The Bell Curve

[_honorentheos]

Schmo -

Reading his bio at the Southern Poverty Law Center's website might help put some perspective on the controversy around Murray.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... les-murray

Harris argues that Murray is being misrepresented and misunderstood because he isn't really saying something race-related. Murray agrees with Harris and that all he is doing is citing data. Reading more about Murray suggests this isn't a fair self-portrait of his aims or how he is actually behaving. Whatever Sam Harris may be intending, Murray can't be said to be the victim of unfair treatment. He claims this is so because people are uncomfortable with what reality has to say. But for this to be accurate, one has to accept certain things as hard facts which are not. EA has made point after point in this thread trying to show that Murray plays with people by shifting between soft conclusions that may be one possibility with caveats to firm, conclusive statements and arguments for how policy should follow these conclusions.

I seriously think Harris got into this for reasons that are not tied to the racial claims but rather those of freedom of speech. And he has continued to make a public mantra of, "I'm just following the data while others are acting out emotionally by drawing inferences from things Murray doesn't actually say." But Murray says things that can be traced back very clearly to the ideas he is being accused of championing and attempting to give scientific support to that could be compared to Trump's given our Ajax-like neighbors the sense it's time to crawl out into the light and reclaim their birthright. If there is room for deniability, one has to want to buy into it for it to be considered reasonable. Harris must have his reasons, but he's obviously wanting to buy into it. in my opinion on this issue, he's playing Hannity to Murray's Trump.

[_Analytics]

It's probably not a good choice to "cram" at all. If you want to keep the analogy to basketball up, we wouldn't expect William Gates to be one of the top 100 basketball players in the country after speed-studying the game for several weeks. We wouldn't even expect that from a year of sustained practice.

I'm reminded of another film about the late 80's early 90's obsession with the "inner city" that came out a few years prior to Hoop Dreams: Stand and Deliver. It's a film based on a true story where a large number of students from a largely poor and latino high school end up taking the AP calc AB exam with a high pass rate. This was unbelievable at the time and contributed to them being forced to retake the exam on short notice, leading to similar passing scores. Of the 14 asked to retake the test, 2 declined saying they did not need the credit, and other 12 passed again. 18 students in total passed the first time.

From there, the program only continued to grow. By the time the movie was in theaters, over 70 students the previous year had passed the AP calc exam with 12 passing the BC test.

At one point, this single high school had over a quarter of all Mexican-American students who passed the AP calc exam in the country. The AP calc exam is tougher than the SAT, ACT, or (I presume) the ASVAB. I took the BC test in high school in the late 90's and it was a very hard test. No actual college course math test I've ever taken had the same difficulty level. The ACT was comparatively a joke. I'm certain high performance in the AP calc test would predict high performance on easier aptitude test equivalents. And since we are converting IQ from those scores....

Great story. Thanks for sharing. Regarding "cramming", that was partly a poor choice of words on my part, but touche--academic excelence takes a lot of sustained work over time.

I do want to address one area of disagreement, however. IQ tests, the ASVAB, and to a large degree the SAT are in fact cognitive tests--they are designed to test IQ. In contrast, AP tests, and to a large extent the ACT, are achievement tests. They are designed to test how well you've masterered class material. Just because the SAT test predicts your IQ score doesn't mean the AP Calculus BC test also predicts your IQ. While I'm sure few people with low IQs will pass the AP Calc test, you could have a very high IQ test and completely fail it if you haven't happened to have studied Calculus.

How "hard" the various tests subjectively seem to be isn't the issue. IQ tests are designedto have a wide range of questions, ranging along a broad continum from very easy to very hard. That is so they can give a precise IQ score to a wide range of intelligence levels. In contrast, the AP Calculus test is designed to test whether you've mastered the Calculus concepts on the sylabus. That is hard to be sure, but it isn't predictive of IQ.

[_Analytics]

Gad's tree analogy includes something I think deserves revisiting as well. Hat tip to Gad for coming up with it........

But when it comes to use them to explain something about a person one might assign to a particular race they fall apart while saying the person making use of them in this way is...well, racist. And Murray and his co-author do just that even if one wants to say they are mainly just commenting on the way things are.

That was fascinating information about Utah trees. I grew up a few minutes away from the mouth of Little-Cottonwood Canyon, and learned a lot from this post.

Just to clarify on what Murray et. al. actually say, they don't attempt to define race. They just use the race that people use to describe themselves. According to the statistics, on average, people who say they are black don't scrore as well as people who say they are white. On average, whites in crappy neighborhoods do better than blacks in crappy neighborhoods. On average, rich white kids going to the best schools in the suburbs do better than rich black kids going to the best schools in the suburbs. Being a rich kid in the suburbs helps your IQ score. Sure. But when controlling for such things, on average whites do better.

That's what Murray et. al. claim, at least. And even if it is true, it isn't clear to me that it is a truth that has a lot of value worth saying.

On the other hand, if this is true, it is informative on whether race should be the basis of afirmative action programs, as opposed to growing up in a sociological disadvantaged enviornment without regard to race. That is what Murray claims his point is.

[_EAllusion]

I do want to address one area of disagreement, however. IQ tests, the ASVAB, and to a large degree the SAT are in fact cognitive tests--they are designed to test IQ. In contrast, AP tests, and to a large extent the ACT, are achievement tests. They are designed to test how well you've masterered class material. Just because the SAT test predicts your IQ score doesn't mean the AP Calculus BC test also predicts your IQ. While I'm sure few people with low IQs will pass the AP Calc test, you could have a very high IQ test and completely fail it if you haven't happened to have studied Calculus.

How "hard" the various tests subjectively seem to be isn't the issue. IQ tests are designedto have a wide range of questions, ranging along a broad continum from very easy to very hard. That is so they can give a precise IQ score to a wide range of intelligence levels. In contrast, the AP Calculus test is designed to test whether you've mastered the Calculus concepts on the sylabus. That is hard to be sure, but it isn't predictive of IQ.

The SAT is a scholastic aptitude test. It's literally the original meaning of the title. That aptitude does not exist independent from schooling. Its not a test meant to test inherent intelligence independent from academic knowledge nor could it. The SAT and ACT math sections were highly similar at the time I took the ACT. I googled to see if that is still the case and it is:

https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-math-v ... difference

The main difference is how they are organized, but the questions themselves are highly similar with the SAT version just having more of a story-problem set-up like AP tests do. They both test high school math knowledge. In fact, they test the kind of high school math knowledge you need to really have down if you want to do well in calculus. If you pass the AP calc test, you're going to score high on the SAT and ACT math sections barring some really bad luck. And if you don't have a strong math background, you won't. The tests test math knowledge. The questions parallel what standard schooling prepares you for. Jamie Escalante's students almost certainly did well on the math sections of college preparation exams.

If you want to seriously argue that there is no meaningful correlation between AP Calc performance and SAT/ACT/ASVAB performance, Id love to see that case made, because there's no way that is going to hold up. And much like you can use correlation to try and proxy convert aptitude tests into IQ scores, you could almost certainly do the same predictive analysis for AP calc performance and SAT/ACT/ASVAB score. (ACT scores can also be proxy converted into IQ scores using the same methodology as SAT scores.)

[_EAllusion]

Forgetting the similarity of the math portions for a second, I'd love to hear an explanation for how the SAT measures intelligence by measuring vocabulary knowledge, and the ASVAB does the same by measuring reading comprehension of paragraphs, but the ACT does not because it measures reading comprehension of paragraphs.

[_Analytics]

Schmo -

Reading his bio at the Southern Poverty Law Center's website might help put some perspective on the controversy around Murray.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... les-murray

Harris argues that Murray is being misrepresented and misunderstood because he isn't really saying something race-related. Murray agrees with Harris and that all he is doing is citing data. Reading more about Murray suggests this isn't a fair self-portrait of his aims or how he is actually behaving. Whatever Sam Harris may be intending, Murray can't be said to be the victim of unfair treatment....

I've got to take issue with this. According to your SPLC link:

According to Murray, the relative differences between the white and black populations of the United States, as well as those between men and women, have nothing to do with discrimination or historical and structural disadvantages, but rather stem from genetic differences between the groups. The Bell Curve, which remains Murray’s most controversial work, firmly lays out Murray’s belief, shared with Herrnstein, that the groups that make up the “underclass” are there solely because of their genes.

Can you provide a single quote from TBC that says or implies "the groups that make up the "underclass" are there solely because of their genes"? The answer is no, you can't, because the book doesn't actually say that or imply it.

[_Analytics]

Forgetting the similarity of the math portions for a second, I'd love to hear an explanation for how the SAT measures intelligence by measuring vocabulary knowledge, and the ASVAB does the same by measuring reading comprehension of paragraphs, but the ACT does not because it measures reading comprehension of paragraphs.

To clarify, they fall along a continum. The SAT changed a couple of years ago. Before that, the SAT was something like 75% correlated with IQ, while the ACT was correlated something like 65% with IQ. This was because the SAT questions had more to do with general questions evaluating how well you could solve problems, while the ACT had more questions about how well you could remember specific things taught in school.

That's all from some easy web searches from experts in such things.

[_EAllusion]

Murray says the underclass is the way it is in significant part because of their genes and poor habits of mind those genes predispose them to, that this also explains racial gaps well, and this fact makes it difficult for commonly supported social uplift programs to be effective. "Solely" is a strawman argument, and it isn't necessary to adopt that reading to recognize that this is far from accepted dogma in the field.

[_EAllusion]

I looked up the concordance between SAT and ACT math performance and the relationship is very tight in general as I would expect. Interestingly, there is some divergence among different subgroups explained by the fact that the tests measure ever so slightly different things that happens to be relevant in niche between-group differences.

[_Some Schmo]

I don't think Harris is racist or that most people are saying Harris is racist.

I don't think that either. It's just something I've heard bubble up, and I'm simply declaring that idea ridiculous.

But he has justly earned a reputation as someone who overestimates his own knowledge and understanding. He isn't as rational as one might assume because he claims to be and tends to keep his cool in most discussions.

I've never once considered him rational because he said so (I don't think I've ever heard him say it, frankly). I suppose it's implied when he encourages people to think rationally, but that's not quite the same thing.

As for what you've written about him... well, ok. You're entitled to your opinion, but it sounds to me you're another one who's had an emotional reaction to him rather than an intellectual one.

I actually hadn't listened to him for a while before this thing came up. It's not like I'm a huge fan (I kind of stopped listening to/reading him after his essay on guns), but since this thing with Murray came up, I decided to listen to his webcast on the matter and was reminded of how I perceive him as an individual. I admire how he thinks. That's the extent of it. So I don't really care if people don't like him, but I will call out inaccuracies if I perceive them. I notice people, when criticizing him, rarely attack his actual arguments. It seems personal. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised he gets under certain people's skin, but I am.