echidna

DC (& ps418), I’m quite familiar with the Naturalist Fallacy & I’m not a subscriber to it at all.

But I do believe in the value of a meritocracy, where roles are assigned on the basis of ability. Recent decades have seen the increase in skilled jobs and the similar decrease in unskilled jobs. By asserting the existence of a genetic group with a perpetually lower cognitive function than the norm, one is also saying that this racial group then should also always feature lower in skilled jobs.

Humanity may not value cognitive function as a positive or a negative, but economists, employers and business certainly do.

Do you agree ?

echidna

Well, Murray himself says :

Because he has no answer, he essentially says that an increase in IQ is likely not an increase in cognitive function, thereby significantly separating IQ from cognitive function. That would seem a bizarre statement from one who also strongly defends psychometrics. Surely given the nature of his pessimism over the immutability of intelligence you can see how inadequate this response is.

echidna

Now, also from the American Psychological Association,

To my understanding the male and female brain differs quite dramatically, far more than between any racial differences. Women's brain size is around 10% smaller on average, neural density is quite different, even structure.

I’m not even confident that brains can be distinguished racially (maybe with difficulty), while they certainly can sexually much more readily. And yet “no important sex differences in overall intelligence test scores”. So despite significantly more research than racially-based studies, even the task-specific functional differences between genders are not immediately attributable to genetic differences.

So how does one then conclude that the comparatively much smaller brain differences between races automatically yield such definite differences in cognitive function ? HM do not address the issue in the context of neurology and I concede it is not a direct response, however I would suggest that neurology of gender would indicate that their genetic conclusions are exaggerated.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]</p>

Rusting Car Bumper

I don't know what "perpetually lower" means in this context. I don't know what "always feature lower in skilled jobs" means either.

If I agreed it would only be for individuals and not for groups.

Even if racial group X has lower IQs STATISTICALLY than racial group Y, I still only hire the best employee who walks through the door. If it happens that person (i.e. an individual) of race X is obviously more skilled than candidate of race Y (and in other words the opposite of what would be expected as noted above) I hire the race X person IN SPITE OF the statistical claims that say the case should be otherwise.

DC

Amen-Moses

Gestation times. Brain size has very little to do with IQ, wiring is far more important and a fwew extra days in which to lay down that wiring could be very significant.

Amen-Moses

ohwilleke

I think that several important conclusions of the Bell Curve are important enough to stir up controversy on a variety of points because they differ from prevailing assumptions in other fields, and have significant evidentiary support.

For instance,

(1) General intelligence, sometimes measured by IQ, is a real phenomena that influences a person's life dramatically.

(2) General intelligence is quite stable with a surprisingly large part of the variation in IQ explainable by events, genetic or otherwise, that happen no later than early childhood. This stability is resistent to concerted positive and negative impacts from nuture.

(3) Performance on IQ tests corrolates strongly with general intelligence.

(4) Performance on IQ tests is not random. Some groups consistently perform better on IQ tests and other tests of particular mental abilities than others for reasons not linked to poor test design.

Education policy is one big area affected by these conclusions.

The United States has historically conducted its education policy on the assumption that intelligence is randomly distributed and that mental performance is largely based on nuture. If kids don't learn how to read, it's the teacher's fault.

In contrast, countries like Germany and England track children in the education system from a much earlier age. Rather than formally distinguishing between college preparation tracks and non-college preparation tracks in the 10th grade and erring on the side of college prep, as U.S. schools do, Germany and England are formally tracking kids as young as 11 years old, five years earlier than the U.S. does, and are less concerned about giving every child a chance to go to college.

The downside of the American approach is that we turn out droves of high school students with no realistic chance of going to college and no training relevant to what is going to be their professional and personal lives -- and end up learning in the school of hard knocks for decades and wasting their years in school. The downside of the German and English systems is that it has a tendency to cement existing class distinctions on the basis of a fallible test, limiting the life chances to really excel of many lower class kids. (One of the Beattles, for example, was told he would only succeed in manual labor).

Which policy is better depends to a great extent on how much IQ is a product of nature and how much it is a product of nuture. It the U.S. overestimates the importance of nuture, it is going to make policy decisions based on incorrect assumptions and may end up with policy decisions that hurt more kids than they help.

Another issue relevant to these conclusions is the school testing debate. Colorado, for example, evaluates schools as "failing" or "passing" based on average test scores which are strongly corrolated with IQ. Failing schools are reorganized or shut down. Passing schools are left alone.

But, evidence strongly indicates that the vast majority of variation in test scores in the vast majority of cases, between schools has to do wtih the socio-economic background of the kids, to a much greater extent than anything that can be attributed to the teachers - education, curricula, etc.

An "IQ is real and groups are different" evalution methodology for schools would reward schools that get good test scores given some baseline based on the population of students that the school has, while punishing schools that get merely acceptable scores despite a baseline of students who ought to be able to do much better. But, such approaches are controversial because they "expect less" from kids in poor minority neighborhoods, even though such an approach might more accurately distinguish between good teachers and poor ones. Now, unless you are head and shoulders above all other schools with poor students (often for anomolous reasons, such as having a lot of monetarily poor college students with children who attend a school, or underemployed college educated immigrants, who in either case aren't actually from a lower class socio-economic background despite current circumstances), teachers in poor minority neighborhoods are almost doomed to failure in the eyes of the system, no matter how hard they try, which does not promote good teaching.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

echidna

Possibly but of course unsubstantiated. Interestingly one of HM’s more controversial sources is J. Philippe Rushton who actually does assert a correlation between brain size and intelligence, bordering on phrenology.

<a href="http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/People/Rushton/rushton-brain-size-matters.html" target="_blank">http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/People/Rushton/rushton-brain-size-matters.html</a>
Brain size matters : my reply to Peters
(flippin' code doesn't work for me)

Not surprisingly Rushton is generally considered a crank. He is anecdotally quoted as saying things like “the bigger the penis the less intelligence required” and so forth. Subsequent to his book Murray distances himself somewhat from Rushton.

ps418

Ok, I understand your point better now. Are you saying that the Flynn effect indicates that IQ is substantially changeable, contrary to the BC? If so, I would tentatively agree with you. I dont really understand why Murray thinks the Flynn effect does not reflect a change in cognitive functioning.

My point was not about that, though. It was that the Flynn effect does not disprove the broader hypothesis that intelligence is to a large extant genetic, which amongst the general public is itself a 'controversial' hypothesis.

Patrick

Happy Wonderer

How do you know? Is there some machine that you can put a person on that spits out their "general intelligence" number? You can try to correlate it to job success and the like, but that is a bit circular. A person who performs well on tests will get into colleges much more easily than a person who is test-incompetent. You have to be careful not to define intelligence as "ability to take IQ tests."

Getting some children to stay still long enough to give them a test can be quite a problem. Getting a sullen teenager who is rebelling against "the man" to take a test seriously is nearly impossible. In our culture (college educated/computer literate, etc) we take it for granted that we should do our best when presented with a test -- but not everybody feels the same way.

Another basic problem that you face is identifying race in an unbiased manner. Given the fact of discrimination in this country, would any African American who can "pass for white" put down anything other than "white" when asked their race? Or do you ignore mixed-race people -- which is pretty much the entire population!

Anyway, it seems that people are passionately attached to or opposed to this book, sounds worthwhile for me to scrounge it up the next time I'm at a bookstore.

HW (A Scotch/English/Native American/Unknown mongrel.)

Amen-Moses

Basically I take it that the FACT that there is no discernable difference in IQ measuremens when comparing male to female scores even though the females in general will have smaller brain mass (although comparing female to female say may show a correlation with brain size) indicates to me that there is more involved than just brain mass (iow the extra mass in males is probably for some other function unrelated to IQ tests, i.e maybe a larger spacial awareness portion or better memory etc).

Secondly the gestation period variance is also a fact and as it correlates with the IQ findings linking genetic heritage with IQ scores, i.e those groups with longer gestation times being the same groups that score on average a few points higher, combined with the extra fact that premature births show a marked increase in learning difficulties I would suggest that gestation time may be a causative agent in the development of intelligence (or at least those factors of intelligence that IQ tests measure).

Personally I don't give a damn either way because IQ is not and should not be seen as the "measure of man", any more so than creativity, sensitivity or physical abilities.

(strangely enough there is also a correlation between time of conception, seasonally speaking, and length of gestation which may explain why some of the astrological claims seem to ring true, i.e those born under certain "star signs" sharing specific talents. Originally this factor probably was driven by dietary differences between the seasons btw.)

Amen-Moses