EAllusion wrote:I own The Bell Curve.
So do I, and have for about 17 years or so.
Since you likely haven't read it,if you are curious, the central thesis is that class structure in America will be increasingly shaped around IQ given that IQ is predictive of school performance and career attainment.
Correct.
It makes a variety of arguments that float around this thesis, such as IQ actually being a highly valid measure of intelligence which is a controversial position. (It also argues that the US is becoming Idiocracy.)
I know.
There is a well known class stratification in IQ scores, usually explained in psychometric research on this subject by the environmental advantages of wealth for what those tests measure (though in very complicated, not at all obvious ways).
Which suggests that it is aspects of culture, not genetics, that are more important in determining actual IQ scores.
The Bell Curve argues the causal relationship in the reverse. While there are uncontroversial assertions, the work ends up making a series of highly provocative arguments generally not accepted by IQ researchers including racial disparities in IQ being explainable significantly in terms of genetic differences between ethnic populations. The latter is an explosive aspect of the book which you, in one of your more brazen moments, just flat deny.
I couldn't have ever denied it because I've never discussed
The Bell Curve at any length in this forum, and since I'm in substantial agreement with Thomas Sowell on the issue, the likelihood of my agreeing with genetics as the major factor in average IQ levels between any demographic groups involved is zero.
Beyond that, as I said, there are a couple of pages in the book mentioning average IQ differences between races, and it otherwise has nothing to due with the burden of the books main thesis.