The Bell Curve

[_EAllusion]

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.

Those correlations are simultaneously so-so and not terribly far apart.

If you want to assume the general relationship holds for the math subsections, that's a close enough relationship that the top end performers in math, which is what people passing AP math tests are, are probably going to do well on either exam, which we can then subsequently predict other correlates of those scores. The difference between "unable to pass a high school algebra test" and "got a 5 on the AP AB calc exam" is going to be immense on math performance for both tests and therefore subsequent composite scores. That in turn will translate into proxy conversion into IQ.

The idea that doing well in the most advanced math high schools can typically offer does not have a strong relationship with SAT math performance doesn't sound bare minimum plausible, and if you have some easy web searches that underwrite that claim, I'd be interested to read them. General correlation between the SAT and IQ tests don't help answer that question.

[_Some Schmo]

I seriously think Harris got into this for reasons that are not tied to the racial claims but rather those of freedom of speech.

by the way, I am fairly certain you are correct about this. And it might be something that's gotten away from him.

To be honest, I've given this subject way more thought than I think it deserves. In the end, it just doesn't matter. People are going to think what they will. I've said what I think about it, but nobody gives a crap about that either, I imagine, so I'll move on.

[_Gadianton]

H dug up this gem, and so same point with a different quote:

"One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy." You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.

Even if it is true, there is no reason to believe that genetics lead to poverty. There are the agents, and then there's the game. If I were kidnapped and thrown into the Sarah and die but then my genius neighbor is kidnapped and thrown into the Sarah and lives thanks to quick thinking that gets him to a cache of underground water, my cause of death isn't going to go down as low IQ or poor genetics for anyone but Murray. It would be relatively uninteresting to make the point, "I guess old Gad didn't have the genetics to survive in a real desert" even if it's true. We want to know why I was kidnapped and thrown into a desert in the first place. It's the game that suddenly changed that's interesting.

If a room full of geniuses are pitted against each other in various strategy games such as chess where the losers are executed, then even if those who live are discovered to be smarter than the losers, it's ridiculous to point to the superior genetics of the winners as driving the narrative. We want to know what kind of a horrible, rigged game accounts for such a terrible state of affairs.

The problem for someone like Murray is that in a positive sum game, it's hard to keep a good man down. My neighbor might be smarter than I am, but surely he can teach me the tricks to reproduce what he did so that I can survive in the desert too. But that sounds a lot like job training. Why should a mother with an 80 IQ be unfit for job training? Even Murray said IQ is mysterious and you can't tell a person's IQ in conversation within 30 (?) points. If a person can be friendly and carry on a conversation then there should be plenty of options available for an IQ 80. The way to keep a good man down (or a good single mother) is to make the game significantly zero sum. So if the following quote is right, you can totally see the incentive to believe it:

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%.

The Sahara example as-is is positive sum and the chess execution example is zero sum. To make sure job training isn't an option, then as you're catching up by training, the tier above you is moving ahead. In order to seal the fate of the poor, Murray has to make the game significantly zero sum, however, unlike a positive sum game where you can't say a priori what the level of intelligence is required to win, and discovering the IQ of a Sahara survivor is an interesting data point even if it's not the most interesting part of the story, in a significantly (competitive) zero-sum game, you can say a priori how many losers there are and if for the chess example 130 gets a bullet to your head, you can know that in advance just by knowing the IQs of the players and knowing 50% will be executed. Likewise, you can arbitrarily describe a zero-sum society in a way that an IQ of 80 is destined for poverty. The problem is, now the argument is so circular it makes you want to throw up.

So 1) the game matters, and if the game is what changes it's more relevant than the attributes of the players as root cause to poverty, 2) if the game is competitive and significantly zero-sum then we know a certain percentage are doomed to lose and so the mechanics of how that plays out is less than interesting. (For instance, EA said low IQs can't figure out the laws, but who the “F” cares because if it wasn't that it would have been something else.)

[_Analytics]

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.

That isn't what he says in the book. What he says is that IQ is a factor. Hostile readers go from "IQ is a factor" to "IQ is the sole factor that completely explains everything."

[_Analytics]

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.

Those correlations are simultaneously so-so and not terribly far apart.

If you want to assume the general relationship holds for the math subsections, that's a close enough relationship that the top end performers in math, which is what people passing AP math tests are, are probably going to do well on either exam, which we can then subsequently predict other correlates of those scores. The difference between "unable to pass a high school algebra test" and "got a 5 on the AP AB calc exam" is going to be immense on math performance for both tests and therefore subsequent composite scores. That in turn will translate into proxy conversion into IQ.

The idea that doing well in the most advanced math high schools can typically offer does not have a strong relationship with SAT math performance doesn't sound bare minimum plausible, and if you have some easy web searches that underwrite that claim, I'd be interested to read them. General correlation between the SAT and IQ tests don't help answer that question.

Do the people who score a 5 on the AP marh test have a "g" higher than the people who only score a 2 or 3? Maybe (probably?), but the correlation between AP test scores and IQ test scores will be closer to zero than to 0.75.

That's my opinion. If you are aware of actual research that demonstrates I'm wrong about that, I'd love to read it.

[_EAllusion]

Do the people who score a 5 on the AP marh test have a "g" higher than the people who only score a 2 or 3? Maybe (probably?), but the correlation between AP test scores and IQ test scores will be closer to zero than to 0.75.

That's my opinion. If you are aware of actual research that demonstrates I'm wrong about that, I'd love to read it.

I think that's the wrong comparison. The people who take the AP calc exam are already people for the the most part who think they have reason to believe they can pass it. You don't get a lot of people who struggle with high school Algebra taking the AP calc exam.

What I'm suggesting is that passing AP Calc exams would be predictive of higher IQ as converted from college preparation exam score because college preparation exams test the ability to take math tests well and this is a significant part of the overall score. Since math isn't the sole part of the exam, you have to be careful about extending beyond this point.

I don't think you need incredibly high general intelligence to have calculus down, but if you are measuring someone's intelligence with a test that asks average level high school math problems, you're going to get higher scores, much higher even, out of people who do well in calculus. If you think that quality of schooling has nothing to do with how well you do in calculus or the math that gets you to calculus, there's no problem here outside of failure to explain why we spend so much money trying to squeeze out better performance. If you do, then that's obviously in conflict with the belief that quality of schooling does not matter much to college preparation exam performance.

[_Some Schmo]

I just finished listening to Sam Harris's podcast with Ezra Klein, mostly because I was curious who he was (it turned out I knew of him, just didn't know his name). It was frustrating to listen to, given that they both seemed to talk past each other.

Klein's point was lost on me in this conversation (and knowing who he is, I know I've enjoyed his articles in the past). I'm not sure he had one that related to the issue at hand. It all reminded me of the dust up Harris had with Ben Affleck a few years ago. His side of the conversation seemed more motivated by the appearance of PC-ness than rational thought. It also sounded incredibly passive-aggressive toward Sam.

One thing this whole episode has made me think is that we should likely take a little more care in who we accuse of racism. The country is in a very weird place right now.

[_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....

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.

That's a fair criticism from what I've seen of the book. Using, "solely" is an overreach.

[_honorentheos]

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.

I find him frustrating at times when listening to his podcast, so yes there is certainly an emotional response involved. Perhaps part of it is I'm used to most podcasters of that prestige and ability to get quality guests being better at creating dialog whereas Harris is often there for debate without a moderator. It works best when Sam is just discussing a topic or has a guest on with whom he largely agrees. Some of his podcasts are infamous for being outright ludicrous for how persistent Sam can be to stay in a death spiral of a debate rather than move a topic forward. So none of that has any bearing on his rationality...other than it seems driven by his insistence on being right to the point of irrationality. If you want to hear a real treat of a podcast, track down the episode of a podcast where Hannibal Burress had been a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast, he and Joe drank way too much, and then stuck around for a second podcast where Joe and Sam Harris were guests at the same studio Rogan owns and, I assume, rents out to others for their podcasts. It gets crazy ugly. And Burress is largely the belligerent one but he's drunk as one can be and almost semi-coherent while Harris is sober as a heart attack. I think Harris had a reasonable position...but damn that wasn't a good look.

On top of that, you'll hear him say things on his podcast with confidence that are wrong or only one of a number of potential positions, things like that, and if it comes up in the discussion it gets turned into a battle to the intellectual death. In regards to this discussion on Charles Murray, his position is that people are inferring things from Murray that Murray isn't saying. Yet, as the quote I shared up thread helps illustrate, his inferences and statements point directly to bigotry and tying race in with genetic deficiencies. One of the criticisms I've seen of Harris over the recent email flap is that he was never directly accused of being a racist but inferred that the accusation was rubbed off on him...and some of his listeners who were critics on this issue commented in effect, "Uh, yeah. That's how people can view Murray as saying something that he may not explicitly say but is saying just the same. So, connect the dots..." His argument is being attacked and if it seems to be a personal attack, it's because it is difficult to say his approach is wrong without using Harris as a reference point.

[_honorentheos]

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.

I guess it comes down to how one views race as a construct. If it's shorthand for something that has more to do with outward appearance and the way we group people based on skin color and cultural expression tied to basic views of ethnic backgrounds, the use of race becomes a choice that says something about the person choosing to do so. If we choose instead to view human beings as genetically the same with variations in abilities being a mix of genes and environment, one has to take a much more culturally introspective position. If there are legitimate differences on performance, there have to be reasons tied to cultural and evolutionary pressures that can't cross the line into legitimate defined boundaries between subspecies of Homo sapiens. Are we choosing to say there are subspecies or varieties of Homo sapiens?