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You are here: Home / Open Threads / There’s a place for us

There’s a place for us

by DougJ|  April 16, 20099:25 am| 130 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Sully links to an excellent Times blog piece on how, predictably, the least educated are being hit the hardest by the recession:

The overall unemployment rate for the more educated is only 4.3 percent. Individuals with a high school degree, but no college, have a 10 percent unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted). The unemployment rate for high school dropouts is 15.5 percent. Moreover, the unemployment rate gap between the most- and least-skilled is widening, not narrowing. Between February and March, the unemployment rate for college graduates increased by one-tenth of a percentage point. Among high school dropouts, the unemployment rate increased by four-tenths of a point.

Sully then comments:

Charles Murray was onto something, wasn’t he?

So I haven’t actually read that Bell Curve book, largely because I think it’s very unlikely that a single “intelligence quotient” measure exists in any meaningful way and because I think that human beings like to do things like invent bogus measures of superiority, pretend that what is being measured is hereditary, and then use these findings to justify the status quo. I did glance through this summary of the book and was stunned that the last item was ominously titled “A Place for Everyone“.

So, let me ask: do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite” and that some portion of the rest of the population belongs in a “more lavish version of the Indian reservation”? Or am I simplifying things.

In a related noted, Nick Kristoff has a good piece on ways to increase educational/intellectual attainment among Americans living in poverty. Which brings me to my last question: is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

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130Comments

  1. 1.

    SGEW

    April 16, 2009 at 9:34 am

    [I]s the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    Now that is a very interesting question.

  2. 2.

    ed

    April 16, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Sully’s still a plague.

  3. 3.

    Nutella

    April 16, 2009 at 9:37 am

    is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    Yes, that sums it up well. The rich are rich because they deserve to be rich. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor.

    Any attempt to change that would be unnatural and immoral, and a waste of money since clearly it wouldn’t work.

    In the past the privileged classes claimed their privileges came from god. Now they use science.

  4. 4.

    joe from Lowell

    April 16, 2009 at 9:38 am

    Charles Murray, in the Bell Curve, argues explicitly and at length against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem. It’s not "at some level;" that such efforts are futile is one of the primary conclusions he writes about at the end of his book.

    Also, he wrote an editorial in the New York Times after Hurricane Katrina in which he credits the absurd claims about rioting and crime at the Superdome and throughout New Orleans, and said it was "The animals have been let out of their cages."

    So, fuck Charles "Grand Dragaon" Murray, and his sycophantic little worshippers.

  5. 5.

    lovethebomb

    April 16, 2009 at 9:39 am

    You can’t fix stupid.

    Ever try talking to a poor religious republican?

    Slate has a piece about how many with graduate degrees can’t find work. College is way overpriced and often does not deliver what the degree is purported to provide; job security.

    Instead, consider the larger issue of globalism, offshoring, outsourcing and the corporate philosophy of squeezing labor anytime they want to increase the profit margin. Best Buy is laying off all of the management positions, but offering them a chance to stay on at $12 per hour. Before long, almost all the workforce will consist of min wage plus a few bucks without benefits.

    Trades are highly competitive and often run by mafia interests. Or monopolies, which is where unregulated capitalism always ends up.

    Ah, the salad days of KBR.

  6. 6.

    itsbenj

    April 16, 2009 at 9:39 am

    every time anyone hears someone like Andrew Sullivan talking about how the Bell Curve is right, proven, accepted science, instead of junk pop culture race porn for uneducated white resent-mongers, they need to be shouted down.

    Murray is just a straight up racist who assembled a bunch of junk info together. he doesn’t have a real point or a thesis, his work is thoroughly debunked, has been over and over. but yes, people with massive insecurities, like Andrew Sullivan, just love to be told that they are superior beings, they eat it up like hot cakes, and if those same findings say that non-white people are genetically inferior, well then, so be it.

    screw Andrew Sullivan, a decent writer but largely a sub-average thinker. and a terribly ineffective bully.

  7. 7.

    The Moar You Know

    April 16, 2009 at 9:39 am

    OT: looks like Tom Friedman will get to be the cab driver that he’s obviously wanted to be all his life.

    On topic:

    So, let me ask: do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite” and that some portion of the rest of the population belongs in a “more lavish version of the Indian reservation”? Or am I simplifying things.

    You are not simplifying anything, I think this is a pretty accurate statement, not just about these two, but about most people.

  8. 8.

    joe from Lowell

    April 16, 2009 at 9:39 am

    Any attempt to change that would be unnatural and immoral. and also useless, because poor people’s socio-economic standing is a consequence of inherent intellectual shortcomings that cannot be remedied.

  9. 9.

    Mike P

    April 16, 2009 at 9:40 am

    I haven’t read The Bell Curve nor do I feel any need to, especially after reading many damning critiques of the book. Having said that, I’m not entirely sure what Sullivan is saying that Murray was on to. Is it that people who have some kind of base level of latent intelligence are better off than those with lower IQ’s? That’s not exactly profound. If the argument is about IQ and equal opportunities, than Sully might want to go read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.

    I guess I’m just not sure what he’s getting at.

  10. 10.

    Eric U.

    April 16, 2009 at 9:41 am

    Sullivan should have learned something from when he pushed that book at TNR. That book is racist horseshit of the rankest sort. I guess if you have a collection of lies, it’s much easier to use it however you want.

  11. 11.

    Leo v.2.0

    April 16, 2009 at 9:41 am

    [I]s the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    Yes. I don’t think there’s any question about it. More generally, its an argument against any attempts to intervene in cyclical poverty.

  12. 12.

    SpotWeld

    April 16, 2009 at 9:41 am

    Skilled labor jobs are more "sticky" in that they are less likley to see the employee as a generic interchangable part.

    It’s not a question of intelligence, it’s a question of skills!
    High school, while critical, doesn’t usually focus on specific job skills (it does give you the basics so you can more readily attainthose skills).

    Post high school education, (including Associate’s degrees and Specialized Trade schools) are about the career skills!

    Drop outs from high school can’t even show they have those basic skills.

  13. 13.

    Evil Bender

    April 16, 2009 at 9:42 am

    I often disagree with Sully, but this may be the single most odious thing I’ve seen from him.

    Anyone considering wasting their time with Murray might want to save themselves the trouble and start with Gould’s excellent Mismeasure of Man.

    It takes a special gift to look at the data Sullivan presented and conclude it means not that education opens pathways to success, but rather that the poor are just stupid. It really is an embarrassingly juvenile argument.

  14. 14.

    Ann B. Nonymous

    April 16, 2009 at 9:43 am

    To be blunt, Sullivan is dim. He’s slow on the uptake and has prejudices he rarely if ever examines — in fact, his entire "conservative" schtick is a dodge so that he doesn’t have to examine his prejudices very often. It’s Burkean!

    I do believe he’s cognitively set apart from the rest of us. Just not in the direction he thinks he is.

    Murray, on the other hand, is intellectually dishonest. The Bell Curve is a shoddy piece of scholarship, and its mathematical underpinnings have been repeatedly debunked, but Murray did similar things in his argument against welfare in Losing Ground, so it’s part of a pattern. Lindert takes them apart in a footnote in Growing Public, which is about all they deserve.

    Of course Murray’s results always go into the direction which serves his ideology. Shocking, I know. At least with Sullivan, the dissonance sometimes causes a buzzing in his head. "Wait, my messiah likes hurting people and doesn’t like gays very much! Not you too Maggie Thatcher!"

  15. 15.

    Leelee for Obama

    April 16, 2009 at 9:43 am

    I have always hated that Bell Curve nonsense. This country is full of truly intelligent, gifted people who don’t have a college degree. Bill Gates comes to mind, but he’s an outlier. I, myself, have no degree, but I can hold my own in many different settings, and when I was waiting tables, bartending or when I was tailoring, I was making very god money considering my lack of higher education. I’d venture to say my I. Q. would dwarf many people that hold powerful positions. It’s not about a Bell Curve, it’s about opportunity and circumstances.

    This argument of Murray’s, if coupled with the realization that a Living Wage is not part of our national discussion, is nothing but an excuse to cut education spending for those socially inferior members of society. He did, however, bring up the possibility of stipends for every citizen, a basic grant (not enough, though)from government on which the more motivated could then build. I think that proposal was another book. At the time I saw Murray talking about this idea, I wondered why an equal education, health care and reasonable housing costs wouldn’t provide the same outcome, without the notion of an annual check to every citizen.

  16. 16.

    Person of Choler

    April 16, 2009 at 9:43 am

    It would have made more sense to refer to "Wealth and Poverty" by George Gilder instead of to Murray. Perhaps Sullivan mixed up the authors.

    Gilder’s advice about avoiding poverty was, in summary, finish school, avoid trouble with the law, and don’t get knocked up without a stable second parent in residence.

    Makes more sense than the questionable theory of "The Bell Curve".

  17. 17.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    April 16, 2009 at 9:45 am

    The peasants are not only inferior through the Edicts of the Almighty; thanks to the progress of science, we have also learned that they are genetically inferior. Even philosophy has reached this conclusion, now that Objectivism has made sense of the senselessness. At last, Reason has allied with Faith to sustain the status quo.

    Once the nation is unemployed, illiterate, barefoot, and (in the case of the women) pregnant again, bringing back the estates of the aristocracy should be a matter of little import. Good industrial jobs will come back, too, for those willing to risk their childrens’ arms for 10 cents a day.

    Huzzah for our natural overlords!

  18. 18.

    Napoleon

    April 16, 2009 at 9:45 am

    @Evil Bender:

    Anyone considering wasting their time with Murray might want to save themselves the trouble and start with Gould’s excellent Mismeasure of Man.

    That is a very good book and I second the recommendation.

  19. 19.

    yam

    April 16, 2009 at 9:46 am

    I’m not surprised that Sully is disingenuous enough to conflate education with intelligence. I know brilliant machinists that have only a high school education and, well, just because you graduated from Law School doesn’t mean you know from Shinola.

    I’m looking at you Althouse and Reynolds…

  20. 20.

    vacuumslayer

    April 16, 2009 at 9:46 am

    I think some people are honestly scared of the idea of the playing field being leveled a bit. Everyone knows that if all kids are able to get a decent education, it’s going to open doors for them that normally would have remained shut had they not. It’s a huge boost up when you get into the working world.

    I really do think these people enjoy feeling superior to others. It’s weird. I think they like the idea of there being a permanent underclass. Of course, an "underclass" will always exist in some form or another…but I really do think some people like the idea of people being serfs. It’s pretty sick.

  21. 21.

    Punchy

    April 16, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Sully then comments:
    ………..
    Charles Murray DARWIN was onto something, wasn’t he?

    Flame me all you want, but now it’s correctly fixed.

  22. 22.

    Dan

    April 16, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Yes. It is.

  23. 23.

    Left Coast Tom

    April 16, 2009 at 9:47 am

    From the NYT’s Bob Herbert, in 1994:

    Mr. Murray fancies himself a social scientist, an odd choice of profession for someone who would have us believe he was so sociologically ignorant as a teen-ager that he didn’t recognize any racial implications when he and his friends burned a cross on a hill in his hometown of Newton, Iowa.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/26/opinion/in-america-throwing-a-curve.html

    Sully’s reference to Murray seems pretty obnoxious on the face of it.

    And, yes, _Bell Curve_ was used to argue that nothing should be done about inequality.

  24. 24.

    jenniebee

    April 16, 2009 at 9:48 am

    Geez, whatever happened to the dignity of labor? This is the sort of thinking that leads people to the idea that the Insufferable Galts of the world are the actual "producers" and everybody else is just a dumb cog that couldn’t still do the same job they’re doing now if there wasn’t someone looking over their shoulder and skimming off the top while they did it. The people who skim off the top and "earn" their big paychecks through the magic of knowing the secret of skimming off the top may be parasites in the technical sense, but they’re rich parasites. That makes them indispensable to the function of capitalism, because if nobody’s getting taken advantage of in your economy then it isn’t capitalism, it’s socialism, QED. These people don’t mind a parasite, but they object to a cut-rate one.

    So now the ads on this site are for a cutie-pie desktop and what looks like a turn-based online game involving slave girls? I actually think I liked it better when you were flogging Joe the Plumber and the Impending Apocalypse.

  25. 25.

    deminoz

    April 16, 2009 at 9:48 am

    OT….when are the Dems/Progressives/Liberals going to actually hit back on the BS Tea Parties (bagging) with a ginormous amount of people happy that they are getting a tax cut….95% of americans? That would be a nice "f" you to the teabagging crap.
    Probably wrong thread but I’m in Aust and too late to trawl through all the other threads.

  26. 26.

    khead

    April 16, 2009 at 9:48 am

    Posts like Sully’s make me sooooo thankful that I managed to escape the genetic cesspool of poverty-stricken southern WV and find a good woman from Philadelphia so I could try to give my family tree a few of those smarter branches.

    If not, my kids would surely be doomed.

  27. 27.

    vacuumslayer

    April 16, 2009 at 9:48 am

    @Leelee for Obama:

    Amen! I’m another here who never finished college. Equating education with intelligence is an all-too-easy but often dangerous mistake to make. There are plenty idiots in college…and there are loads of extremely bright folks who never got a degree, thank you very much.

  28. 28.

    cleek

    April 16, 2009 at 9:49 am

    of course there’s a place for everyone. even the Gammas and the Deltas have their place: at the Imperial Chemical Industries, cleaning up after the Alphas.

  29. 29.

    anonevent

    April 16, 2009 at 9:51 am

    Like Spotweld said in #12, people who skilled labor jobs are not seen as being interchangeable. Also, if you have one job and two people to fill, the person with the college degree has an inherent advantage in employer’s eyes, as long as the person isn’t overqualified.

  30. 30.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    April 16, 2009 at 9:51 am

    Mr. Murray fancies himself a social scientist, an odd choice of profession for someone who would have us believe he was so sociologically ignorant as a teen-ager that he didn’t recognize any racial implications when he and his friends burned a cross on a hill in his hometown of Newton, Iowa.

    Racism is dead in America. All peasants are created equally inferior to their masters.

  31. 31.

    joe from Lowell

    April 16, 2009 at 9:52 am

    Charles Darwin was onto something.

    Charles Darwin wrote that natural selection cannot explain human societies.

  32. 32.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    April 16, 2009 at 9:53 am

    Every few months Sully mentions Murray and then spends a good portion of the next week "explaining" himself. I generally like Sullivan but some of his stuff does get a bit tiresome. I have no idea why someone who claims to be an empiricist–as Sullivan does–continues down a path that has been proven to be fruitless and outright wrong.

  33. 33.

    Bob In Pacifica

    April 16, 2009 at 9:58 am

    The left-right measurement was the sitting arrangement in the French legislature after the revolution. More accurate is up v. down. If you’re on top the hardest work you’ve got on your plate is to provide the rationale for why you’re there and why others don’t deserve it.

    It’s a subset of greed. Greedy people have to rationalize why they shouldn’t pay taxes, why they shouldn’t pay their employees well, etc. It is the philosophy of the Republican Party and it’s reformulated and broadcast to every stratus. "Well, ah may be poor and stupid but at least I ain’t black" used to work, but now that there’s an eloquent black President there’s got to be a rhetorical shift., the pitiful anti-tax proclamations of the reactionary hoi polloi notwithstanding.

    In some places "cognitive elite" is more like alternate reality.

  34. 34.

    PeakVT

    April 16, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Charles Murray was onto something, wasn’t he?

    Sully continues to be a clever writer of monumentally bad judgment. Which makes him perfectly qualified to be a pundit.

  35. 35.

    Evil Bender

    April 16, 2009 at 10:00 am

    Wow. It didn’t take long before we got the highly fallacious connection between evolutionary theory and social Darwinism, did it?

  36. 36.

    gnomedad

    April 16, 2009 at 10:01 am

    @Punchy:

    Flame me all you want, but now it’s correctly fixed.

    OK, screw you. Nothing in Darwin predicts general intelligence should sort by race.

    You’re welcome.

  37. 37.

    peach flavored shampoo

    April 16, 2009 at 10:02 am

    @lovethebomb: Best Buy management at $12 an hour? AYFKM? Can I get a link to this? TIA.

  38. 38.

    gnomedad

    April 16, 2009 at 10:03 am

    @PeakVT:

    Sully continues to be a clever writer of monumentally bad judgment. Which makes him perfectly qualified to be a pundit.

    We have a winner!

  39. 39.

    Jon H

    April 16, 2009 at 10:06 am

    @itsbenj: "but yes, people with massive insecurities, like Andrew Sullivan, just love to be told that they are superior beings"

    In his specific case, it probably stems in large part from deep-seated insecurity about his having published Murray in TNR in the first place.

  40. 40.

    gex

    April 16, 2009 at 10:08 am

    Meanwhile, Sully also posts these entries on how stress and poverty impair children’s cognitive abilities. It’s just in his DNA to think that white Christian males are superior.

  41. 41.

    Leelee for Obama

    April 16, 2009 at 10:08 am

    @gnomedad: Oh, gnomedad, you beat me to it! In another thread we were discussing the love-hate relationship many of us have wit the the Sully man. This latest pissed me off so badly yesterday, I almost promised myself to stop reading him for awhile. I’ll have to see if I can manage it. One thing about his blog that makes me hissy is the no comments policy. I think I’d feel better if I could just verbally smack him upside the head once in awhile!

  42. 42.

    Punchy

    April 16, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Charles Darwin wrote that natural selection cannot explain human societies.

    It can’t, but for the long-term benny of mankind, it should.

    Humans don’t allow for natural selection b/c they’re willing to support the weak and old, while other species would simply let those types die off. But if the world is to prevent overcrowding and massive overpopulation by humans, perhaps it’s best to have this happen. It’s admittedly a very unfriendly and socially unacceptable thing to say, but on a purely biological level, it may be necessary. Lest we upset the balance of species (if we havent already) and ruin all our resources.

  43. 43.

    Dennis-SGMM

    April 16, 2009 at 10:13 am

    So, let me ask: do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite”…

    Yep. Them and the teabaggers.

  44. 44.

    NonyNony

    April 16, 2009 at 10:14 am

    @Nutella:

    Yes, that sums it up well. The rich are rich because they deserve to be rich. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor.

    So you’re saying Sullivan is, in essence, a Calvinist who uses science instead of religion to justify why he’s among the "elect" and the people at the bottom deserve their status at the bottom?

    That sounds about right, actually. And puts a lot of the more craptacular crap that Sullivan spews into perspective.

    (Sullivan’s constant enshrining of the ridiculously obvious racist screed masquerading as a bad piece of garbage "research" known as "The Bell Curve" is why I still refuse to take the man seriously as a "thinker". His a puffed-up blind squirrel who occasionally finds a nut. If it weren’t for the fact that he himself is a member of a "hated minority", he probably wouldn’t even be able to find that occasional nut. The only time he transcends his own prejudices is when his own minority status is thrust into his face by the majority and he has to step outside of his comfort sphere and deal with the fact that other people hate him and think him subhuman. THEN he gets some good observations in. Other than that, he’s lost in the fog of his own prejudice and poor assumptions.)

  45. 45.

    Punchy

    April 16, 2009 at 10:16 am

    OK, screw you. Nothing in Darwin predicts general intelligence should sort by race.

    No, fuck you. I NEVER said anything about race, jackass. The whole post was about education. EDUCATION. The fact that the lower educated people got the worst jobs, etc.

    I’m sorry if I didn’t know Murray was also a racist, but nothing in this post–or my comment–is about race. So bugger off.

  46. 46.

    Mary

    April 16, 2009 at 10:17 am

    Sullivan is a flat taxer who wants to abolish Social Security and Medicare. Everything else is just window dressing.

    Also, he is fat and ugly so he should be the last one to assert that he is genetically superior to anyone else.

  47. 47.

    joe from Lowell

    April 16, 2009 at 10:18 am

    The whole post was about education. EDUCATION.

    Charles Darwin never wrote about education.

  48. 48.

    Dennis-SGMM

    April 16, 2009 at 10:18 am

    Humans don’t allow for natural selection b/c they’re willing to support the weak and old, while other species would simply let those types die off. But if the world is to prevent overcrowding and massive overpopulation by humans, perhaps it’s best to have this happen.

    We should have just let that Hawking guy keel. Same for that cripple who was elected president three times.

  49. 49.

    NonyNony

    April 16, 2009 at 10:18 am

    @Punchy:

    Humans don’t allow for natural selection b/c they’re willing to support the weak and old, while other species would simply let those types die off.

    The fact that humans support the weak and the old while other species would simply allow those "types" to die off is, in fact, a function of natural selection. Our tribes grew stronger by keeping the physically weaker but experienced or intelligent members alive longer and pass on their knowledge. And so the "weaker" members were able to pass on that knowledge about how to craft the perfect pointy stick for killing a mammoth or helping a child get past a fever or storing nuts in the perfect place to let them survive the winter. We’ve always been the masters on the planet of building communities that are stronger than individuals, because compassion is an attribute that has been passed down through natural selection.

    You’re an idiot on this Punchy, stop with the social Darwinism and open your eyes to the stupid crap you’re spewing.

  50. 50.

    Dave S.

    April 16, 2009 at 10:18 am

    @Eric U.: Sullivan keeps propping up Murray precisely because he pushed The Bell Curve while at TNR. Discrediting Murray would discredit himself.

  51. 51.

    joe from Lowell

    April 16, 2009 at 10:22 am

    NonyNony,

    Sullivan isn’t a Calvinist; he’s a Tory.

    Remember, he doesn’t come from the American political/cultural tradition that goes back to the Mayflower, but from the English tradition that the Puritans were rebelling against. English conservatives don’t need Calvin to justify class distinctions, and don’t claim that they’re grounded in morality.

    To a Tory like Sullivan, you don’t even need to go to God to explain why some people are better than others; you can just point to natural forces, no different than the breeding of livestock.

  52. 52.

    SGEW

    April 16, 2009 at 10:23 am

    Leelee for Obama:

    I think I’d feel better if I could just verbally smack him upside the head once in awhile!

    Write him emails. He reads a lot of them, and sometimes responds (publicly or privately) if you are civil and raise a reasonable objection.

    Punchy:

    It’s admittedly a very unfriendly and socially unacceptable thing to say, but on a purely biological level, it may be necessary.

    Excuse my hyperbole, but you are the enemy of social progress.

    Where’s B.O.B.? This sort of thing is right up his alley.

  53. 53.

    Mary

    April 16, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Speaking of Friedman becoming a cab driver, his own paper says that the GGP bankruptcy will leave the Buckbaums "humbled." Telling.

  54. 54.

    John S.

    April 16, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Equating education with intelligence is an all-too-easy but often dangerous mistake to make.

    Indubitably.

    Look, I never finished college myself, and I know that has no bearing on my intelligence. Neither does possessing a degree from an institution of higher learning endow the recipient with intelligence.

    I never put too much stock in IQs or theories of intelligence based on economic or ethnic stratification. All I can be certain of is that there are a LOT of fucking morons in this country, and they are proud of their stupidity – no matter what their race or prosperity. I know many wealthy people (stockbrokers, business owners, realtors) that are absolutely fucking dolts – and they know it, but are proud of it because they got rich anyway.

    My measure of intelligence is based on curiosity and wonder. People that are always seeking knowledge and trying to understand the many facets of the world they live in are intelligent. People that are superficial and consumed with trivial nonsense like American Idol and People magazine are stupid. That’s not to say that intelligent folk don’t like gossip and pop culture as much as the next person, but I daresay it is the focal point of their existence.

    We are literally on the doorstep of an Idiocracy, and it has nothing to do with fucking bell curves.

  55. 55.

    Shinobi

    April 16, 2009 at 10:26 am

    It drives me nuts that you now need a Bachelor’s Degree to get a job cleaning floors or filing, or answering phones. You do not need a liberal arts education to do half these things. In fact, I bet a good third of people who have a 4 year degree and work rarely use any of the skills they learned in college. I mean, my company’s marketing manager majored in nutrition, one of the analysts I worked with majored in History.

    Are they really better workers having spent 4 years studying something they don’t ever use? And is it therefore justified to require anyone wanting a job ever to have a bachelor’s degree in something that could be totally unrelated to the job they are applying for?

    It doesn’t seem so to me. There was a series of peices in the WSJ online a few years ago about this where someone talked about how college really isn’t for everyone. I couldn’t agree more. Most people don’t need a liberal arts education, and a lot of them aren’t really smart enough to have one anyway. And I’m talking about everyone here, not just poor people, I couldn’t tell you how many white upper middle class morons I know that are considered more successful than others because they have a 4 year degree. Even though they never use the degree, and only learned things in college that they should have learned in high school.

    If we really want to level the playing field then the inordinate expense of college needs to become less necessary. People should be able to learn skills and things they need to be part of the working world during highschool so that when they graduate they are ready to enter the work force (or go off to college if they want to be overeducated.)

    A highschool dimploma needs to be worth something again.

  56. 56.

    SGEW

    April 16, 2009 at 10:27 am

    Also:

    Sullivan isn’t a Calvinist; he’s a Tory.

    I think of him more as a neo-Whig.

  57. 57.

    JGabriel

    April 16, 2009 at 10:28 am

    DougJ @ Top:

    So, let me ask: do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite” and that some portion of the rest of the population belongs in a “more lavish version of the Indian reservation”? Or am I simplifying things?

    … is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    Yes. No. Yes. SATSQ.

    On a related note, I third Evil Bender’s recommendation of Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, which remains a great corrective to The Bell Curve – despite being published a good baker’s dozen years before it – and other similiar racist/classist bullshit.

    .

  58. 58.

    Napoleon

    April 16, 2009 at 10:29 am

    @NonyNony:

    The fact that humans support the weak and the old while other species would simply allow those "types" to die off is, in fact, a function of natural selection.

    Not only is this correct but it is not limited to humans. Apes and monkeys have been observed helping and taking care of their old, handicapped and even those suffering from what in humans is Downs Syndrome.

    PS, I think elephants and dolphins have also been observed exhibiting altruistic behavior.

  59. 59.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    April 16, 2009 at 10:30 am

    ‘Cause there’s a place in the sun
    Where there’s hope for everyone
    Where my poor restless heart’s gotta run.
    There’s a place in the sun
    And before my life is done
    Got to find me a place in the sun.

  60. 60.

    Leelee for Obama

    April 16, 2009 at 10:34 am

    I just want to say how many great comments I’m reading in this thread; too many to respond to, but just excellent.

    Maybe we can wrest this country back from the edge of doom. There’s lots of smart concerned people here; hopefully there are more in the wider world.

  61. 61.

    diogenes

    April 16, 2009 at 10:34 am

    “more lavish version of the Indian reservation"

    This is about as racist, and dishonest, a remark as I can think.

    In their attempt to promote western capitalism as the only possible goal of humanity, millenial old civilized societies are marginalized.

  62. 62.

    Will

    April 16, 2009 at 10:39 am

    Also, he wrote an editorial in the New York Times after Hurricane Katrina in which he credits the absurd claims about rioting and crime at the Superdome and throughout New Orleans, and said it was "The animals have been let out of their cages."

    Did Charles Murray actually write the sentence "the animals have been let out of their cages" in that editorial? Or is that just the premise you took from his piece? I’m pretty shocked if they actually allowed that kind of thing to be published in the NYT. I’m having trouble finding the quote. If he said such a thing, then Sully definitely needs to be taken to task for continuing to support such a vile "academic".

  63. 63.

    SGEW

    April 16, 2009 at 10:43 am

    There’s lots of smart concerned people here . . . .

    Don’t worry: the commentariat will soon be back to making jokes about bestial-necrolagnia and/or testicles.

    B-J: Come for the thoughtful analysis, stay for the tasteless humor. [Tho’ Mr. Cole has selfishly deprived us of the chance to make fat jokes at the expense of his cat. An outrage!]

  64. 64.

    Bill Teefy

    April 16, 2009 at 10:45 am

    I think it is natural for most animals to attempt to identify the stronger, better, more powerful, healthiest, etc.

    I think we all try to see where we excel or are better at any number of things than those around us.

    I find it disgusting when someone uses these metrics to create some sense of entitlement or distinction that they are a more deserving than others.

    Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust."

    This goes back to the recent Sully makers and takers thread. What does Sully make?

  65. 65.

    gnomedad

    April 16, 2009 at 10:45 am

    @Punchy:

    I NEVER said anything about race, jackass.

    So noted. But I don’t think you can throw in a one-liner about Darwin in a context like this without the implication that it’s about race.

    Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so smug; the flame invitation got to me.

  66. 66.

    Punchy

    April 16, 2009 at 10:47 am

    You’re an idiot on this Punchy, stop with the social Darwinism and open your eyes to the stupid crap you’re spewing.

    We simply vociferously disagree on this point. I should further ask what the biological (and resource) benefit vs. cost is for supporting those that would otherwise die without care (Down’s, mental retardation, etc.), but the argument never remains on that tack, as emotion and compassion instead paint such questioner as an ass.

    IMO, Darwin’s theory extends to brain development, and if you don’t think the smarter folk tend to (note: TEND TO…yes, there exist anecdotal exceptions) live longer, have families, and support those families better, then we really, really diagree.

  67. 67.

    Church Lady

    April 16, 2009 at 10:51 am

    On an intellectual level, no, all people are not created equal. With each of us, some are smarter and some not. Increasing funding and other improvements to public education are not going to change that particular fact. What would be an improvement, however, would be if our educational institutions could or would recognize this at a point early enough, where guiding those perhaps not destined for college onto an alternative path towards a technical education, which might keep them in school and allow them to obtain a marketable skill.

    I live in a city where a majority of children are now born to single mothers, most of them mired in generational poverty. Our public school dropout rate is on a fast track to approach 50%. The motto of our city schools is "College Bound. Every Day.", which is just not realistic. Some of the high schools offer a technical path as an alternative to the college path, but not enough of them. The system also doesn’t identify which students should be on what path. That’s up to the student and their parent(s). Each path requires a different combination of courses for graduation and changing from one path to another would put you behind and require either summer school to make up required courses or another year in school. The result we wind up with is kids on the college path that are unable to hack it and, rather than switch to the technical path or transfer to a school that has a technical program attuned to their skill set, just drop out. The end result is another kid whose best option for legal employment is memorizing the phrase "Would you like fries with that?". It’s just discouraging.

  68. 68.

    clone12

    April 16, 2009 at 10:54 am

    I would interpret this wage disparity as evidence against the Bell Curve argument. If we are as truly predestined by our genetic IQ as implied by the Bell Curve argument, then disparity in wages between college education and high school education should narrow, not widen.

    Why? In the last 40 years college attendance for high school graduates has increased from 50% to 40%, much of this increase due from exactly the kind of government policies opposed by Murray.

    If this is simply just a case of stuffing people who shouldn’t be going to college in the first place, then they should be dragging the average down. But instead we see the opposite.

  69. 69.

    les

    April 16, 2009 at 11:01 am

    do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite” and that some portion of the rest of the population belongs in a “more lavish version of the Indian reservation”?

    Sullivan’s a classic "fuck you, I got mine," whose level of intellectual dishonesty doesn’t even permit him to look at his biases and positions. Directly beneficial to Sully=good, anything else is irrelevant to bad.

  70. 70.

    slag

    April 16, 2009 at 11:02 am

    From the Kristoff article: "when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study."

    Andrew Sullivan is ignorant–and possibly stupid–in this area. According to his own argument, he really shouldn’t have a job discussing it.

  71. 71.

    A Ghost To Most

    April 16, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Why people continue to read Sullivan (or anyone who doesn’t allow comments) eludes me. If you aren’t willing to accept feedback in this day and age (of the intertubes), you are bound to eventually go off the rails. The only echoes you hear are your own voice.

    Would John have ever stepped back into the light without the collective wisdom of his commentariat?

  72. 72.

    David

    April 16, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Though it is unpopular, and typically left unstated to stay well clear of all of this controversy that is imputed into intelligence studies, intelligence is the strongest predictor of workplace performance. It is moderated by complexity of the job, to no surprise.

    That is the uncontroversial aspect of general intelligence tests. Of course, they are discriminatory. This has been shown over and over by sociologists to be more grounded in socio-economic issues such as nutrition, early learning via parents, etc. Those taking stupid short cuts (pretty ironic for the folks writing "The Bell Curve", isn’t it) leave out that evidence, linking it to a covariate of socio-economic class: race.

    And the controversy about race and intelligence is largely a lot of smoke and not much fire, really, because of those underlying causes that are more predictive of intelligence than race.

    Want to fix the intelligence gap between the races and thereby close the employment gap and the problems of persistent poverty? Fund nutrition and better education, and our supposed cognitive inferiors will be pulled out of the poverty trap and into whatever job suits their nature.

  73. 73.

    Cyrus

    April 16, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Jesus, I thought Murray was just a typical conservative on race – says he’s not racist himself even though he’s willing to tolerate intolerance and blind to it on his side, and all about the distinction between black people and n*****s – but he actually went burning crosses as a teen and now claims he didn’t mean anything by it? Wow.

    I’d give Sullivan credit for merely being a dupe, though, or standing up for Murray to defend himself by proxy rather than Murray’s ideas. I remember a post of his some time in mid-November linking to a report of a recent noticeable increase in black IQ scores. To an oh-so-enlightened person like me, it seems obvious that the election would have a significant self-esteem boost and increase the expectations of black youths, which would be reflected by test scores. Well, Sullivan’s post made it seem like he was genuinely and pleasantly surprised by the report. Apparently it didn’t lead him to question his underlying assumptions about The Bell Curve, but he took a baby step in the right direction, at least.

    The best thing about Sullivan’s blog these days is the nascent feud between him and Ann A/thouse. Those two were made for each other.

  74. 74.

    Leelee for Obama

    April 16, 2009 at 11:07 am

    @Church Lady:

    Back in the Neanderthal Period, when I went to HS, there was just such a situation. There were business courses, programs for automotive and aviation construction and maintainence, LPN , cosmetology, drafting, mechanical drawing, just all kinds of technical skills. These were pushed out of the HS setting a few years after I graduated and into BOCES- skills schools to which you were sent after half-days at reg. HS. Lots of kids hated that idea, others wanted to learn in aprrenticeship settings, and then suddenly, everyone was supposed to be in college.

    If we are ever going to regain some equilibrium, we have to get back to basics and make it possible for someone to learn a trade that will support them and a family, and that’s that. BTW, some of the training programs have been co-opted into computers skills, but that should be available for all kids-they need them for anything else anyway, and knowing how to use software programs make finding a job far less daunting.

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    April 16, 2009 at 11:17 am

    Sully links to an excellent Times blog piece on how, predictably, the least educated are being hit the hardest by the recession.

    Sullivan doesn’t understand science or economics, or rather he views these topics through a philosophical prism of essentialism, so he Murray’s stoopidity has an fundamental appeal to him.

    One of the things that the Times blog misses, for example, is that people with more education can fall downwards, taking less prestigious and lower salaried jobs, pushing the lesser educated out of the job market. So if you simply look at the employment rate for this group, it might not look so bad, but if you had a reliable measure of under-employment, the picture would be less rosy.

    And this doesn’t immunize the more-educated from the recession since they can still end up losing their homes.

    Apart from this, the jump that Murray and Sullivan make from education to IQ is just a waste of time, because ultimately it is an assumption, not anything real.

    Punchy – Humans don’t allow for natural selection b/c they’re willing to support the weak and old, while other species would simply let those types die off. But if the world is to prevent overcrowding and massive overpopulation by humans, perhaps it’s best to have this happen. It’s admittedly a very unfriendly and socially unacceptable thing to say, but on a purely biological level, it may be necessary. Lest we upset the balance of species (if we havent already) and ruin all our resources.

    You simply don’t understand anything about Darwin, which is sad since the world recently celebrated Darwin’s 200th birthday and there have been a wealth of articles on him and his theories.

    Survival of the fittest has NEVER meant the strongest or the smartest. A weak parasite which finds a way to survive and have offspring wins the evolution sweepstakes.

    There ain’t no such thing as "the balance of the species." Species don’t even really matter at a certain level, only individuals do, or even more appropriately, only genes matter.

    Oh, yeah, "ruin all our resources" don’t mean squat either. Resources (as an economics concept) don’t even exist until someone finds a way to utilize them. All the oil in the ground was not a resource until there was a means to use it for something.

  76. 76.

    Scott H

    April 16, 2009 at 11:20 am

    I quit reading Sullivan the last time he trotted this stuff out. I am not amused that a refugee from a class system in which he would have been dead-ended himself would peddle this rubbish.

  77. 77.

    bellatrys

    April 16, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Gilder’s advice about avoiding poverty was, in summary, finish school, avoid trouble with the law, and don’t get knocked up without a stable second parent in residence.

    Ah, if only it worked that way IRL…

    Unfortunately, none of that matters as much as having good connections and/or 10+ Charisma and XY chromosomes, based on observations of my dropout brothers, other relatives, acquaintances, coworkers and employers. And mere "school" is not enough either when everyone’s got a BA – I would have done better to go to tech school and learn how to weld or fix engines than get into debt majoring in Phil, as far as jobs go.

    As far as Sully defending Murray, as others have noted, he was one of The Bell Curve’s original backers. Tory, yanno?

    I do have a certain regard for Murray and that book – in that it was a major eye-opener years back as to how the claims that we conservatives weren’t racist, oh no! were empty lies, when a colleague defended it to me. It’s like the rock you trip over that breaks your ankle which saves you from walking under the falling piano, you see…

  78. 78.

    Punchy

    April 16, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Survival of the fittest has NEVER meant the strongest or the smartest. A weak parasite which finds a way to survive and have offspring wins the evolution sweepstakes.

    No shit. Yeah, and how often does a weak animal survive? What does that even mean? Weak in evolutionary sense means less likely to survive predation or environment. Stongest means best-suited, NOT physically strongest.

    My point was that on a intelligence level, if the smarter humans get better education and thus better paying jobs, they tend to live longer, and so do their families. Thus, they tend to "win the evolution sweepstakes".

    Here’s an easy one for ya: Better edu–>better job–>better (or just any) healthcare–> bigger, healthier families–>more family support (money, connections, resources, diet)–>more opps for the kids–>kids in better schools……repeat. This is my point.

  79. 79.

    SGEW

    April 16, 2009 at 11:47 am

    Punchy:

    . . . as emotion and compassion instead paint such questioner as an ass.

    Actually, the questioner is often painted as a heartless stone-age eliminationist barbarian. Accusations of racism, sexism, eugenics, and genocide often follow. For good reason, I argue. Bear with me here . . . .

    Let me first acknowledge that you are raising a legitimate point of view, of sorts. There is nothing inherently unreasonable about looking to biology in order to gain insight into social theory. Evolutionary theory, ecology, genetics, neurology . . . these are all extraordinarily interesting fields that are undergoing revolutionary growth at this moment in time, and there is certainly a case to be made that they have some sort of relevance as to how culture, society, and government can/should/might be influenced and/or be explicated by them. Right? Ok. But there are a few problems.

    First of all, this line of thinking has an ugly pedigree. A very, very ugly pedigree. Examples abound. ‘Nuff said on that, as the argument tends to speak (loudly) for itself.

    Similarly, I think I’ll elide questions of ethics for now. Go ask hilzoy. Or Michael J. Fox.

    Questions of ethics aside, however (what a caveat!), let us just say that there is an extremely strong social compact to care for and preserve our elderly, our infirm, and our physically and mentally challenged. It’s been a long, long time since throwing the "unfit" children of Sparta into the Kaiada was considered to be kosher. Therefore, be not surprised when people respond to your benefit vs. cost argument with visceral moral repugnance.

    As to the actual scientific questions, there may be, of course, great interest. But I argue that there is simply not nearly enough data or theoretical cohesion in any scientific field that relates to human interaction or behavior that could begin to justify radical social policy[1][2]. There are a lot of paradigm-shifting breakthroughs that need to come along before we can even start thinking about it; it turns out that Darwin alone (never mind Malthus) is insufficient.

    Now, you may be willing to "speak the unspeakable," (especially here, demi-anonymously) in the interest of free speech and open debate, not to mention challenging long-held customs. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and all that, ghosts of Paine, etc. etc.. Totally respectable. However, I caution you to tread lightly with this topic, and to hold your possible philosophical bedfellows at arm’s length, and with great suspicion.

    [1] N.B.: The fields of economics, sociology, and psychology are excepted here, as I do not consider them to be "science" in the same manner that strict evolutionary theory, neurology, or ecology are. I am withholding judgement on "Evolutionary Psychology" for another, oh, say, fifteen years or so.
    [2] Anyone who says "But what about Anthropogenic Global Warming?!" can go suck an egg. If all of the geologists say that your volcano is about to blow the fuck up, it justifies the radical policy of moving your ass out of town. Don’t compare apples and lightning bolts.

    [edit: After reading your actual policy recommendation, I don’t see why you brought up Darwin and natural selection in the first place, to be honest.]

  80. 80.

    Dr.BDH

    April 16, 2009 at 11:48 am

    How long before Sullivan starts rehabbing his former love affair with Bush? He can’t admit his errors permanently, that would mean he wasn’t the most intelligent gent in the room!

  81. 81.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    April 16, 2009 at 11:55 am

    I’m a lot smarter than Sully but I’d never attribute that to his inferior English breeding. God just likes me more.

  82. 82.

    Shygetz

    April 16, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    Here’s an easy one for ya: Better edu—>better job—>better (or just any) healthcare—> bigger, healthier families—>more family support (money, connections, resources, diet)—>more opps for the kids—>kids in better schools……repeat. This is my point.

    Science…ur doin it rong! In America, reproduction scales inversely with income and education. So, smart people are "weaker" in your model.

  83. 83.

    Charity

    April 16, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    Sully obviously believes success is a zero-sum game. If someone else attains wealth or status, that somehow reduces others’ wealth or status. When in fact I think the adage "A rising tide lifts all boats" is more apt.

  84. 84.

    Charity

    April 16, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    May I also add: My husband has a Ph.D. He always says it’s no indication of how smart you are, but how dedicated and persistent you are.

  85. 85.

    jibeaux

    April 16, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    I’m probably crazy, but those statistics are almost the opposite of what I’d expect to see, it just seems like so many white-collar jobs have gone and while there have also been a lot of blue-collar jobs to disappear, when you’re talking about jobs within easy reach of high school dropouts you’re typically talking minimum wage level jobs, and I would tend to think they would have taken less of a hit and that some previously better paying jobs may have even joined this level and started hiring less educated people.

    This is evidently not the case, BUT it is definitely true that there have been all along jobs that "require" more education than they require, e.g. an admin assistant type job which has a college degree requirement even though a reasonably organized sixteen year old with typing skills could do the job. It certainly seems to me that education has gotten devalued as more people pursue it, and also that lots of people are underemployed. So I’d be interested to see if these numbers reflect more than anything that there is a lot of competition for jobs, a lot of which are not that great, but due to the competitive environment employers are able to hire better educated and skilled people than they would be able to otherwise, whether they "need" that education and skill or not, so those are the ones who get the jobs, even if it probably makes them underemployed.

    Sorry so long. Thinking out loud.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    April 16, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    @Punchy:

    No shit. Yeah, and how often does a weak animal survive? What does that even mean? Weak in evolutionary sense means less likely to survive predation or environment. Stongest means best-suited, NOT physically strongest.

    You still don’t know what you are talking about. There is no such thing as "weak in an evolutionary sense." There is no such thing as "strongest" meaning best suited. This is nowhere in Darwin’s "Origin of Species."

    My point was that on a intelligence level, if the smarter humans get better education and thus better paying jobs, they tend to live longer, and so do their families. Thus, they tend to "win the evolution sweepstakes".

    Still wrong. A long life is not particularly meaningful in evolutionary terms. Living long enough to have offspring is somewhat more meaningful. So, for example, a sexy risk taker who attracts a lot of women, has kids, and dies in an accident at an early age has won the evolutionary lottery. The persistence in human populations of people who are Byronically "mad, bad and dangerous to know" testifies to this. Scientists are still arguing over the value of menopause in human and related populations.

    And a recent article about the Hapsburgs demonstrates how in human society, genetic fitness can be at odds with social wealth (Revealed: the inbreeding that ruined the Hapsburgs — Dynasty that dominated Europe for more than 500 years was undone by incest, study finds):

    Scientists have found that the Hapsburg fashion of marrying their relatives to keep their dynastic heritage intact had dire consequences for subsequent generations, which culminated in the last heir to the Spanish throne being sickly and impotent. … Professor Gonzalo Alvarez, of the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, found that the Hapsburgs suffered a far higher child mortality than the general population, even though the family was immensely wealthy and did not experience the poverty related health problems faced by many people at the time.

    And so we have Charles II of Spain: "Charles II not only suffered an extreme version of the Hapsburg lip, his tongue was said to be so big for his mouth that he had difficulty speaking and drooled. He also suffered from an oversized head, intestinal upsets, convulsions and, according to his first wife, premature ejaculation."

    But he was a hell of a catch. And the last of the Spanish Hapsburg line.

    Here’s an easy one for ya: Better edu—>better job—>better (or just any) healthcare—> bigger, healthier families—>more family support (money, connections, resources, diet)—>more opps for the kids—>kids in better schools……repeat. This is my point.

    Golly gee. In Western societies, higher social standing and education is associated with smaller family size. You are wrong again, and have no point. That is, a point about social outcomes is not related to anything having to do with evolution.

    For those interested in learning something about evolution, I recommend Ernst Mayer’s "What Evolution Is." It’s short (336 pages), non-technical, and an elegant read.

  87. 87.

    JK

    April 16, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Andrew Sullivan is awaiting surgery to remove his head from his rear-end.

    Sully is a breathtakingly repulsive scumbag.

    The Atlantic Monthly has fallen on hard times. It has some of the most clueless, obnoxious, and truly repugnant voices in the blogosphere – Sullivan of course – and who can forget the smarmy, moronic, running at the mouth Megan McArdle and that fat slob and useless tool Marc Ambinder. At least they’ve gotten rid of blowhard Ross Douthat. Unfortunately, that bozo has a much bigger platform now that he’s joining the NY Times.

    Reading Sullivan, McArdle, and Ambinder will definitely induce vomiting.

  88. 88.

    vacuumslayer

    April 16, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    My measure of intelligence is based on curiosity and wonder. People that are always seeking knowledge and trying to understand the many facets of the world they live in are intelligent.

    Wow! Precisely! This is so well said, I don’t even need to expound on it.

  89. 89.

    Jamey

    April 16, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    yes

    do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are members of a genetic “cognitive elite” and that some portion of the rest of the population belongs in a “more lavish version of the Indian reservation”? Or am I simplifying things.

    no

    That concludes this hour’s installment of SASTQ, lapsed Republicans edition.

  90. 90.

    slag

    April 16, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    @Punchy:

    Here’s an easy one for ya: Better edu—>better job—>better (or just any) healthcare—> bigger, healthier families—>more family support (money, connections, resources, diet)—>more opps for the kids—>kids in better schools……repeat. This is my point.

    If this is your point, one thing you may consider asking yourself is "What does ‘better’ mean?". Do you think those teachers teaching those "better" kids actually have "better" jobs than the banksters who have taken over our country? Is Bill O’Reilly "better" because he has more money to support his family than does…say…John Cole here?

    Honestly, You should consider deeply where this mindset is coming from. Because you may find some of your value judgments a little disturbing.

  91. 91.

    Erika Froh

    April 16, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    If you’re interested in the relationship between IQ and race, I recommend this Malcolm Gladwell article about the Flynn Effect (the fact that IQ scores rise across generations). Basically the environment the brain in question grows up in has a far greater effect on IQ than the genetics that gave rise to that particular brain.

  92. 92.

    Brandon T

    April 16, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    @David:

    Though it is unpopular, and typically left unstated to stay well clear of all of this controversy that is imputed into intelligence studies, intelligence is the strongest predictor of workplace performance. It is moderated by complexity of the job, to no surprise.

    This is obvious, and I don’t think anyone’s saying it’s a useless measure, except some liberals that get so incensed at its use to measure the worth of people that they try to do away with it all together. It’s just useless for saying anything innate about human intelligence. Why? Because IQ tests are designed around traits and abilities we already associate with success; and thus any argument anti-correlating success and IQ is essentially a truism.

  93. 93.

    Face

    April 16, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    Living long enough to have offspring is somewhat more meaningful.

    I figured this was understood. I regret I didn’t make it more explicit.

  94. 94.

    slag

    April 16, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    @JK:

    that fat slob and useless tool Marc Ambinder

    "fat slob" I thoroughly reject on the grounds that the phrase perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes. "useless tool" has some merit, but is debatable.

  95. 95.

    D. Mason

    April 16, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    What does Sully make?

    Himself look like an elitist pile of shit, as always. This guy was a disgusting splooge rag for the GOP until he saw they were going down in flames. His writing should be treated accordingly.

  96. 96.

    D. Mason

    April 16, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    May I also add: My husband has a Ph.D. He always says it’s no indication of how smart you are, but how dedicated and persistent you are.

    Not always, but usually, it’s a measure of how lucky/wealthy you are. If you can afford to spend 8 years in school or are lucky enough to win a scholarship then you can dedicate yourself and be lot more persistent. I had all of the paper qualification to go to a very nice university, grades and test scores etc. I had to quit school because i couldn’t pay for classes and help cover the bills at home at the same time.

  97. 97.

    jibeaux

    April 16, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    I also read this yesterday, which I thought was interesting. I liked this line:

    In the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, when girls kept outscoring boys, IQ tests were repeatedly adjusted to make the results turn out "right."

  98. 98.

    jibeaux

    April 16, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    Is Bill O’Reilly "better" because he has more money to support his family than does…say…John Cole here?

    Look, I’m sure Tunch’s diet has to do with his health just like John says. He knows we’d kick in if he needed it, for Tunch.

  99. 99.

    Joel

    April 16, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    Which brings me to my last question: is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    Everyone thinks they’re Voltaire.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    April 16, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    @Brandon T:

    This is obvious, and I don’t think anyone’s saying it’s a useless measure, except some liberals that get so incensed at its use to measure the worth of people that they try to do away with it all together.

    I think that IQ is conceptually meaningless, and I’m not particularly liberal. This is an example of scientists thinking that something is meaningful simply because they can measure it. But some scientists used to think that they could determine intelligence by measuring the shape of a person’s head, giving rise to this bit of nonsense from a book called "Social Mobility" – "almost all progress of European Civilization is due to the blond Nordic dolichocephals," and having created this standard the author then had to magically project it backwards in time to explain how this group must have "composed the higher strata of Ancient Greece."

    Some social scientists like to claim that IQ is a real measure of g, general intelligence. But no one has claimed, looked for or found something called a, general athletic ability. And if someone made the claim that someone with a high AQ would necessarily excel at a particular position in a specific sport, they would rightly be considered a fool because reality quickly and definitively contradicts any broad claims about athletic performance. Hell, so far, no one has been able to reliably predict which college quarterback will succeed in the pros, even though there is obviously big money to be made here.

    In short, IQ remains a big deal primarily because it is easy for scientists (and pundits) to measure and write about, not because it says much about anything in the real world.

  101. 101.

    jibeaux

    April 16, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    But no one has claimed, looked for or found something called a, general athletic ability

    Haven’t they? They should. But they should look far away from me. I nearly fell over stepping onto a perfectly normal floor, and ten seconds later somehow managed to project my coffee upwards trying to set it down on my desk. I have failed to catch a beach ball. I have -a.

  102. 102.

    HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker

    April 16, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door …

    now don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.

  103. 103.

    HyperIon

    April 16, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    @Charity:

    May I also add: My husband has a Ph.D. He always says it’s no indication of how smart you are, but how dedicated and persistent you are.

    yeah, i got one and that’s the conclusion i reached a long time ago.

    also…is the post title a reference to West-side Story?
    (i have noticed DougJ’s tendency to go for "clever" titles.)

  104. 104.

    HyperIon

    April 16, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    @bellatrys:

    I would have done better to go to tech school and learn how to weld or fix engines than get into debt majoring in Phil, as far as jobs go.

    yes, you would have done better.
    but somehow people still go to college and major in philosophy and art history. NOT majors that open doors to lots of jobs. oh, well.

    on a separate matter: IMO encouraging everyone to go to college is similar to encouraging everyone to buy a home. Cui bono? these policies benefit neither kids who are unready for college nor renters unready for a big mortgage.

  105. 105.

    Xanthippas

    April 16, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    In a related noted, Nick Kristoff has a good piece on ways to increase educational/intellectual attainment among Americans living in poverty. Which brings me to my last question: is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    I haven’t read The Bell Curve so please correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the research that Kristof is citing to undermine the notion that differences in IQ can be explained to any substantial degree by inheritance and race? If that research is correct, then it would seem that differences in IQ due to heredity are minor compared to differences that are the result of income inequality and poverty. And it would seem to me that disparities in poverty levels among races, would permit you to conclude-falsely-that race is an important factor in determining IQ differences. As does the research showing that greater early childhood education can do a lot to fix those disparities.

    In short, if all of that is true-as current research suggests that it is-then why are we even talking about The Bell Curve and it’s noxious conclusion that our goal should be to reduce birthrates among the poor. And why is Sullivan still defending that book?

    Also, I second recommendations to read Mismeasure of Man. It’s definitely one of those books that’s stuck with me, and influenced my thinking on a whole range of issues.

  106. 106.

    Xanthippas

    April 16, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    Also, Sullivan should really be more careful about one-liners. I don’t know how to take his comment except in the vein of Ebenezer Scrooge, as a recommendation to "decrease the surplus population."

  107. 107.

    Blue Raven

    April 16, 2009 at 3:14 pm

    @Scott H:

    I quit reading Sullivan the last time he trotted this stuff out. I am not amused that a refugee from a class system in which he would have been dead-ended himself would peddle this rubbish.

    Oh, gods, YES. He’s a vicious case study for Stockholm Syndrome as a socially transmitted disease.

  108. 108.

    Darkrose

    April 16, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Ah, Sully–just come out and say it: you resent the fact that you’re denied your white male privilege because you like having buttsex with other white men (unprotected buttsex, in your case–nice!), and that’s just unfair.

  109. 109.

    Darkrose

    April 16, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    @Charity:

    May I also add: My husband has a Ph.D. He always says it’s no indication of how smart you are, but how dedicated and persistent you are.

    And how much ass you’re willing to kiss while being treated like shit by the professors.

    Likewise, getting tenure is more about whether your sense of entitlement is strong enough to get through the years of being treated like shit to get your Ph.D.

    Not that I’m a bitter university staff member or anything.

  110. 110.

    bellatrys

    April 16, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Not always, but usually, it’s a measure of how lucky/wealthy you are. If you can afford to spend 8 years in school or are lucky enough to win a scholarship then you can dedicate yourself and be lot more persistent. I had all of the paper qualification to go to a very nice university, grades and test scores etc. I had to quit school because i couldn’t pay for classes and help cover the bills at home at the same time.

    D. Mason, I hear you. I would go back and get a degree that would actually be useful/fun myself, but – the Money Fairy inexplicably continues to fail to show up and leave a grant under my pillow.

    And how much ass you’re willing to kiss while being treated like shit by the professors.

    Darkrose, sounds like you don’t buy into the Peter Principle either! Funny how being around the "elite" all day will do that to one…

    yes, you would have done better.
    but somehow people still go to college and major in philosophy and art history. NOT majors that open doors to lots of jobs. oh, well.

    Hyperlon, I honestly don’t get what you’re trying to say there. I got a liberal arts BA because 1) my folks strongly opposed my going to art school like I a) wanted, b) was actually good at, because ZOMG!LIBERALZ! TEH SEXORZ but 2) insisted that I HAD to get *a* BA because otherwise I would never get a good job, but a BA would ensure that I got one and not be a burden on society etc. So I majored in Phil because, well, family pressure again.

    Unfortunately, it did not actually translate into "Wow, Ms. Philosopher-At-Large, you did really well in college, here’s your decent white collar job!" but rather "Philosophy? Is that the same as Psyche? No? What *is* it?" and also "You’re kind of overeducated, aren’t you?" and also, "Shouldn’t you have gone to grad school, then?" but nothing that actually helped pay the student loans off, nothing that opened a single door …not like my HS typing class did, or having worked on the student publications in HS did.

    Whereas if I had gone to art school and got an art hist. degree, there are quite a few decent jobs around here that I could have at least been *qualified* for…

    Spilled milk, I know. But anything to spare the innocent from making the same sort of "Trust-the-grownups" mistakes that I did…

  111. 111.

    Ella in NM

    April 16, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    This is one of those disturbing areas of complete cognitive dissonance (and therefore intellectual hypocrisy) Sullivan continues to harbor in an otherwise thoughtful and basically decent heart and mind.

    It’s the same with his bizarre position on the health care system in the US ("some people do deserve to go without care if they can’t afford to pay for it, even though I have a life threatening disease that I get hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care coverage for); and taxes (flat taxes with no middle class deductions and gas taxes that price working people out of transportation but no inheritance or captial gains taxes on the wealthy cause that’s not fair).

    Meanwhile, he is one of the most eloquent and earnest critics of the US use of torture and suspension of the rule of law, for equality of race, gender and orientation, and for the elevation of science as separate from fundamentalist hysteria in religion that I have ever read.

    He just has this really sad blindness to the incompatibility of some of his philosophies.

    I wrote Andrew a lengthy letter once when he was making a case in support of some of Murray’s assertions, telling him that if he had ever had the opportunity to administer a standardized IQ test, (like I did hundreds of times in my former career) he would feel completely ridiculous in advancing the idea that there are racial limitations on IQ. There are only cultural and educational limitations, and yes possibly genetic (as in physiological dysfunctions or diseases) period, and statistically, the range of score differences between members of the same groups is wider than those between different groups. While we all know intuitively that some people are "smarter" than others, we have yet to really define just what smart is, much less how to fairly assess it.

    But that’s beside the point for Andrew, for some reason.

  112. 112.

    AnneLaurie

    April 16, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    What would be an improvement, however, would be if our educational institutions could or would recognize this at a point early enough, where guiding those perhaps not destined for college onto an alternative path towards a technical education, which might keep them in school and allow them to obtain a marketable skill.

    Such a wonderful platitude theory, as long as it’s not YOU or YOUR kids getting shunted onto the wrong branch of the A(cademic)/B(usiness)/C(ommercial) track! Keep in mind that under the benevolent regime you propose, the mixed-race child of a teenage mother (who alternated between yanking him out of the approved curriculum while she pursued her own selfish & unrealistic goals and dumping him with his elderly & undereducated grandparents) would probably be "encouraged" to stick with a nice unchallenging vocational program — there will always be jobs for plumbers in Kansas! Meanwhile, the first-born son of wealthy high-achieving parents with a long history of Ivy-league education would, of course, be given all possible assistance to follow in his forebearers’ footsteps, even if the kid himself were a perennial delinquent with a long history of anti-social behavior, probably at least one undiagnosed (unadmitted) learning disability, and a history of substance abuse going back to his early adolescence. Because, goshdarnit, by all the "accepted" educational theory, Barack Obama just isn’t a very promising candidate for success at higher education, is he, compared with someone from the RIGHT background like George W. Bush?

  113. 113.

    Xanthippas

    April 16, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Not that anybody’s asked, but something that infuriates me about Sullivan’s defense of Murray is the prominent position that Murray and this book played in the welfare reform movement of the mid-90’s. His arguments, embraced by conservatives and centrist Democrats, bolstered the notion that poor people could not be helped out of their mess because they were inherently stupider, and so welfare program should be cut to encourage them to breed less. I mean for fuck’s sake, that’s one of the MAIN conclusions of the book.

    And since then, Murray’s been writing ridiculous nonsense like this. And this man was praised by mainstream media publications for his "research"? Murray was right…there’s stupidity in our country, but it’s got nothing to do with class or race.

  114. 114.

    Church Lady

    April 16, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    @AnneLaurie:

    You are absolutely right. It is much better that a child without the reading, writing or math skills, or some combination thereof, necessary for success in a university setting, be allowed to continue to fail in high school, while on the college path, rather than being directed to a technical path perhaps more in tune with his/her abilities. When said child quits school out of frustration, with no discernable job skills, we can then take comfort in the fact that well, we tried.

    Yeah, that’s better for everyone.

  115. 115.

    Charity

    April 16, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    @D. Mason: Good point, however in his particular case, The Hubs went to all state schools. My father-in-law likes to joke that — between his scholarships and work-study programs — he ended up making a couple bucks on the deal.

  116. 116.

    Xanthippas

    April 16, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    One more thing, and I swear I’m done with this thread. here’s a great column by Stephen Jay Gould that he wrote when The Bell Curve came out.

    Two things I find interesting. He references early education, which we now know does make a difference in IQ. But he also mentions how bias might effect test scores:

    But V–bias, the source of public concern, embodies an entirely different issue, which, unfortunately, uses the same word. The public wants to know whether blacks average 85 and whites 100 because society treats blacks unfairly—that is, whether lower black scores record biases in this social sense. And this crucial question (to which we do not know the answer) cannot be addressed by a demonstration that S–bias doesn’t exist, which is the only issues analyzed, however correctly, in The Bell Curve

    Which instantly made me think of this:

    Now researchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.

    So essentially, two of the four premises that Gould lists that must be true for the central thesis of The Bell Curve, that IQ is immutable, and that is genetically based, are kicked away. The other two, that IQ can be represented by a single number, and people can be ranked in linear order on the basis of IQ, were criticized even when the book came out. So what’s left? What was there at the beginning: a dressing up of social Darwinism and conservative racial and class stereotyping.

    Which Andrew Sullivan STILL defends.

  117. 117.

    Master Mahan

    April 17, 2009 at 5:02 am

    Andrew Sullivan himself is a fine example of why the whole of human ability cannot be summarized in a simple ranking. Sometimes he can be quite thoughtful and well-reasoned. Other times, the cognitive dissonance is astounding.

    This is definitely one of these other times. Sullivan seems to have missed that The Bell Curve’s entire (heavily flawed) argument that factors such as education are *less* important that raw intelligence.

  118. 118.

    Justin

    April 17, 2009 at 8:37 am

    The Bell Curve was debunked thoroughly so there is no reason to read it. The only question I have is why someone like Sullivan is citing a man who, since his research is a fraud, is clearly simply a racist.

  119. 119.

    Sam Hutcheson

    April 17, 2009 at 9:11 am

    Doug, Sullivan responds to you this morning. He distinctly does NOT answer your question at all.

  120. 120.

    matoko_chan

    April 17, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Wow Doug….I never thought Balloon Juice would descend to the torch and pitchfork level.
    Balloon Juice was one of my shining cities on the hill of reason.
    This is the Murray article you read.

    Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement.

    Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and Right, though in different ways. Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.

    Many laws are too optimistic, but the No Child Left Behind Act transcended optimism. It set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality.

    In public discourse, the leading symptom of educational romanticism is silence on the role of intellectual limits even when the topic screams for their discussion. Try to think of the last time you encountered a news story that mentioned low intellectual ability as the reason why some students do not perform at grade level. I doubt if you can. Whether analyzed by the news media, school superintendents, or politicians, the problems facing low-performing students are always that they have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, or have gone to bad schools, or grown up in peer cultures that do not value educational achievement. The problem is never that they just aren’t smart enough.

    The apotheosis of educational romanticism occurred on January 8, 2002, when a Republican president of the United States, surrounded by approving legislators from both parties, signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which had this as the Statement of Purpose for its key title:

    The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.

    I added the italics. All means exactly that: everybody, right down to the bottom level of ability. The language of the 2002 law made no provision for any exclusions. The Act requires that this goal be met "not later than 12 years after the end of the 2001-2002 school year."

  121. 121.

    matoko_chan

    April 17, 2009 at 9:31 am

    May I also recommend……
    Dr. Lynn
    The Global Bell Curve and IQ and the Wealth of Nations?
    These are books about science, unlike the Mismeasure of Man.
    The Maths don’t lie, while men can and will in support of wishful thinking.

  122. 122.

    matoko_chan

    April 17, 2009 at 10:53 am

    is the Sully/Murray stuff at some level an argument against taking government action towards rectifying the country’s educational inequality problem?

    We already have, lol, No Child Left Behind mandates that every child in America shall be above average.

  123. 123.

    evts

    April 17, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    I think he’s mainly trying to justify publishing the article in the first place.

    It’s also useful to remember that in the struggle for gay rights, the burden has always been to prove that homosexual orientation is a simple matter of genetic disposition and not some kind of anti-social choice. He may therefore feel a certain stake in preserving the argument from heredity in a general sense.

    I happen to think he’s a very smart guy, which makes this particular assertion more puzzling. The fact that the poor are disproportionately hurt in an economic downturn says nothing about what made them poor, whether nature or nurture.

    I find he’s usually a lot sharper than this, even when saying things I totally disagree with.

  124. 124.

    evts

    April 17, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    matoko_chan

    As I recall the Murray excerpts published in TNR, they had everything to do with the romantics of the left (as you describe them) and nothing to do with the romantics of the right. Sullivan is certainly addressing the claims against ‘romantics of the left’.

  125. 125.

    Christian

    April 17, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    So what made Sullivan so genetically flawed he would put his faith into George Bush? What if Murray’s thesis was that all homosexuals are pre-disposed to self-centered hysteria?

    Sullivan is the classic "I’m Allright, Jack" — just look at his arrogance about blogging: "I make a living so everybody can and should!"

  126. 126.

    The Lounsbury

    April 17, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    @matoko_chan:

    Statistic can and do lie, my dear fruitcake. Given the dodginess and poor quality of data, never mind the very coherency of the concept of IQ, your bleating regarding science is amusing.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Andew Sullivan lauds Charled Murray « Notes from Evil Bender says:
    April 16, 2009 at 9:56 am

    […] [h/t] […]

  2. JABbering Stooge :: Simple Answers to Simple Questions: Teabagging Edition :: April :: 2009 says:
    April 16, 2009 at 10:32 am

    […] to Sully being his usual rebarbative self, DougJ asks: So, let me ask: do people like Sully and Murray actually believe that they and their friends are […]

  3. Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » The Obama Effect says:
    April 17, 2009 at 10:27 am

    […] things to say. Now, however, the issue has currency again, although not for the reasons that Doug covered below, to which Andrew responded here. Instead the new ideas come from science and, at least indirectly, […]

  4. Andrew Sullivan « Weilerblog says:
    April 18, 2009 at 9:26 am

    […] Yesterday, Sullivan linked to this critical response, from Doug at Balloon Juice: […]

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