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Actually I read both books years ago and "The Mismeasure of Man" was far more sound in its analysis. In particular the biases in IQ testing were made very clea

Actually I read both books years ago and "The Mismeasure of Man" was far more sound in its analysis. In particular the biases in IQ testing were made very clear in Gould's work. My take on what the Charles Murray crowd (and its antecedents dating back to Francis Galton's Social Darwinism) is that it's just an attempt to justify the social status quo based on 'genetic superiority of the ruling class'. This is merely a replacement for the previous (and completely discredited) religious justification for the social status quo, i.e. priests telling the serfs and slaves that 'The gods have blessed the divine kings'. We also have the economists getting in on the game, telling everyone that gross wealth disparity is the inevitable result of pure econometric theory and so on. For other hilarious takes on this, I always point to the "Nobel Prize Sperm Bank"[1] [1] https://www.thecut.com/2019/08/what-ever-happened-to-the-mysterious-nobel-prize-sperm-bank.html https://www.thecut.com/2019/08/what-ever-happened-to-the-mys...

rsj_hn 5y ago
So notice how quickly blank-slate side devolves into politics, questioning motives, casting dark aspersions, etc. The reason is that they don't feel comfortable talking about the science, and so this is all a form of science-denial. If you care at all about what is real, as opposed to fighting political battles, you may want to read up on the current state of the art. Human Diversity is a great read, but if you are short of time, there are lots of scientific articles out there - check out the tweet stream summarizing the data with links to the current research here: https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1211170458902487042 https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1211170458902487042 Unfortunately trying to get people to look at scientific questions using scientific methodology is as hard as trying to convince a creationist. They are simply not going to listen and will accuse you of being a bad person, etc.

rsj_hn 5y ago

So notice how quickly blank-slate side devolves into politics, questioning motives, casting dark aspersions, etc. The reason is that they don't feel comfortable talking about the science, and so this is all a form of science-denial. If you care at all about what is real, as opposed to fighting political battles, you may want to read up on the current state of the art. Human Diversity is a great read, but if you are short of time, there are lots of scientific articles out there - check out the tweet stream summarizing the data with links to the current research here: https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1211170458902487042 https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1211170458902487042 Unfortunately trying to get people to look at scientific questions using scientific methodology is as hard as trying to convince a creationist. They are simply not going to listen and will accuse you of being a bad person, etc.