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> Regarding The Bell Curve, it being a poor academic work (i.e. technical critiques) is probably the main reason it is so heavily criticized. It used deeply fla

> Regarding The Bell Curve, it being a poor academic work (i.e. technical critiques) is probably the main reason it is so heavily criticized. It used deeply flawed studies to back up its case, the conclusions did not logically follow the premise, it relied on dubious assumption with weak justifications, etc. The main reason Murray gets criticized is for his alleged racism and his politics. The attempts I've seen to discredit his actual arguments tend to be more self-righteous than serious. I haven't read all of The Bell Curve (though I have read the sections that deal with race) but I have read other works of his, as well as criticisms of those works, and to my layman's eyes I find little credit can be given to his critics. Indeed, Murray often goes to great lengths to highlight to what extent each of his claims can be supported by facts, and does a great deal to acknowledge where there is disagreement in the scientific literature. It may be that good critiques exist, but they are hard to find in the deluge of low quality hit-pieces. > The fact that it then goes on to advocate for conservative policies based on such a weak case is why people conclude it is simply a racist work masquerading as academic Frankly, this is why it's so hard to take his critics seriously. The only practical effect of the political Left's use of the label "racist" is to inhibit critical thought. We've spent much of this discussion talking about his alleged racism, when it still has nothing to do with the actual core thesis of The Bell Curve or my initial reasons for citing him. > In an alternative world where the premise wasn’t of such poor scientific quality and the findings were sound, I bet people would still criticize it, but the overall reaction would be different. We would be trying to find a way to accommodate groups of lower IQ. Social scientists would try to identify barriers and advocate for their removal etc. What do you think Murray's advocated policies entail? Regardless, in a world in which people acknowledged group differences, there would still be genuine differences of opinion in how best to address those differences. >However given this work’s poor scientific quality, the whole notion that this group different a) exists, b) is significant, c), is innate d) is immutable, and e) largely inherits, should simply be ignored as false. Our current scientific understanding does not allow us to conclude this, or at the very least. This book is wrong in reaching these conclusions. That group differences exist is an incontrovertible fact. The extent to which those differences are driven by genetics is certainly up for debate, but Murray never claimed (and indeed, specifically argued against) that those differences were completely genetic. The idea that genetics has no role to play in group differences is quite astounding, and attempts to defend that position tend to fall afoul of Lewontin's Fallacy[1]. [1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12879450/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12879450/

runarberg 5y ago
> What do you think Murray's advocated policies entail? He and Hernstein advocated for abandoning affirmative action, and divert funds away from supporting low IQ groups (e.g. welfare) into supporting high performance groups. This conclusion would always be debated among political lines as more left wing folks would argue against it in favor of accommodations, even in a world IQ was actual proven science. > That group differences exist is an incontrovertible fact. This is true, however the reason for this difference, and whether it is of societal significance, is up for debate. I would argue that we should care more about SAT scores then IQ scores because SAT scores are actually used as an admission metric. These two correlate however I can just as well come up with a new metric which correlates with SAT and use that in my models in place of SAT, that doesn’t mean it is providing any additional info over SAT, nor that anyone should care about it. [EDIT] Or as M. C. Frey (2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/ puts it: > Finally, when we understand that the SAT is a reasonable measure of intelligence, we can use SAT scores as a proxy measure for time-consuming and sometimes unavailable traditional intelligence assessments, as dozens of researchers have been doing since 2004. Although, I should say that Frey misses an important alternative interpretation of her conclusion here, which is to ask: “Why care about IQ if we can use SAT to measure the same thing?” [/EDIT] We do care about the group difference present in SAT scores, and we do care that high/low SAT scores seem to follow generations. However we see that as something to rectify. Nutrition, childhood led exposure, high noise levels all contribute to lower SAT scores, so we try to eliminate those. We could do the same for IQ scores, but why would you? If we found out that 50% of the variance of SAT scores were explained by genetics, who cares? The effect size is still tiny compared to other reasons why people score low on these test. Lets fix those. Lewontin's Fallacy is a silly path to go down. You can draw taxonomy lines wherever you want. If you base that on a silly metric you get a silly taxonomy. Junk-in Junk-out still applies even if you subscribe to Lewontin's Fallacy. This is especially true in the study of human behavior. Humans are a remarkably homogeneous species, we share almost all the same genes. Our experience varies way more then our genes. And alas, that is how most people split us into behavioral groups, e.g. by education, by socio-economic class, by occupation, by geographic region, etc. Group difference down these groups is way more interesting study then down gene make-up. And alas, this is where you find most research which actually contributes to policy change and further our understanding of the human mind. EDIT 2: If you want to see for your self how poor the scientific quality of The Bell Curve is, I recommend you read the sources it cites. Of particular interests is the meta-alalyses by R. Lynn (1991) [Here is a summary https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?t=4256 https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?t=4256].

runarberg 5y ago

> What do you think Murray's advocated policies entail? He and Hernstein advocated for abandoning affirmative action, and divert funds away from supporting low IQ groups (e.g. welfare) into supporting high performance groups. This conclusion would always be debated among political lines as more left wing folks would argue against it in favor of accommodations, even in a world IQ was actual proven science. > That group differences exist is an incontrovertible fact. This is true, however the reason for this difference, and whether it is of societal significance, is up for debate. I would argue that we should care more about SAT scores then IQ scores because SAT scores are actually used as an admission metric. These two correlate however I can just as well come up with a new metric which correlates with SAT and use that in my models in place of SAT, that doesn’t mean it is providing any additional info over SAT, nor that anyone should care about it. [EDIT] Or as M. C. Frey (2019) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/ puts it: > Finally, when we understand that the SAT is a reasonable measure of intelligence, we can use SAT scores as a proxy measure for time-consuming and sometimes unavailable traditional intelligence assessments, as dozens of researchers have been doing since 2004. Although, I should say that Frey misses an important alternative interpretation of her conclusion here, which is to ask: “Why care about IQ if we can use SAT to measure the same thing?” [/EDIT] We do care about the group difference present in SAT scores, and we do care that high/low SAT scores seem to follow generations. However we see that as something to rectify. Nutrition, childhood led exposure, high noise levels all contribute to lower SAT scores, so we try to eliminate those. We could do the same for IQ scores, but why would you? If we found out that 50% of the variance of SAT scores were explained by genetics, who cares? The effect size is still tiny compared to other reasons why people score low on these test. Lets fix those. Lewontin's Fallacy is a silly path to go down. You can draw taxonomy lines wherever you want. If you base that on a silly metric you get a silly taxonomy. Junk-in Junk-out still applies even if you subscribe to Lewontin's Fallacy. This is especially true in the study of human behavior. Humans are a remarkably homogeneous species, we share almost all the same genes. Our experience varies way more then our genes. And alas, that is how most people split us into behavioral groups, e.g. by education, by socio-economic class, by occupation, by geographic region, etc. Group difference down these groups is way more interesting study then down gene make-up. And alas, this is where you find most research which actually contributes to policy change and further our understanding of the human mind. EDIT 2: If you want to see for your self how poor the scientific quality of The Bell Curve is, I recommend you read the sources it cites. Of particular interests is the meta-alalyses by R. Lynn (1991) [Here is a summary https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?t=4256 https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?t=4256].