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Cognitive ability is an abstract thing, IQ is a form of measuring it. It's like using 10k running time, amount of weight lifted in a deadlift, bench press, and

Cognitive ability is an abstract thing, IQ is a form of measuring it. It's like using 10k running time, amount of weight lifted in a deadlift, bench press, and squat as a measurement of athleticism. Regardless, > This does seem to be murray's contention. I don't think SSC agrees though. And this is actively harmful if you subscribe to the view that it is malleable: claiming that it can't be changed and that someone is "inferior", as Murray does, probably isn't going to set them up for success. This statement seriously makes me doubt whether you've read Murray . The central thesis of his book The Bell Curve is that society needs to do a better job helping people on the lower end of cognitive ability lead fulfilling and productive lives. The notion that less intelligent people are inferior is the complete opposite of what he actually wrote.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> Cognitive ability is an abstract thing, IQ is a form of measuring it. It's like using 10k running time, amount of weight lifted in a deadlift, bench press, and squat as a measurement of athleticism. No, it's like picking one of those and using it as the measure. If you pick 10k running time, you'll be biased towards mid-length endurance athletes. If you pick deadlift, you'll be biased towards raw strength athletes. The question of if Usain Bolt or Hafthor Bjornsson is more athletic is malformed, it requires us to ask which athletic talents we value more highly (not to mention comparing to someone like Kobe Bryant or Tom Brady, where social interaction is a component of the athletic achievement). Similarly, most measures of IQ contain implicit assumptions about what intelligence means, and those assumptions are based on western cultural norms. Even tests designed to be less culturally biased, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices, aren't free of this issue. And this ignores cultures where decision making is often a team sport, so being forced to take a test without aid is an unusual environment, and may be, culturally, a malformed question. > The central thesis of his book The Bell Curve is that society needs to do a better job helping people on the lower end of cognitive ability lead fulfilling and productive lives. Right, the unstated assumption here being that they are genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability (and further that this ability is highly correlated along racial lines). That they are genetically inferior and society needs to cater better to their inferiority: "we should be more willing to help the cognitively disabled". Not that they may be just as well equipped as everyone else, and we should address the biases in society that mismeasure their intelligence, such as biased IQ tests and other cultural assumptions about what intelligence is. The Bell curve doesn't engage with any of this criticism (it predates some of, but by no means all of it). It assumes that the measure is objective and valid. I've read enough of Murray, and enough criticism of him, to understand how he's wrong.
- manfredo 6y ago
  > Right, the unstated assumption here being that they are genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability (and further that this ability is highly correlated along racial lines Not even remotely true. The intra-race differences are much larger than the inter-race difference. The difference along racial lines is a fraction of a standard deviation. They almost entirely overlap. Murray emphasized, repeatedly, that the IQ distributions between race almost entirely overlaps. "Highly correlated along racial lines" is the total opposite of what was actually written in the book. I'm sorry but this just about confirms my suspicion that you are not familiar with what Murray actually wrote. I'm sure the version Murray's message you have in your mind is highly racist. But that is a very different message than the one that exists in reality.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    The book makes multiple claims in multiple directions, such that you can cite somewhat contradictory statements. I choose to criticize the least measured ones, You choose to ignore them. > I'm sure the version Murray's message you have in your mind is highly racist. But that is a very different message than the one that exists in reality. I haven't yet claimed he's racist. I've claimed he's wrong about measurement of cognitive ability. That said, since you bring it up, I do think he's racist. The book itself isn't about race, per say, it's a Social Darwinist policy-paper aimed at reducing welfare on the argument that welfare for childcare encourages low-income (and, as the book suggests, presumably cognitively-lesser) women to have more children. It also, plainly a succinctly states that immigration is bad, and that modern immigrants are "less able": > The other demographic factor we discussed in Chapter 15 was immigration and the evidence that recent waves of immigrants are, on the average, less successful and probably less able, than earlier waves. This is blamed on the low cognitive ability of modern immigrant populations compared to previous ones, and not structural and systemic factors that make it more difficult for immigrants to be high-achieving. So I find it highly suspicious that the book lays out policy suggestions that will predominantly harm low income black women, and prevent immigration, and that he complains in particular about the harms of nonwhite immigration when he says "Latin and black immigrants are, at least in the short run, putting some downward pressure on the distribution of intelligence.", and then proceeds to suggest that we should reduce immigration from Africa and Latin America to address this. Tell me how that isn't racist. I mean in a sense you're right: whether or not one believes that these policy proposals are based on a genetic or environmental understanding of cognitive heritability isn't really relevant. They're still pretty racist. And they get even more racist when you recognize that there are flaws in how Murray chooses to measure cognitive ability, flaws that systematically favor those with significant exposure to Euro-American culture. Choosing to measure people's athleticism solely on their powerlifting ability, and then proposing to ban anyone who doesn't perform well enough is fairly prejudiced against long distance runners.

joshuamorton 6y ago

> Cognitive ability is an abstract thing, IQ is a form of measuring it. It's like using 10k running time, amount of weight lifted in a deadlift, bench press, and squat as a measurement of athleticism. No, it's like picking one of those and using it as the measure. If you pick 10k running time, you'll be biased towards mid-length endurance athletes. If you pick deadlift, you'll be biased towards raw strength athletes. The question of if Usain Bolt or Hafthor Bjornsson is more athletic is malformed, it requires us to ask which athletic talents we value more highly (not to mention comparing to someone like Kobe Bryant or Tom Brady, where social interaction is a component of the athletic achievement). Similarly, most measures of IQ contain implicit assumptions about what intelligence means, and those assumptions are based on western cultural norms. Even tests designed to be less culturally biased, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices, aren't free of this issue. And this ignores cultures where decision making is often a team sport, so being forced to take a test without aid is an unusual environment, and may be, culturally, a malformed question. > The central thesis of his book The Bell Curve is that society needs to do a better job helping people on the lower end of cognitive ability lead fulfilling and productive lives. Right, the unstated assumption here being that they are genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability (and further that this ability is highly correlated along racial lines). That they are genetically inferior and society needs to cater better to their inferiority: "we should be more willing to help the cognitively disabled". Not that they may be just as well equipped as everyone else, and we should address the biases in society that mismeasure their intelligence, such as biased IQ tests and other cultural assumptions about what intelligence is. The Bell curve doesn't engage with any of this criticism (it predates some of, but by no means all of it). It assumes that the measure is objective and valid. I've read enough of Murray, and enough criticism of him, to understand how he's wrong.

manfredo 6y ago
> Right, the unstated assumption here being that they are genetically predisposed to having lower cognitive ability (and further that this ability is highly correlated along racial lines Not even remotely true. The intra-race differences are much larger than the inter-race difference. The difference along racial lines is a fraction of a standard deviation. They almost entirely overlap. Murray emphasized, repeatedly, that the IQ distributions between race almost entirely overlaps. "Highly correlated along racial lines" is the total opposite of what was actually written in the book. I'm sorry but this just about confirms my suspicion that you are not familiar with what Murray actually wrote. I'm sure the version Murray's message you have in your mind is highly racist. But that is a very different message than the one that exists in reality.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  The book makes multiple claims in multiple directions, such that you can cite somewhat contradictory statements. I choose to criticize the least measured ones, You choose to ignore them. > I'm sure the version Murray's message you have in your mind is highly racist. But that is a very different message than the one that exists in reality. I haven't yet claimed he's racist. I've claimed he's wrong about measurement of cognitive ability. That said, since you bring it up, I do think he's racist. The book itself isn't about race, per say, it's a Social Darwinist policy-paper aimed at reducing welfare on the argument that welfare for childcare encourages low-income (and, as the book suggests, presumably cognitively-lesser) women to have more children. It also, plainly a succinctly states that immigration is bad, and that modern immigrants are "less able": > The other demographic factor we discussed in Chapter 15 was immigration and the evidence that recent waves of immigrants are, on the average, less successful and probably less able, than earlier waves. This is blamed on the low cognitive ability of modern immigrant populations compared to previous ones, and not structural and systemic factors that make it more difficult for immigrants to be high-achieving. So I find it highly suspicious that the book lays out policy suggestions that will predominantly harm low income black women, and prevent immigration, and that he complains in particular about the harms of nonwhite immigration when he says "Latin and black immigrants are, at least in the short run, putting some downward pressure on the distribution of intelligence.", and then proceeds to suggest that we should reduce immigration from Africa and Latin America to address this. Tell me how that isn't racist. I mean in a sense you're right: whether or not one believes that these policy proposals are based on a genetic or environmental understanding of cognitive heritability isn't really relevant. They're still pretty racist. And they get even more racist when you recognize that there are flaws in how Murray chooses to measure cognitive ability, flaws that systematically favor those with significant exposure to Euro-American culture. Choosing to measure people's athleticism solely on their powerlifting ability, and then proposing to ban anyone who doesn't perform well enough is fairly prejudiced against long distance runners.