in the statement, inadvertently or deliberately, seemed to him to build up to the conclusion that the black-white racial gap had a genetic cause."

Oh, the list is definitely doing that. It points out that, "almost all Americans who identify themselves as black have white ancestors – the white admixture is about 20%" at the bottom of the list for no reason in particular. The official point that comment is made for is tenuously related. Yet it makes a lot more sense when you realize that Gottfredson believes this explains the difference between African Americans being in the borderline IQ range on average and African Blacks having a mean IQ in the intellectually disabled range.

That's not my complaint with the list though. The points vary in how disputable they are. My complaint is that it's an endorsement of Murray and Hernstein, which is the main function of the list even, when that is not a fair representation of the state of the field. Since Sam Harris also endorses Murray, you triangulate and consider Gottfredson's editorial as vindication. She herself does not exactly have a sterling academic reputation, though she would say that's because of PC witchunting, so you're left with arguing the signatures represent an adequate representation of the state of the field. They do not, nor, more importantly, could they. It's not a representative survey.

[_Morley]

Clearly different people have different opinions and "intelligence" is an incredibly abstract thing that can be thought about in different ways. That's what I think.

That's certainly not what you've been arguing.