Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Republicans in disarray!

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Fight them, without becoming them!

So many bastards, so little time.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

We still have time to mess this up!

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

In after Baud. Damn.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

The willow is too close to the house.

You are here: Home / Echo and the Frummy men

Echo and the Frummy men

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I never get tired of the epistemic closure debate!

One my favorite misguided Slate contrarians, William Saletan, has an earnest piece about how the right can get out of its echo chamber, the way that David Frum and Julian Sanchez and the rest want them to. The suggestions he makes would be perfectly reasonable if they were being made to people who wanted to get out of the conservative echo chamber. The trouble is that contemporary conservatives enjoy living in an echo chamber, much as Saletan and Mickey Kaus enjoy living in a world of smug, facile contrarianism.

By chance, another journalist I spoke to recently told me that he thought that the Daily Caller would one day be the conservative conservosphere’s answer to TalkingPointsMemo. Now, it may be that Daily Caller will survive. Conservatives are often happy to spend money supporting such things; maybe the bloggers there can support themselves with Bradley prizes. And I’m pretty sure that Politico, Howard Kurtz, et al. will continue to promote it the way they have with the Washington Times, regardless of whether or not it ever rises above the level of Potemkin journalism. But there is no way there can ever be a conservative version of TalkingPointsMemo (or any of the other blogs like it), because conservatives aren’t interested in reading things like that.

Erick Erickson has made it onto The Most Trusted Name in news running a completely fact-free blog, which surely takes almost no time to maintain. He gets to do fun things like send representatives silly putty…while being taken seriously by both the media and the conservative establishment. Why would he want to get all Columbia Journalism Review now?

I don’t understand why journalists want to project their own interest in journalism onto conservatives. What part of “the facts were in the ballpark” don’t they understand?

Reader Interactions

94Comments

  3. 3.

    Mike Kay

    … why the party of deathpanels and birthers are thrusting for reality based news…

  4. 4.

    Martin

    The only real suggestion they need is: stop being douchebags.

    Once they recognize and accept their douchebagginess, it’s all downhill from there.

  5. 5.

    David

    It’s all about cheerleading for Conservatives. You’re either a reliable cheerleader or you’re a piece of garbage.

  6. 6.

    Cris

    The trouble is that contemporary conservatives enjoy living in an echo chamber

    I have to be honest enough to acknowledge that I do too.

  7. 7.

    DougJ

    @Cris:

    I honestly don’t. I enjoy reading right-wing blogs and starting threads where people disagree with me and call me a jerk.

  9. 9.

    The Bearded Blogger

    @Martin: For some reason I read your comment as if it were some sort of timeless oracular advice, something to be engraved in bronze somewhere, or God’s final message to humanity:

    Stop being douchebags

    it made your comment really good

  10. 10.

    Cris

    @DougJ: I enjoy reading right-wing blogs and starting threads where people disagree with me and call me a jerk.

    I know, and that’s why people like me need people like you. As the line goes, you guys read that stuff so I don’t have to.

  11. 11.

    Short Bus Bully

    @DougJ:

    That’s the beauty of the modern Left right there: DISAGREEMENT.

    Yeah, the firebaggers suck and a lot of times I want to donkey punch them, but they can disagree with me and then agree with me the next day and I’m cool with that. That is NOT cool and NEVER will be cool in the right wing echo chamber. You’re either in with the talking points and the right haircut or you are the enemy. No in between.

  12. 12.

    The Bearded Blogger

    The deal is, conservatives think that non-conservatives are evil execrable beings that should be silenced or destroyed, not reasonable human beings that are to be won over by ideas. Therefore, any questioning or softening of conservative dogma is bad, because it weakens the cause, the cause being defeating the bad guys.

    To liberals, conservatives are misguided fools, while liberals are level headed.

    To conservatives, liberals are Mum-Ra and Skeletor while they are Lion-O and He-Man

  13. 13.

    Martin

    @The Bearded Blogger: It has very broad application. I always thought it’d be a superior replacement for the first commandment. *Then* I’d be in favor of plastering it all over public buildings in the south.

  15. 15.

    John Cole

    Why would they want to change anything? They are going to win a ton of seats in the fall. We get to pretend death panels are serious ideas. Journalists get to pretend whether Obama smokes or not is a big deal. Wins all the way around.

  17. 17.

    The Bearded Blogger

    @Martin: For a lot of people, a lot of them in the South, a belief in God is a free pass for being a douchebag..

  18. 18.

    Martin

    @John Cole: I think the $10,000 question is whether wins in the fall empower the GOP to double down on the stupid, or they declare mission accomplished and decide some sanity might be beneficial. I’m betting on the former, personally. I’m also not certain the GOP is going to do as well as people think.

  19. 19.

    matoko_chan

    pot, kettle.
    BJ is rife with IQ denialists.
    i don’t see a nanowafer of difference between you and Erick.

  20. 20.

    Bubblegum Tate

    @John Cole:

    Exactly. This is an interesting discussion, but ultimately, it’s rather meaningless because this is not a country that rewards being correct and punishes failure and ridiculousness; this is a country that rewards failure and ridiculousness and punishes being correct.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    @matoko_chan: Sorry, you’re right. White people are clearly genetically superior. Thank God for the NBA to give them all a way to contribute to society, eh?

  26. 26.

    Americanadian

    @matoko_chan: Not only do I deny your BS racial IQ theories, I also deny that the “nanowafer” is a unit of measurement.

    Declining to pursue racist thought does not make someone epistemically closed.

  28. 28.

    Chuck

    Being called a jerk on Redstate is not the thing. I can get called a jerk and worse on the GOS. There’s little opportunity to ever be _called_ a jerk on redstate, because Erik the Red will ban you the instant you say anything out of the orthodoxy.

    So not only is it an echo chamber, it’s a pathetically small one thanks in no small part to the likes of Erik and Moe. I’m pretty sure this little WP blog has more active comment threads at any one time than redstate. Hell, I suspect the cat diaries on DK alone pull in more traffic than redstate does for the entire week.

  29. 29.

    Chuck

    I’m a flat-earth denialist. I know, such closed minds here, none that can measure up to the inimitable scientific acumen and rigor of the likes of Andrew Sullivan.

  30. 30.

    gwangung

    @Martin:

    Sorry, you’re right. White people are clearly genetically superior.

    No, YELLOW people are clearly genetically superior. (not that we’ll claim matoko-chan)(though she does remind me of a Chinese American glibertarian who said he was approaching it from a scientific basis, and then said “the null hypothesis was bunk.”).

  34. 34.

    Mike Kay

    white people can’t jump. unless it’s the olympics then they set world records in the pole vault and high jump.

  37. 37.

    Mike Kay

    white people have superior IQs. just look at palin, she went to six colleges! I mean, only a white person would have the intellectual rigor to conquer six different colleges.

  38. 38.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Martin:

    Here’s a little tidbit from deep red Onslow County, NC. Yesterday despite a huge ad campaign by the teabagging Americans for Prosperity, rallies, letters to the Editor, editorials in the Newspaper wall to wall radio ads which drove me mad, as well as cheerleading from the RWNJ owner/host of the radio station a 1/4 cent sales tax increase passed by a 70% margin. The republican candidate for the District 15 seat (he has no opposition in November) who supported the sales tax increase and who refused to sign the “no new taxes pledge” and who was backed by three of the county’s biggest democratic fundraisers won over the Teaparty candidate. I have to wonder how much influence the Teaparty has when they couldn’t even get their peeps out to vote down a tax increase. Turnout here in Onslow County was something like 13%, so much for the Republican landslide in November.

  39. 39.

    Garrigus Carraig

    I’m not getting this matoko_chan thing. If it were funny, then, well, alright. But it’s not funny. Will it get funny?

  40. 40.

    jwb

    @Martin: I’m also not convinced the goopers are going to do as well this fall as the MSM and politicos think.

  41. 41.

    Dee Loralei

    DougJ, great title. But I bet you’ve been saving it for awhile waiting for the perfect moment. Damn, I love puns.

  47. 47.

    Mike Kay

    @jwb: yes. they’re engaging in large amount hype in order to manufacture a story and momentum.

    there’s really nothing to this. there is a natural ebb and flow in off year elections. case in point: Reagan lost 28 seats in 1982. I mean, even someone as mild and noncontroversial as Ike lost 49 seats in ’58 midterm.

  50. 50.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jwb: We could get mclaren explaining that we are all fascists. There are so many options.

  51. 51.

    The Bearded Blogger

    @gocart mozart: Any wins they make they’ll paint as a huge rejection of Obamafascitocommunistohealthcareolarazasumthinsumthin….

  52. 52.

    eemom

    I do not get why bloggers I normally regard as sane keep echoing the “GOP is gonna kick ass in November” emmessemm bleat

  54. 54.

    frankdawg

    Of course these assholes want to stay in the chamber. They make excellent money doing little more than whacking off to dashboard statues of St. Ronnie of Reagan.

    I was given a bible education as part of my upbringing. I also studied, semi-seriously, magic. The first faith healer I saw (I was around 13 or 14 looking for something to watch on Sunday AM TV) I realized I could do his act even with my weak skills. Later in life I saw Randi’s take down of Peter Popoff, he was a really crappy magician!

    I could have gone that way, it was easy money but, sadly, I have a heart and a conscience so I have an honest job. These assholes are like I was; they can see the easy money. The difference is that they have no heart, no conscience or soul. Make me wish there was a hell waiting for them when they go.

  56. 56.

    Fencedude

    @Garrigus Carraig:

    I’m not getting this matoko_chan thing. If it were funny, then, well, alright. But it’s not funny. Will it get funny?

    Also, “matoko”? Seriously? I mean, Motoko, sure. Makoto, sure, but “matoko”? I don’t think thats even an actual Japanese name, and you can string together almost any three random syllables and get a Japanese name!

  59. 59.

    Martin

    @Litlebritdifrnt: I agree. The teabaggers are visible, but really are a rather tiny movement. We do a good job of fluffing them up to look like a big influence.

    That’s not a bad thing. If it keeps driving the rank-and-file GOP candidates to higher and higher degrees of crazy, to where even Glenn Fucking Beck is having to walk them back, then it’ll only help our chances down the road. Might lose seats in the near term, but the GOP incumbents are all going to be batshit crazy and get clobbered when everyone sobers up and the teabagger goggles come off.

    But the campaigns have barely even begun – there’s nothing yet really to see.

  60. 60.

    Hob

    @Garrigus Carraig: No. This person has been around here a good while, and occasionally comments on other things in a way that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but isn’t blatantly insane, but whenever anything Bell Curve-related comes up(*) this is the result. I’m not sure why the meltdown is so much worse this time, except maybe just that more people noticed and argued with her. I really hope they will stop.

    (* which, btw, she doesn’t seem to understand is not due to some crazy obsession we have with it, but because right-wingers keep serving up the exact same bullshit and this gets rather annoying since it was already thoroughly debunked at the time it was written.)

  61. 61.

    patrick II

    I don’t understand why journalists want to project their own interest in journalism onto conservatives.

    Part of it is insecurity. The result of privilege is deep down people know that they don’t deserve everything they have. There grasp of their privileged position is tenuous. It’s why they like aristocracy and will assign club membership to people who don’t want to rock the boat.

  63. 63.

    dmsilev

    @Comrade Kevin:

    I am also a phrenology-denialist.

    Under certain circumstances, there’s something to be said for retrophrenology (hitting someone on the head with a hammer until you get the desired personality changes…). There’s a whole long list of people who could benefit from that therapeutic technique.

    dms

  65. 65.

    Midnight Marauder

    @eemom:

    I do not get why bloggers I normally regard as sane keep echoing the “GOP is gonna kick ass in November” emmessemm bleat

    This continues to confound me as well. I mean, I get it. The Republican Party has a bunch of highly visible know-nothing crazies who are super excited about putting their people white males back into power. Fine. And the political climate in this country is dreadful right now and totally disadvantages incumbents and the party in power. Sure.

    But we are talking about a political party in the GOP that is achieving levels of world-class crazy this country has never seen. They are openly declaring their intentions to introduce legislation in almost another 10 states to disenfranchise and target Latinos and Hispanics. They have, literally, not a single viable plan for ANYTHING if, in fact, the regain the majority. They have absolutely NO leadership. And this is the part that always makes me shake my head when I read/see/hear someone saying “THE REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO SWEEP EVERYTHING THIS FALL!” These clowns still have another 6 months to further embarrass themselves and show the rest of country that they are, collectively, even crazier than most people already thought.

    I really just cannot understand why so many people think this particular Republican Party is well-suited for a political uprising this fall. In the long run, I feel like almost every element is stacked against them. Mainly, because they are a batshit crazy group of individuals.

  66. 66.

    eemom

    @Midnight Marauder:

    eggzactly.

    And the fact that Our Own People are buying into this, is like we’ve gone from circular firing squad to lemmings off a cliff.

    There is nothing to be gained from defeatist resignation in the face of rightwing insanity — NOTHING. This kind of attitude is another reason the wingnuts HAVE the traction they have — no matter how batshit crazy they get, they never say die.

    It reminds me of the absurd apologist “shit sandwich” meme over HCR. Also too.

  67. 67.

    Mike in NC

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    I have to wonder how much influence the Teaparty has when they couldn’t even get their peeps out to vote down a tax increase. Turnout here in Onslow County was something like 13%, so much for the Republican landslide in November.

    One of the roadside signs put up by some idiot running for the NC House (in Brunswick County) read: “Cut taxes. Less government.” Apparently that was the extent of his entire platform. Quite a winning philosophy, eh?

  68. 68.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @Midnight Marauder:

    This baffles me to no end also. The only reason I can come up with is one I stated the other day. That maybe subconsciously folks are thinking to themselves that these guys are crazy mofo’s who will only get crazier if they don’t get back into power. I know it’s a flimsy theory, but it is all I can think of.

  69. 69.

    matoko_chan

    I do not get why bloggers I normally regard as sane keep echoing the “GOP is gonna kick ass in November” emmessemm bleat

    they are starting to get nervous.

    Hawkins at PJM

    Medved–No Future for an All White GOP

    The math here is brutal and eye-opening. If Obama in 2012 wins the same percentage of the combined black, Asian and Hispanic vote that he won in 2008 (82 percent), then in order to beat him the GOP candidate would need to win an unimaginable 65 percent of all white voters — whose numbers include such stalwart Democratic constituencies as gays, atheists, Jews and union members.
    The 65 percent threshold represents a far higher percentage than Ronald Reagan won in his landslide against Jimmy Carter in 1980, or even his history-making 49-state re-election-sweep against Walter Mondale in ’84.
    Since white voters won’t comprise larger portions of the electorate in future races, and since no Republican could compile a big enough white majority to win the election on those voters alone, that leaves only one possible path for GOP victory: more competitive performance among Hispanic, African-American and Asian citizens.

    New polling.–

    The conservative “tea party” movement appeals almost exclusively to supporters of the Republican Party, bolstering the view that the tea party divides the GOP even as it has energized its base.
    That conclusion, backed by numbers from a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, also suggests that the tea party may have little room for growth. Most Americans — including large majorities of those who don’t already count themselves as supporters — say they’re not interested in learning more about the movement. A sizable share of those not already sympathetic to the tea party also say that the more they hear, the less they like the movement.

  70. 70.

    matoko_chan

    my name is a tribute to the Major.
    it can be spelled either way in japan.
    i added the honorific because mostly people think im XY if they cant see me.
    im a supernerd…..the Major is my cosplay costume.

    and i think a lot of you are bioluddites.
    :)

  72. 72.

    Corner Stone

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    matoko_chan: You are a bit of a one trick pony, aren’t you?

    No, she’s not. She’s unbelievably wrong and/or misguided about everything she comments on. She may be “consistent” in that she’s non-stop wrong, but she doesn’t restrict herself to just one thing to be utterly brutally bogglingly wrong about.
    It’s amazing because she seems to collect an awful lot of data about things she’s interested in – but the problem is it’s a lot of awful data, and matoko has displayed a consistent failure to synthesize any kind of correct conclusion from all this data.

  73. 73.

    Dr. J

    Conservatives don’t need to do investigative journalism like Josh does because they just make shit up. It is a lot less work and no one holds them accountable for it. Why would they need a website like TPM?

  74. 74.

    Belvoir

    Has Slate yet run their contrarian article about how the Gulf oil spill is a good thing? Oh wait, they were scooped by the NY Times..

  75. 75.

    matoko_chan

    I may be wrong…..but I am not alone.
    you are liberal bioluddites—
    your arguments are that race and IQ are meaningless because they are SOMETIMES used for evil.
    You hate genetic heritability because you can’t level genes to fit your [admirable and altruistic] social justice models.

    The idea that we should outlaw any knowledge that could possibly be used for malevolent ends is absurd……by that argument mathematics should be banned because it led to the design of the atomic bomb. — Simon Young, Designer Evolution

    Should Hitler harm us for the next 200 years by saying we cannot do genetics? –James Watson, Independent

  76. 76.

    matoko_chan

    The left is just as epistemically closed on IQ and heritability as the right is closed on global warming.
    Consider the current dustup over Volokh and the 3L student.
    Consider the Larry Summers relative mathability in the XX.
    Summers was forced to resign for speaking the truth.
    One of Sully’s readers—

    I think there’s something important that’s by-and-large been left out of this discussion. To me, the most alarming thing about the 3L email incident is how it demonstrates what I suppose you might call “Liberal Epistemic Closure.’ This woman attends a university. She, like other bright young people with an independent, contrarian streak, wrote in an email that she was disinclined to accept the dogma of her environment as gospel simply because it was what she’d been spoon-fed and told to believe, and pointed out (quite fairly) that scientific conclusions tend to be somewhat warped by the political and cultural climates in which the studies take place. She was doing what people should be doing in academic environments: questioning accepted truth. But questioning accepted truth doesn’t mean the rejection of that viewpoint, it means that she was playing around with ideas, asserting her right to engage with them until she was able to reach a satisfying conclusion on her own terms, as opposed to allowing her mind to be molded by popular prevailing opinion.
    People like that are vital to society. We need them. They should be celebrated, not vilified. In fact, one could argue that the entire purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach people to think in an independent, contrarian, “I’m not going to think what you tell me to think until you convincingly demonstrate to me why I should” way. Academia should be the safest place for people to explore ideas and ask questions.

    pot, kettle.

  78. 78.

    slippy

    @matoko_chan:

    your arguments are that race and IQ are meaningless because they are SOMETIMES used for evil

    I think IQ is meaningless because, well, IQ tests are more about being “appropriately” socialized than they are about any kind of reasonable test of one’s intelligence. Some of the early intelligence tests (which I studied in a psych class in college) asked some monumentally idiotic questions which had NOTHING to do with cognitive ability and everything to do with ascertaining that the subject was a white Christian.

    As far as race, well I think you’ve wound that rope around your own racist neck quite effectively. The fact that you don’t recognize that you’re hanging yourself with your idiocy is just sad. I think race is fairly meaningless in determining ability because “race” itself is genetically very difficult to ascertain. Subjectively people choose to identify with people they look and act like. It is ENTIRELY subjective. In reality our genes are so similar that if we weren’t bound up by these stupid conventions nobody would even be talking about it, and I think when the human species grows up a bit (a phase of our evolution I assure you YOU will never see or participate in) discussions of race will vanish.

    But grinding away at it like you, sully, and the authors of the Bell Curve do just makes it safe for me to dismiss you and them as immature, childish, self-centered, and probably suffering from a severe inferiority complex that can only be redressed by finding somebody YOU can shit on. It’s sad that you’re such a mess but I can’t be responsible for you. It’s an adult world out here. Your choice is to grow up or continue acting like a child. You will continue to be treated as one by your betters, I assure you.

  80. 80.

    matoko_chan

    You are liberal bioluddites.
    You have become what you most despise.

    I think IQ is meaningless

    says it all.

  81. 81.

    brantl

    @matoko_chan: Get a brain. Then start using it. Amazing how you leave out the context of the quote, you pinhead. I feel sorry for you.

  83. 83.

    matoko_chan

    Then you’re a moron

    umm….im a sufi transhumanist.
    but im cool with BJers setting up an antique genome reservation and refusing designer eugenics.
    i plan to be homo sapiens transhumanicus.
    but you can all stick to the unimproved design.
    ;)

    the wingnuts are climate change refusniks…..balloon juice commenters are IQ-heritability refusniks.
    you are all luddites.

  84. 84.

    Corner Stone

    @matoko_chan: It doesn’t surprise me in the least that through these threads you have been unable to determine what the arguments being made here are.
    You continue to argue against something no one here has said.

  85. 85.

    matoko_chan

    oh i understand….race is a meaningless fantasy construct and IQ is an empty measurement devoid of content.
    And anyone that disputes that will be adhommed as an ignorant racist.

  86. 86.

    Corner Stone

    @matoko_chan: ISTM that several people have tried to engage you on this topic, and most of them have made the same position clear:
    1. Define what IQ is
    2. Detail how you will standardize a significant and repeatable test for it across populations
    3. Define how you plan to differentiate categories

    Most individuals I’ve seen respond have said something along the lines of, “Previous testing into IQ has suffered due to biased and rather meaningless testing/reporting. We reject the category of “Race” as a marker in these studies because it is ill-defined, if it is defined at all.”

    But it seems you’ve found data you like, or that fits what you need, and you just keep whining when people ask for a little intellectual honesty and scientific rigor.

  88. 88.

    matoko_chan

    nah cornstone…..its simpler than that.
    IQ is a relative metric, a measurement tool…..no one claims it is the sum of “intelligence”…is an approx

    There is a heritable component of IQ DUE TO GENE EXPRESSION….it’s contribution may be as high as 85% or as low as 30%…that is still under investigation…..ie scientific research.
    Environment is heritable– the four components of inheritance are genetic, epigenetic, symbolic and behavioral.
    when an individual self-describes as “black” they include environmental inheritance.
    Dr. Lynn has done a lot of work on IQ, religiosity, and SES….it is not just race….there are many correlates….race is just one.
    The heritiability of IQ is disputed by both the right and the left.
    It violates the liberal egalitarian meme that everyone’s abilities can be leveled through social justice.
    OTOH it violates the conservative meme that “all men are created equal” so “yeoman farmers” are equally as fit to lead as Jefferson’s natural aristoi.

    But the truth is, while all men are created equal under the law, no man is created equal under the genes (for conservative bio-luddites), and ……while environment can be leveled, genes cannot. (yet) (for liberal bio-luddites)
    And that is why this so contentious.

    The idea that we can’t discuss or investigate the heritability of IQ because the results are sometimes used for evil….well….I don’t get that.
    But there are bio-luddites on both sides.
    BJers are observable majority liberal bio-luddites.

  89. 89.

    matoko_chan

    IQ is a measurement of cognitive ability….an approximation or estimate. It is simply the best model we have to date.

  90. 90.

    Corner Stone

    @matoko_chan: I made the mistake of reading some of your comment threads at Protein Wisdom.
    If I had one iota of feeling for you I would be embarrassed for you at how bad they stomped your pathetic spew.
    There’s not enough brain bleach to wipe out the sheer stupidity of you getting beat down by the simpletons at PW.

  91. 91.

    matoko_chan

    @Corner Stone: all they have are adhoms….its exactly the same way I’m treated here.
    they are conservative bio-luddites, you are liberal bio-luddites.
    toute le meme chose
    :)
    There is a biological basis for all behavior…including intelligence.

    Neuroscience is contributing to an understanding of the biological bases of human intelligence differences. This work is principally being conducted along two empirical fronts: genetics — quantitative and molecular — and brain imaging. Quantitative genetic studies have established that there are additive genetic contributions to different aspects of cognitive ability — especially general intelligence — and how they change through the lifespan. Molecular genetic studies have yet to identify reliably reproducible contributions from individual genes. Structural and functional brain-imaging studies have identified differences in brain pathways, especially parieto-frontal pathways, that contribute to intelligence differences. There is also evidence that brain efficiency correlates positively with intelligence.

    And race.

    Ok, race is cultural construct, but so what? Does that make racial categorization somehow less real? When we perceive color, we are looking at a continuum frequency diversity on the electromagnetic spectrum. Somehow we still manage to call one color red and another one blue. You don’t hear people saying the difference between red and blue is meaningless and unworthy of scientific investigation, do you? I have a hydrangea that is red and another that is blue. I should pretend that they are the same, and not inquire as to whether there is a genetic basis for it? (There isn’t; it’s a result of varying soil acidity, but how can I know that if I’m not allowed to ask the question because someone has already told me that color is just a cultural construct?)
    If there is no “race” at the genetic level, then why is it that dark skinned people with very curly hair keep having children with dark skin and curly hair? Why do children of Asians look persistently different from children of Jews? There is something genetic happening that affects skin, hair, facial features, disease susceptibility, and a whole host of other things. But we are powerless to examine those differences because there’s no such thing as “race” at the genetic level? The contention is absurd on its face.
    Tell it to a drug company who sees differential effectiveness and side effects among blacks, Asians, and whites. Sorry guys, you are not allowed to record race in your clinical trials anymore, because everyone knows that information has no meaning!

  92. 92.

    El Cid

    On this:

    If there is no “race” at the genetic level, then why is it that dark skinned people with very curly hair keep having children with dark skin and curly hair? Why do children of Asians look persistently different from children of Jews? There is something genetic happening that affects skin, hair, facial features, disease susceptibility, and a whole host of other things. But we are powerless to examine those differences because there’s no such thing as “race” at the genetic level? The contention is absurd on its face.

    Really? Really? Some people inherit dark skin and curly hair, and this means there’s something such as ‘race’ outside cultural constructions?

    Lots of people inherent tendencies toward alcoholism or manic depressive behavior, two factors which also factor environmental variables.

    For people who are stupid and unscientific, this could be convincing. It’s an embarrassment to those actually tasked with studying genetic patterns and diversity in humans. Which is why it’s written by one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers and not, say, the American Anthropological Association or other scientific associations, who, of course, are all in on the vicious conspiracy to find little useful value in a concept of “race” versus lots of other real definitions of genetic patterns.

    If this is the type of ‘argument’ which convinces people, it’s not the strength of the argument but the weakness of the reader.

  93. 93.

    matoko_chan

    El Cid, let me ax one question…….do you use crosstabs?
    respondents self-identify with race.

    There are many, many genetic markers that are scientifically associated with race. Tay Sachs in Ashkenzai Jews, Sickle Cell in blacks, alcohol suseptibility in Asians and Amerindians are just a few examples.
    You are a liberal bio-luddite.
    You cannot deny the component of heritability in IQ vs race without denying the heritability of all traits vs race.

  94. 94.

    matoko_chan

    and adhom adhom adhom….
    Balloon-juice is the mirror of Protein Wisdom.

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