The Bell Curve

[_EAllusion]

This is jargon from race science / eugenics crowd that refers to later generations inheriting undesireable traits, intelligence in this case, from the previous generations.

This might need further clarification. In the Bell Curve they claim that this is is jargon from population biology:

We will refer to this downward pressure as dysgenesis, borrowing a
term from population biology

It's really a term, as they use it, used in eugenics / race science crowd to refer to the the concept they are discussing as the opposite of eugenic. They appear to have gotten specifically from Richard Lynn and related figures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn

If you don't know this, my statement might look like I'm ignoring that it's really just a population biology term. They're being dishonest in how they introduce the term, and the context of their dishonesty tells you something, but it's an aside to the fact they are making an argument about the problem of downward pressure on IQ in the US population, and the attendant problems they associate with it, in part due to elevated black fertility.

[_Gadianton]

I was having issues with the book long before the race part.

I have no problem leaving the race part behind to distill a couple important ideas. Here's the first:

So the objective is to figure out how to do a better job of raising the IQ of everybody who is dull. Better nutrition, better environments, and better education are part of it, as is research to figure out what else can be done or how it could be done better. As we strive to maximize everyone's IQ, which can be thought of as maximizing their potential, we need to work on helping them reach their potential.

If God blessed every American with the capacity to get 25% more ASVAB questions right, the IQ of the average person is still 100, and the IQ of a mother receiving welfare is (presumably) still 80. Would the situation improve or not?

(hypothetically) suppose in 2018, there are no good jobs available for a person with an IQ of 80, but some reasonable jobs for an IQ of 90. People with 90 IQs also, on average, have better morals and social values than people with IQs of 80. In 2019, a machine learning really takes off, and takes over every job requiring a 90 IQ and now all these folks lose their jobs and suffer various bad fates. some turn to crime. In thinking about those who turn to crime, did they do so because a relatively low IQ -> crime or because poverty -> crime? low IQ -> poverty -> crime -- that's a true statement, right?

[_EAllusion]

If IQ improved because underlying general intelligence improved, then you'd think that the problems associated with low intelligence should improve as well. If the IQ improved because IQ testing ability improved, but not what it is trying to measure, then not necessarily.

If raw IQ scores keep rising resulting in norms obsolescence, then what does that say?

I believe Murray and Hernstein argue that laws of the 1990's are much more complex than they were in the 1950's to suggest that lower intelligence people are having a harder time following them, and this should help explain spike in crime between the two periods. There's a large section attributing propensity towards crime to lower IQ. But what of the Flynn effect? Wasn't intelligence also going up during this time? Are we saying that laws got so much more complex that this outstripped gains? Does this sound even bare minimum plausible? If not, then wait a minute. If so, then wait a minute.

[_Analytics]

One basic question concerns the innateness of IQ—its supposed un-trainability. In fact one can improve one's IQ score significantly by practicing the specific kinds of questions that appear on the tests. The only reason that IQ can be said not to improve with education in that way is that people just don't practice for IQ tests, because they would really have to go out of their way to do that. The questions on IQ tests are weird challenges that never come up in normal life. If there were any cross-training effect on IQ tests from real-world intellectual tasks, the claim that IQ is unaffected by education could never be made. Given this lack of influence of real-world intellectual skills on IQ, the converse claim that IQ nonetheless contributes generally to all intellectual tasks is eyebrow-raising.

Another basic pronblem for me is that reification is a much subtler issue than the IQ literature I've read seems to realize. As an analogy for what they're saying about intelligence, consider wealth. Some people are rich and some are poor, and it's arguably possible to determine a net financial worth for a person in order to quantify just how rich or poor they are. In that sense okay, wealth is a thing. And it's an important thing precisely because it is a general thing. One's ability to buy a yacht, or an election, doesn't depend much on what particular form one's wealth takes. The bottom line net worth is what matters.

And if you hear someone say all that about wealth, then so far, so good. Wealth is like that. If someone starts talking about the difficult issues involved in carrying your wealth around, though, or in storing it, then you have to do a double take. Do they imagine that wealth is gold coins? Bales of hay? Just because wealth is real, in a sense, doesn't mean that it's real in the way that gold coins or hay are. In some ways it's a thing but in other ways not, and if you casually treat it as a thing in one way just because it's a thing in the other, you're going to have a bad time.

Just to clarify a few things about what Murray actually says, he does not say tbat g is a literal real thing that literally cannot be changed in the way that, say, phycists say electrons are literal real things with literal negative charges. Rather, "g" is a model with explanatory power of how we perform across the board on complex mental tasks.

He doesn't say g can't be changed as if that were a fundamental property of the universe. Rather, he says that according to the psychological research, it is difficult to change it much. Of course you can't score well on the ASVAB if you've never been exposed to Algebra. Nobody claimed that you could. Duh. It's just that in America, almost everybody who takes the test has in fact had a few years of Algebra.

According to Murray, the research indicates that if you study for the ASVAB it does in fact improve your score. However, if you take the test 6 weeks after you stop studying, your score will likely revert. It is important to understand that when talking about all of Murray is just describing in broad terms what the research indicates. He says that being adopted into a better environment to grow is in fact proven to raise your IQ.

Have you seen the documentary, "Hoop Dreams"? It follows the life of a couple of gifted inner-city kids who dream of being NBA stars.

Although they are from inner city Chicago they come from good homes that value education. They are tall, strong athletes who have clearly eaten well their whole lives. They don't get in trouble with the law or do drugs. They get basketball scholarships to one of the best private high schools in Chicago.

At that point, what disadvantages do they have? They are going to a school with a bunch of privleged rich kids where they are treated like gods; they are getting the best high school education money can buy.

One of them becomes one of the top basketball recruits in the country. As a high school senior, everybody believed one day will be an NBA star. He gets a full ride scholarship to a prestigious college, but according to NCAA rules, if he isn't in the top half of his class, he needs to hit a minimum score on the SAT to prove that he has any business being in college. After attending one of the best high schools in the country for 4 years, he still can't pass the SAT. The university hires top-tier tutors to help him study for it, and he STILL needs 2 or 3 more attempts to meet thi minimum standard.

All IQ tests are at best approximations of "g", which in and of itself isn't a real thing but rather is just a way of modeling intelligence that turns out to have predictive power.

If somebody studies a lot so that they do well on these tests, they can probably work hard and succeed at other intellectually challenging things too. But if you work hard at a top-ranked high school and still can't get a modest SAT score, don't count on hard work to get into law school.

I don't think Murray would take issue with anything I just said. Don't confuse EA's strawman with what TBC actually says.

[_EAllusion]

I think you are both misrepresenting the Bell Curve and Dr. Murray's later public advocacy. It is saying that national variance in traditional objective measures of school quality do not do much to budge measures of IQ, which in turn are reasonably obtained from measuring acquired aptitudes (crystallized intelligence in the "g" model). The implication here is obvious, which is that differences in schooling doesn't do much to explain the variance in performance on that measure, which is specifically something schools teach. This is long part of the public advocacy that the Bell Curve and Dr. Murray's later writings is used for, and is not an interpretation lost on both its advocates and critics. Except you, maybe.

At that point, what disadvantages do they [William Gates and Arthur Agee] have?

!

A lot? Did you fall asleep during the movie?

[_EAllusion]

Hoop Dreams is one of my favorite films. The idea that the students being referred to lacked disadvantages that would impact their academic success is a misreading of what's going on in that film so wide that it is flabbergasting. It's difficult to know where to start.

Take this line:

Although they are from inner city Chicago they come from good homes that value education.

Arthur Agee's father during most of the time period was addicted to crack. He was so out of it that he was caught on film doing crack deals shown in the documentary. He was an on-again, off-again absentee father. He spent time in jail for burglary during this period. He was physically abusive.

I believe his father sincerely wanted to do better and the film does capture his attempts at redemption, but this is a "good home" in Analytics' mind that washes that out as a possible roadblock to educational success. Good god.

The family was so poor at one point that they were powering lamps to provide enough dim light to see in their apartment by running extension cords from a neighbor.

[_EAllusion]

My favorite hard cut in all of film comes from Hoop Dreams. There's a scene showing a basketball game where Agee's school is middle of an improbable string of wins where the crowd is raucous. The cheers are deafening. The players on the court are heroes to an adoring crowd. That is immediately hardcut to a scene of a graduation ceremony for Arthur's mom, Sheila, for completing a nursing program with the highest GPA of her class. The room is huge, but filled with almost no one but a few of her classmates. The celebration is quaint to the point of sad. Knowing what Sheila overcame to get up to that point gives the scene emotional heft. It is a moment of triumph and genuine heroism. If it doesn't move you to watch it, you are made of stone. And almost no one cares. Not like they do for a high school basketball game.

The cut is meant as a comment on this dynamic. It's so well done. Even if we forgot the myriad ways the boys in Hoop Dreams were disadvantaged compared to their peers, I wonder what message this sends to someone in Agee's shoes.

(Sheila would later go on to become a private nurse for well-to-do families.)

[_subgenius]

My favorite hard cut in all of film comes from Hoop Dreams. There's a scene showing a basketball game where Agee's school is middle of an improbable string of wins where the crowd is raucous. The cheers are deafening. The players on the court are heroes to an adoring crowd. That is immediately hardcut to a scene of a graduation ceremony for Arthur's mom, Sheila, for completing a nursing program with the highest GPA of her class. The room is huge, but filled with almost no one but a few of her classmates. The celebration is quaint to the point of sad. Knowing what Sheila overcame to get up to that point gives the scene emotional heft. It is a moment of triumph and genuine heroism. If it doesn't move you to watch it, you are made of stone. And almost no one cares. Not like they do for a high school basketball game.

The cut is meant as a comment on this dynamic. It's so well done. Even if we forgot the myriad ways the boys in Hoop Dreams were disadvantaged compared to their peers, I wonder what message this sends to someone in Agee's shoes.

(Sheila would later go on to become a private nurse for well-to-do families.)

You bring up an interesting point here that can not be diminished. On one hand we see that the "crowd" tends to celebrate, be "fanatics" for, sports activites because they are easily absorbed into one's identity - eg "I am a Mudhens fan - see my shirt". However, while the accomplishment of graduation is admirable, I am not sure it merits public celebration...collective celebration. Graduation being a more personal and intimate achievement - and motivated by something altogether different.
Notice at large graduation ceremonies each graduate typically only receives applause when their own name is called and that applause is isolated to a small group of attendees...of "fans". No one really applauds for a graduate they do not know. Only at the end of the ceremony does the entire audience celebrate the collective achievement.
So, while I enjoy the more cerebral and emotional inspirations that scripted films can offer, in the absence of actual experience I try to let the script direct the actors... and I am entertained thusly....

[_Analytics]

I was having issues with the book long before the race part.

I have no problem leaving the race part behind to distill a couple important ideas. Here's the first:

So the objective is to figure out how to do a better job of raising the IQ of everybody who is dull. Better nutrition, better environments, and better education are part of it, as is research to figure out what else can be done or how it could be done better. As we strive to maximize everyone's IQ, which can be thought of as maximizing their potential, we need to work on helping them reach their potential.

If God blessed every American with the capacity to get 25% more ASVAB questions right, the IQ of the average person is still 100, and the IQ of a mother receiving welfare is (presumably) still 80. Would the situation improve or not?

(hypothetically) suppose in 2018, there are no good jobs available for a person with an IQ of 80, but some reasonable jobs for an IQ of 90. People with 90 IQs also, on average, have better morals and social values than people with IQs of 80. In 2019, a machine learning really takes off, and takes over every job requiring a 90 IQ and now all these folks lose their jobs and suffer various bad fates. some turn to crime. In thinking about those who turn to crime, did they do so because a relatively low IQ -> crime or because poverty -> crime? low IQ -> poverty -> crime -- that's a true statement, right?

The book's main focus in those chapters is simply describing the correlation. Is does clearly imply that they think low IQ leads to these social problems, but I don't recall it hypothesizing the specific path--only that low IQ is at rhe root.

His fear going forward is that even if everyone's IQ significantly rises, society is only going to have a good place for those in the top x%.

To reiterate, he doesn't create a model for why blacks must be dull and how dull people are destined to lives of misery. Rather, he looks at the evidence of how, empirically, IQ effects different social outcomes.

[_Analytics]

I think you are both misrepresenting the Bell Curve and Dr. Murray's later public advocacy. It is saying that national variance in traditional objective measures of school quality do not do much to budge measures of IQ, which in turn are reasonably obtained from measuring acquired aptitudes (crystallized intelligence in the "g" model). The implication here is obvious, which is that differences in schooling doesn't do much to explain the variance in performance on that measure, which is specifically something schools teach. This is long part of the public advocacy that the Bell Curve and Dr. Murray's later writings is used for, and is not an interpretation lost on both its advocates and critics. Except you, maybe.

At that point, what disadvantages do they [William Gates and Arthur Agee] have?

!

A lot? Did you fall asleep during the movie?

Touche. I probably did fall asleep.