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Except that the argument Chomsky makes about the fact that this research would have no purpose in a society that treats people as individuals, ie not a racist s

by cm2187 5y ago

Except that the argument Chomsky makes about the fact that this research would have no purpose in a society that treats people as individuals, ie not a racist society, is certainly valid, but the current progressivism is to do the opposite, ie to define people by their race/sex, and to count the number of people of each race or sex in organisations, and to call racism/sexism if it is not exactly the population distribution. That’s the argument Murray makes in his latest book, i.e. that differences in distributions is a toxic topic that he has been trying to stay clear of since the Bell Curve, given all the griefs he got for it. But the claims of systematic racism or sexism when you don’t have matching representation everywhere can only be opposed if you get into this ugly discussion.

littlestymaar 5y ago
> i.e. that differences in distributions is a toxic topic that he has been trying to stay clear of since the Bell Curve, given all the griefs he got for it. This sentence makes it sound as if Murray was acting in good faith when writing the Bell Curve and received undue flack from susceptible people. This wasn't what happened: Murray and Herrnstein used a big corpus of explicitly racist studies (pro-apartheid South African ones for instance). This (pretty long) videos[1] offers a quite thorough review of the sources used in the book, and clearly this book isn't an honest look on a controversial topic (writing an opinionated book isn't a problem in itself, but Murray himself claimed his book to be as neutral and factual as possible, which is clearly not the case). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
- concordDance 5y ago
  Any non video critiques avilable? Videos are much harder to analyze, assess and think about. As far as I know the fundamental points of the bell curve (of which only a small bit relates to race) are nigh-universally acknowledged by people in the relevant fields to be true.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    > Any non video critiques avilable? Videos are much harder to analyze, assess and think about. Unfortunately no. I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. > As far as I know the fundamental points of the bell curve (of which only a small bit relates to race) are nigh-universally acknowledged by people in the relevant fields to be true. AFAIK this is really not the case. I've seen a survey (which I can find now :/) of people working in this field and there's actually a clear division between the conservative (genetics first) group and the liberal (society is key) one. > (of which only a small bit relates to race) It's not that small, and when you dedicate an entire section of your book to this particular topic and you keep using mainly openly racist studies as a reference, it's unlikely to be an accident.
    - sitkack 5y ago
      The Bell Curve is unrescuable from a scientific perspective, it should be thrown away. If it is definitional to your worldview, then replace it with a scientifically sound one.
- zosima 5y ago
  Murray was as far as can be determined acting in good faith. The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes, is (or ought to be) completely non-controversial, consistent with almost all scientific evidence and obvious.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    > The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes, is (or ought to be) completely non-controversial, consistent with almost all scientific evidence and obvious. “That people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes” is, as you say, obvious. But just because there's a lot of variation in many traits among humans mean there's variation in all of them, in fact we all have the same organs with the same functions, the same number of chromosomes, the same metabolic pathway to produce energy from food, etc. There are as many things that don't have variations in humans as thing that do. Don't get me wrong, I do think there is a genetic impact on cognitive ability, but this argument is really poor one. > Murray was as far as can be determined acting in good faith. When almost all your citations in your discussion about the link between “races” and intelligence, are taken from at best biased studies (from South Africa, Rhodesia or Southern US under segregation) when it's not openly racist (Richard Lynn, which has 20+ citations in the book!). If you want quick look at the quality of the sources used in this book, I highly recommend you to watch just the five minutes starting at 1'52'28[1], about the “single best study of Negroid intelligence”. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo&t=5328s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo&t=5328s
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      There are, in fact, much more things that are common between humans than things that vary between populations.
      - spiralx 5y ago
        To the point where anthropologists have compiled lists of "human universals" that are seen in human groups everywhere. http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/2890/brownlisthumanuniversals.pdf http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/2890/brownlisthumanuniversal... Also genetically aren't all the different distinct populations found around sub-Saharan Africa anyway, with everyone else in the world all sharing a single genetic group that has very little genetic variance within it?
RubberbandSoul 5y ago
I wonder if a society that treats people as individuals is even possible? To me that sounds like reasoning along the lines of the physics professors answer: "First, let's assume that all cows are spherical..." Not always a useful assumption. Generalizations are necessary for a human to function. Something like 90% of all daily activities are repetition and you would become psychotic if you tried to make a conscious effort to evaluate and re-evaluate everything all the time. This goes for how we view people too, obviously. Especially those that we do not know. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try, just trying to argue that it would be inhuman to expect us to succeed every time.
- everdrive 5y ago
  We could definitely do a better job than we're doing right now, even if the ideal is out of reach. Shoot for the stars, and hit the moon, as they say.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    Except the stars are millions of light-years away from the moon. I don't think we are that far from a race neutral society, despite the last year of political slogans.
- notSupplied 5y ago
  Treating everyone as an individual is exactly the opposite of “assume all cows are roughly spherical”. It means judge someone with the highest resolution information available. The fact that perfect information is not always available, doesn’t mean you can’t still have the maxim of making the best of the information you have / can acquire.
rafaelero 5y ago
> But the claims of systematic racism or sexism when you don’t have matching representation everywhere can only be opposed if you get into this ugly discussion. I agree. This is a major counterargument to this notion that this type of knowledge is not useful. Not even mentioning that it is freaking interesting and it will always spark curiosity in a lot of people.

by cm2187 5y ago

littlestymaar 5y ago

> i.e. that differences in distributions is a toxic topic that he has been trying to stay clear of since the Bell Curve, given all the griefs he got for it. This sentence makes it sound as if Murray was acting in good faith when writing the Bell Curve and received undue flack from susceptible people. This wasn't what happened: Murray and Herrnstein used a big corpus of explicitly racist studies (pro-apartheid South African ones for instance). This (pretty long) videos[1] offers a quite thorough review of the sources used in the book, and clearly this book isn't an honest look on a controversial topic (writing an opinionated book isn't a problem in itself, but Murray himself claimed his book to be as neutral and factual as possible, which is clearly not the case). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo

concordDance 5y ago
Any non video critiques avilable? Videos are much harder to analyze, assess and think about. As far as I know the fundamental points of the bell curve (of which only a small bit relates to race) are nigh-universally acknowledged by people in the relevant fields to be true.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > Any non video critiques avilable? Videos are much harder to analyze, assess and think about. Unfortunately no. I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. > As far as I know the fundamental points of the bell curve (of which only a small bit relates to race) are nigh-universally acknowledged by people in the relevant fields to be true. AFAIK this is really not the case. I've seen a survey (which I can find now :/) of people working in this field and there's actually a clear division between the conservative (genetics first) group and the liberal (society is key) one. > (of which only a small bit relates to race) It's not that small, and when you dedicate an entire section of your book to this particular topic and you keep using mainly openly racist studies as a reference, it's unlikely to be an accident.
  - sitkack 5y ago
    The Bell Curve is unrescuable from a scientific perspective, it should be thrown away. If it is definitional to your worldview, then replace it with a scientifically sound one.
zosima 5y ago
Murray was as far as can be determined acting in good faith. The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes, is (or ought to be) completely non-controversial, consistent with almost all scientific evidence and obvious.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes, is (or ought to be) completely non-controversial, consistent with almost all scientific evidence and obvious. “That people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes” is, as you say, obvious. But just because there's a lot of variation in many traits among humans mean there's variation in all of them, in fact we all have the same organs with the same functions, the same number of chromosomes, the same metabolic pathway to produce energy from food, etc. There are as many things that don't have variations in humans as thing that do. Don't get me wrong, I do think there is a genetic impact on cognitive ability, but this argument is really poor one. > Murray was as far as can be determined acting in good faith. When almost all your citations in your discussion about the link between “races” and intelligence, are taken from at best biased studies (from South Africa, Rhodesia or Southern US under segregation) when it's not openly racist (Richard Lynn, which has 20+ citations in the book!). If you want quick look at the quality of the sources used in this book, I highly recommend you to watch just the five minutes starting at 1'52'28[1], about the “single best study of Negroid intelligence”. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo&t=5328s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo&t=5328s
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    There are, in fact, much more things that are common between humans than things that vary between populations.
    - spiralx 5y ago
      To the point where anthropologists have compiled lists of "human universals" that are seen in human groups everywhere. http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/2890/brownlisthumanuniversals.pdf http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/2890/brownlisthumanuniversal... Also genetically aren't all the different distinct populations found around sub-Saharan Africa anyway, with everyone else in the world all sharing a single genetic group that has very little genetic variance within it?

RubberbandSoul 5y ago

I wonder if a society that treats people as individuals is even possible? To me that sounds like reasoning along the lines of the physics professors answer: "First, let's assume that all cows are spherical..." Not always a useful assumption. Generalizations are necessary for a human to function. Something like 90% of all daily activities are repetition and you would become psychotic if you tried to make a conscious effort to evaluate and re-evaluate everything all the time. This goes for how we view people too, obviously. Especially those that we do not know. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try, just trying to argue that it would be inhuman to expect us to succeed every time.

everdrive 5y ago
We could definitely do a better job than we're doing right now, even if the ideal is out of reach. Shoot for the stars, and hit the moon, as they say.
- cm2187 5y ago
  Except the stars are millions of light-years away from the moon. I don't think we are that far from a race neutral society, despite the last year of political slogans.
notSupplied 5y ago
Treating everyone as an individual is exactly the opposite of “assume all cows are roughly spherical”. It means judge someone with the highest resolution information available. The fact that perfect information is not always available, doesn’t mean you can’t still have the maxim of making the best of the information you have / can acquire.

rafaelero 5y ago

> But the claims of systematic racism or sexism when you don’t have matching representation everywhere can only be opposed if you get into this ugly discussion. I agree. This is a major counterargument to this notion that this type of knowledge is not useful. Not even mentioning that it is freaking interesting and it will always spark curiosity in a lot of people.