7 ms·

Another phenomenon that accelerated in the early 1970s is the bifurcation of the American public into a cognitive elite and cognitive normal. Colleges became ex

by ipnon 5y ago

Another phenomenon that accelerated in the early 1970s is the bifurcation of the American public into a cognitive elite and cognitive normal. Colleges became exceedingly efficient at filtering entrants by IQ, with the typical college student 1 standard deviation above the mean IQ, and with some prestigious colleges like Harvard having an average student multiple SDs above the mean. Simultaneously business administration became the purview of the same cognitive elite. Could the rural purge have been the result of network executives alienated and at odds with the viewership they were nominally at the behest of? Urbanization did not increase significantly at this time, so it seems cultural factors are the better explanation.

kingsuper20 5y ago
That doesn't explain earlier network television. There was something of a push for high-quality stage drama, jazz, avant-garde comedy in addition to urban situation comedies (I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners). My guess is that somebody does a successful show and everyone else jumps in the pool.
- ghaff 5y ago
  That article (and a couple of articles/blogs it references) tries to coherently explain why TV changed like it did during that period. The better explanation is probably that network programming--probably even more so than other aspects of culture--was very much a fashion business. It may also reflect the personal preferences of a handful of network execs. Furthermore, the 70s were definitely not a back to the city period so its hard to use that as an explanation.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    There's always the pachinko effect of network executive tastes, it's not unlike the music business, but I think that the article is trying to find patterns in clouds. To refresh my memory, I just looked at a bunch of years of network programming. The 'rural' comedies don't seem to make that much of a footprint. If anything, a person could probably build a more convincing, invented-from-whole-cloth, essay about the birth and death of Western TV shows.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Or private detective--outside of British imports of course. Medical dramas. Etc. I think I probably agree with you though that Westerns (both on TV and film) are probably the almost stereotypically American genre that used to be hugely popular and is largely non-existent today. But I'm not sure I'd assign any great significance to the fact other than shifting tastes and, perhaps, sensitivities.
lmohseni 5y ago
Cognitive elite? Or cultural elite. Given that IQ scores purport to measure cognitive faculty but instead measure cultural fluency. (Changed pretend to purport)
- whatshisface 5y ago
  That's not as true as one would hope. There's not a lot of "cultural fluency" involved in matching squares, unless you're from the jungle and have grown up never seeing any squares. (The theory that people who grew up not looking at corners would be less able to perceive square shapes has received some attention, but we have to admit that doesn't have much relevance to people living in modern countries like America or India .) Now, cultural fluency questions have appeared on IQ tests, especially in the past. However that's not so much an attack on the idea of "g" as it is a problem with antiquated methods of measuring it. That's not to say that IQ tests are that accurate. The biggest confounder I know of is ADHD, which causes the tests to come out five whole points lower on average. I'm sure there are others.
  - the_local_host 5y ago
    > There's not a lot of "cultural fluency" involved in matching squares There are a lot of cultural factors involved in believing a seemingly pointless exercise like matching squares is worth doing. You have to believe that something good can come out of it in general; and you have to believe that something good can come out of it specifically for yourself.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      Accurately measuring the performance of someone who is not interested in demonstrating their performance seems like an impossible task for anyone but GLaDOS from the Portal series. ;) More seriously, random pattern matching questions are the best you can do to control for the not-caring factor, because they eliminate the advantage of test prep. The SAT has a significant test prep factor, which I agree is highly confounded by "culture" (a byword for how much your parents make you study) and the circumstances and opportunities related to test prep, including the motivation of the student, and the availability of a place to study and study materials. IQ tests are significantly more meritocratic than algorithms interviews or the SAT.
glaukopis 5y ago
A nitpick orthogonal to your main point, but I would argue anecdotally that there's no way elite schools have an average undergraduate IQ "multiple standard deviations" above the mean - unless by multiple, you mean "two". Any integer over that, and at 4,000,000 students graduating high school a year, and 3sigma working out to ~1/1000, there literally wouldn't be enough smart kids to go around, especially considering a majority of those students probably don't go to T10 schools anyways due to the fact that college isn't an idealized market. Having gone to an elite school for undergrad, I'd argue most students were around 2sigma or slightly below, but almost universally also had 2sigma levels of work ethic, self-discipline, and goal-seeking.
- ipnon 5y ago
  What I meant is that elite universities like Harvard and Stanford are capturing something like 90% of those 3 sigma high school graduates, not that all Harvard and Stanford students are 3 sigma. That was not the case 100 years ago, and in the 1970s it was a rapidly increasing trend. Thank you for calling out this ambiguity.
  - Glyptodon 5y ago
    It seems pretty hard to believe for that Harvard and Stanford, or even just the more "elite" universities capture 90% of circa 3 sigma high school students. My experience is that desiring to go to Harvard, Stanford, or other "prestigious" schools is way more correlated to the socialization of valuing prestige than anything, and that many of the very smart folks I've met value particular interests or other concerns much more than status signaling. I'm also not sure the most common admissions tools have great usefulness or accuracy into measurement above 2 sigma. (Though I'm sure people are pretty smart at these schools.)
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  I did not go to an elite university though I have family members who did. The eye general attitude seems to be that “the smart kids at your high school were probably just as smart as the kids at [Harvard], but at [Harvard] all the kids are that smart”.
cafard 5y ago
I'm not getting into the whole IQ thing, but have you watched some of what was on TV in the later 1970s? Treat yourself to a binge viewing of "Love Boat", "Lenny and Squiggy", or "Three's Company" or even ostensibly serious stuff like "Marcus Welby" or "Lou Grant". When you have recovered, tell me again about the cognitively elite at the network executive level.

by ipnon 5y ago

kingsuper20 5y ago

That doesn't explain earlier network television. There was something of a push for high-quality stage drama, jazz, avant-garde comedy in addition to urban situation comedies (I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners). My guess is that somebody does a successful show and everyone else jumps in the pool.

ghaff 5y ago
That article (and a couple of articles/blogs it references) tries to coherently explain why TV changed like it did during that period. The better explanation is probably that network programming--probably even more so than other aspects of culture--was very much a fashion business. It may also reflect the personal preferences of a handful of network execs. Furthermore, the 70s were definitely not a back to the city period so its hard to use that as an explanation.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  There's always the pachinko effect of network executive tastes, it's not unlike the music business, but I think that the article is trying to find patterns in clouds. To refresh my memory, I just looked at a bunch of years of network programming. The 'rural' comedies don't seem to make that much of a footprint. If anything, a person could probably build a more convincing, invented-from-whole-cloth, essay about the birth and death of Western TV shows.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Or private detective--outside of British imports of course. Medical dramas. Etc. I think I probably agree with you though that Westerns (both on TV and film) are probably the almost stereotypically American genre that used to be hugely popular and is largely non-existent today. But I'm not sure I'd assign any great significance to the fact other than shifting tastes and, perhaps, sensitivities.

lmohseni 5y ago

Cognitive elite? Or cultural elite. Given that IQ scores purport to measure cognitive faculty but instead measure cultural fluency. (Changed pretend to purport)

whatshisface 5y ago
That's not as true as one would hope. There's not a lot of "cultural fluency" involved in matching squares, unless you're from the jungle and have grown up never seeing any squares. (The theory that people who grew up not looking at corners would be less able to perceive square shapes has received some attention, but we have to admit that doesn't have much relevance to people living in modern countries like America or India .) Now, cultural fluency questions have appeared on IQ tests, especially in the past. However that's not so much an attack on the idea of "g" as it is a problem with antiquated methods of measuring it. That's not to say that IQ tests are that accurate. The biggest confounder I know of is ADHD, which causes the tests to come out five whole points lower on average. I'm sure there are others.
- the_local_host 5y ago
  > There's not a lot of "cultural fluency" involved in matching squares There are a lot of cultural factors involved in believing a seemingly pointless exercise like matching squares is worth doing. You have to believe that something good can come out of it in general; and you have to believe that something good can come out of it specifically for yourself.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Accurately measuring the performance of someone who is not interested in demonstrating their performance seems like an impossible task for anyone but GLaDOS from the Portal series. ;) More seriously, random pattern matching questions are the best you can do to control for the not-caring factor, because they eliminate the advantage of test prep. The SAT has a significant test prep factor, which I agree is highly confounded by "culture" (a byword for how much your parents make you study) and the circumstances and opportunities related to test prep, including the motivation of the student, and the availability of a place to study and study materials. IQ tests are significantly more meritocratic than algorithms interviews or the SAT.

glaukopis 5y ago

A nitpick orthogonal to your main point, but I would argue anecdotally that there's no way elite schools have an average undergraduate IQ "multiple standard deviations" above the mean - unless by multiple, you mean "two". Any integer over that, and at 4,000,000 students graduating high school a year, and 3sigma working out to ~1/1000, there literally wouldn't be enough smart kids to go around, especially considering a majority of those students probably don't go to T10 schools anyways due to the fact that college isn't an idealized market. Having gone to an elite school for undergrad, I'd argue most students were around 2sigma or slightly below, but almost universally also had 2sigma levels of work ethic, self-discipline, and goal-seeking.

ipnon 5y ago
What I meant is that elite universities like Harvard and Stanford are capturing something like 90% of those 3 sigma high school graduates, not that all Harvard and Stanford students are 3 sigma. That was not the case 100 years ago, and in the 1970s it was a rapidly increasing trend. Thank you for calling out this ambiguity.
- Glyptodon 5y ago
  It seems pretty hard to believe for that Harvard and Stanford, or even just the more "elite" universities capture 90% of circa 3 sigma high school students. My experience is that desiring to go to Harvard, Stanford, or other "prestigious" schools is way more correlated to the socialization of valuing prestige than anything, and that many of the very smart folks I've met value particular interests or other concerns much more than status signaling. I'm also not sure the most common admissions tools have great usefulness or accuracy into measurement above 2 sigma. (Though I'm sure people are pretty smart at these schools.)
germinalphrase 5y ago
I did not go to an elite university though I have family members who did. The eye general attitude seems to be that “the smart kids at your high school were probably just as smart as the kids at [Harvard], but at [Harvard] all the kids are that smart”.

cafard 5y ago

I'm not getting into the whole IQ thing, but have you watched some of what was on TV in the later 1970s? Treat yourself to a binge viewing of "Love Boat", "Lenny and Squiggy", or "Three's Company" or even ostensibly serious stuff like "Marcus Welby" or "Lou Grant". When you have recovered, tell me again about the cognitively elite at the network executive level.