Oh, my. Read this:
Well, yes, I do tend to get concerned when politics cramps research and when certain facts are suppressed. And the subtle but clear differences in IQ between broad racial groups are a reality – across country and continent and world. They do not only persist when controlling for economic class, on some measures, they increase. Now, this is only the first baby step in the discussion, but it strikes me as the most important one. And it is this finding – staring right out at us from vast amounts of data that no one disputes – that prompts the question: why? At least that’s what I can say for myself. I had no interest in this subject until I saw the data in Murray’s and Herrnstein’s book. I was, frankly, astounded by it. As a highly educated person, I had never been exposed to this data. And yet, it turned out it was undisputed. Merely the interpretation of it was open to real and important debate.
Then just read this and enjoy the whole thing. If this follows the same pattern as it has for everything else, like the “Ryan plan is serious” episode and too many other to count, we’ve got a couple more days of him digging in before slowing backing down as the bigger guns start to weigh in.
Brian R.
The Bell Curve data is “undisputed”?
I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.
mcd410x
The “Howard Johnson is right!” with Paul Ryan was the last straw. Not reading more of him. You can’t make me.
cathyx
What I love about intelligence tests is, who gets to define what intelligent is? Who sets the standards and qualifications of what is intelligence?
Brachiator
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over a statement simultaneously so pompous and so stupid.
Sadly, I don’t see him backing down on this. He has been stubbornly persistent on this since, well, since he discovered The Bell Curve.
Also, too, what the fuck are “broad racial groups?”
dmsilev
Andrew Sullivan is running for the GOP Presidential nomination?
mapaghimagsik
Oh look, Sully gets hits by being controversial. Clearly not as “highly educated” as he thinks he is.
Arundel
A Reader’s Guide to Andrew Sullivan’s Defense of Race Science
..at Gawker. Amusing and true.
cathyx
If we were to put Andrew Sullivan on a deserted island (feel free to substitute any environment where he is out of his element) and he had to figure out how to survive, and he failed, would he be considered stupid?
schrodinger's cat
His beard looks really weird in the photo. Is he auditioning for a creepy Santa role?
dmsilev
@Brachiator:
A statement like that is usually an admission that someone can’t assemble an argument more compelling than “I went to a fancy college, so shut up”. It also leaves a giant bullseye painted on ones forehead, just waiting for someone who *does* actually know what they’re talking about.
trollhattan
@Brian R.:
Uh, yeah…”undisputed” among Madonna’s tour dancers, among the Pet Shop Boys, among the many beagles he’s discussed this with, among…?
He’s lost his everlovin’ mind.
Certified Mutant Enemy
staring right out at us from vast amounts of data that no one disputes
That’s some grad A bullshit there.
dmsilev
Also, too, let’s save this episode and bring it out the next time anyone is tempted to take Sullivan seriously.
danimal
Oh, for the love of all that’s holy, stay away from Sully’s blog when he gets on one of his stupid kicks. He can make sense while sober, and he has an interesting blog much of the time. But Good Lord Almighty, he’s as useless as tits on a bull when he stubbornly digs in on subjects he emotes over. Just give it a rest for now.
Violet
I’m not clicking over, but for those that have, is this some kind of new data, or is he digging up the Bell Curve “research” and rehashing it? What seems to have prompted him to start writing about this crap again?
Vixen Strangely
It seems that his defense of race science is based in denial; if he can hold onto the idea that inequalities are innate, he can avoid examining his own privilege and the way conservatism has been a mechanism for preserving unearned and undeserved privilege. Once seen in that light, conservatism starts looking like a bad thing to base one’s entire worldview around.
Just a guess.
Redshift
@trollhattan:
Among Murray and Herrnstein, clearly, since he mentions no other source that he’s read on the topic.
Gex
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Well, if you flat out ignore everyone who disputed it, as Andrew has, then it is true that those conclusions are undisputed.
This is the truest indicator that he’s a conservative. He’s decided on a “fact” and in order to keep it a fact, he will hear nothing else.
ETA: Love the handle. Didn’t know that there was a Whedonverse certification program. I’ll have to check that out.
Citizen_X
Oh yeah? And at the cheap(er), public/land-grant cow colleges I went to, they made it abundantly clear that I was expected to actively, critically, take part in my own education, and not be a mere passive receptecle for the knowledge that I would be “exposed to.”
MarkJ
Is Andrew even capable of interpreting the findings from his grocery shopping receipts, much less those from vast amounts of data whether in dispute or not? The guy is basically innumerate except when it comes to basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and I’m not even sure he’s capable of long division when it comes right down to it. The idea that he’s capable of interpreting results from complex statistical or economic models is laughable. He’s proven time and again that he has no ability in that area.
JR
If I’m not mistaken, the renowned scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a book destroying the arguements AND the data used in The Bell Curve. Maybe just an article in Nature, I’m not sure any more.
Sad for a highly educated person to lose memories like that, isn’t it?
But The Bell Curve has been shown by numerous evolutionary biologists, psychologists and statisticians to be a pile of racist drek, written by rock-solid
scientists, er, ah racists. Or so I have been led to believe…Jewish Steel
Not so highly educated to be suspicious of surprising data though.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@danimal:
Which is how me and Sully came to part ways. I came to realize his principled stances were only coming after being publicly flogged, and I didn’t care to keep seeing his clearly masochistic/narcissistic tendencies on an regular basis.
Turgidson
Could have fooled me!
chopper
jesus, that’s some cask-strength stupid right there. someone give him another shovel.
Shinobi
It would be ridiculous of me to let politics get in the way of saying that Andrew Sullivan is a either a racist or a moron.
Roy G.
It’s really quite hilarious, because Keith Ellison absolutely pwned him on the last Real Time with Bill Maher.
reflectionephemeral
As is only appropriate, we’re taking the fact that the Bell Curve has been entirely & thoroughly discredited as a given. If you’re interested in more, there’s stuff from Howard Gardner, Stephen Jay Gould, & others here in great detail on that point, & others here. Also some all over the rest of the Internet.
It’s a pretty useless form of “unpopular truth-telling” that insists on stressing that historically discriminated-against out groups are, on balance, dumber than regular people, rather than examining the motives and the funding for people such as Charles Murray and David Brooks.
sherparick
“Undisputed” is not quite right. That two individuals who most openly press this meme, Jensen and Rushton, have openly racialist agendas. As to nature of the dispute, see the article by Thomas Flynn http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/flynn.pdf
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Flynn
Flynn was critical of some of Gould’s arguments in “The Mismeasure of Man,” Stephen Jay Gould’s response to “The Bell Curve.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Responses_to_the_second_edition_.281996.29
So, Sully, it is only undisputed if you take Phillip Rushton’s straight. But Rushton is very bent.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@JR:
THE MISMEASURE OF MAN, which was actually published before BELL CURVE as a work that thoroughly underlines the centuries of pseudo-scientific hackery around this IQ bollicks, for both race and gender. As Coates noted, this is old, old business.
Gould put out a revised version shredding BC after it’s publication. I really cannot recommend the book enough to anyone interested in history, culture, or science.
The Bearded Blogger
A broken clock is right twice a day. Morons with occasionally sane positions are still morons. Morons with language skills are still morons.
Apply to: Sully, Newt, Ron Paul…
FlipYrWhig
It’s been being disputed for twenty bloody years, you git. What is the matter with this cretin? Why did anyone ever listen to him on anything to begin with?
Brachiator
Somehow, I can’t help but recall when I discovered an older cousin’s porn stash while he was away at college. I was astounded, and had never been exposed to so much “data.” But I didn’t make a big deal about it.
Gawd, Sully sounds like a dope here.
Or, as Bugs Bunny would say,
What a maroon! What an ignoranimus!
Redshift
@JR: Yes, The Mismeasure of Man. Anyone who declares that The Bell Curve is “undisputed” and doesn’t bother to read Gould’s book (which is highly readable) or even bother to acknowledge its existence is just saying “lalalalala I can’t hear you!”
schrodinger's cat
@MarkJ: He can’t calculate percentages and gets confused with orders of magnitude.
trollhattan
@Roy G.:
Was that the episode where Sully claimed the reason US education ain’t workin’ is because we can’t fire bad teachers? I don’t think he’s really against torture because he sure likes to torture reality.
gwangung
@danimal:
What? And not indulge in our inherent sadism? Some of us ENJOY having a battle of wits with an unarmed man, when when we have so much ammunition on our side.
(“highly educated” my ass).
Redshift
@Shinobi:
I must protest! That is not an either/or question!
eemom
WTF ever happened to that wagon you were supposed to be on, Cole?
Haven’t you heard that even if you do fall off, you’re supposed to get RIGHT BACK ON?
carpeduum
“I have no clue what I’m talking about, but that’s not gonna stop me”
For a second there I thought Clueless Cole was gonna admit his own shortcomings….but then he disappointed and carried on with his usual Doom porn shtick.
Linda Featheringill
So what is this? The last dying breath of White Supremacy? Brought on by the fact that Obama is obviously superior to most of us?
Certified Mutant Enemy
@The Bearded Blogger:
Apply to: Sully, Newt, Ron Paul…
To be fair, Newt is typically more wrong than a broken clock.
El Tiburon
Help me out here: what or how is Sullivan’s claim to fame? Just because he has somewhat of a British accent is he supposed to be some intellectual heavyweight? To me he appears as a gayer, less drunk Christopher Hitchens.
My first exposure to him was several years ago as he almost came to tears on Bill Maher’s show because he felt all the Godless Liberals were picking on True Believers like himself. He really sounded like an immature, spoiled little brat.
Veritas
Even if this is true who fucking cares? IQ is not the only measure of human worth, or even “intelligence” (which can’t even really be defined!) In fact its an entirely contrived one.
RealityCheck
Brian R.
Speaking of racists not having a clue, did you know that Obama is going to take away our guns … just like notorious dictator Forrest Whittaker?
Shinobi
@Redshift: Well, yes, but I am interested in highlighting which is more important. I am astounded to think that he could be such a moron as to be a racist. And yet I wonder if he is such a racist as to accept stupid claims in order to justify his beliefs.
mclaren
Great, Sully. So you were exposed to the data? Tell me what the regression coefficients were.
Don’t know?
There’s a reason you don’t know. The regression coefficients were hidden in an appendix at the end of Herrnstein & Murray’s opus horribilis. Because they’re shite.
You’re looking at regression coefficients around 0.3. Square ’em to get an estimate of the goodness of fit. What’s 0.3 squared? 0.09. It’s garbage. A goodness-of-fit of 0.09 is about what you’d expect if you correlated a straight line with snowflakes falling randomly on a winter sidewalk.
Why do you people keep doing this to yourselves? You pay attention to these no-know do-nothing wankers and get yourselves all worked up.
Over here on the physics side of the fence, we call a 3 sigma event an anecdote and a 5 sigma event interesting and when it gets to 9 sigma, then it’s an observation. Regression coefficients of 0.3, we don’t even pay attention to. That’s static on a fucking TV screen.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: I think you’re pretty much accurate: he’s a gayer, less drunk, Catholic, Thatcherite Christopher Hitchens. He was a young hotshot editor of (EvenTheLiberal) New Republic and then one of the earliest blogger/pundits.
Special Patrol Group
Are we in some sort of fucking time warp?
2005:
Jeezus, what a self-righteous, yet wildly incorrect, dildo.
I can’t fucking believe we have to relive this fucking bullshit yet again. Is this some sort of punishment for being right about the Iraq Invasion, regressive taxes, and what have you?
Mojotron
“I am aware of all academic traditions.”
FlipYrWhig
@Brian R.: He must have become dictator some time after wrapping up his football career at Ridgemont High.
Veritas
As I said before, Sullivan cares about one thing and one thing only at the end of the day–The Buttsex. Remember that, and he makes more sense. If he wasn’t gay, he’d be an extremely obnoxious Papist prick–IOW Rick Santorum.
RealityCheck
RossinDetroit
In which Sully, having learned nothing in the meantime, steps right back into it up to the hips.
I second the rec of S.J. Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man. It’s not only a very readable and authoritative book on IQ measurement fraud, it’s an excellent introduction to the scientific method and its pitfalls.
Berial
Seriously, why does anyone actually read this guys stuff?
Special Patrol Group
Also, too:
and
Douchebags of a (white) feather.
handy
@Veritas:
Did you just out yourself?
BGinCHI
Is this Andrew Sullivan riding the tram?
http://gawker.com/5863088/british-ladys-racist-tram-rant-caught-on-tape
Maybe has a wig on?
Veritas
@handy:
Entirely intentional. The blog now automatically filters if I use my hand in the name slot.
RealityCheck
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@Veritas:
OK, let me explain how this works — like everything else, it’s not about rationality, but emotion.
As many people have noted, there’s a huge, long history of this kind of “we’re smarter than People X” business. We care because people like Sullivan want to ignore than history, and the effects that ripple into today, in favor of their brand of “science” — which, like Creationism and Climate Change Denial, have more to do with maintaining the status quo than any Scientific Method I know of.
We push back because we’ve seen what happens when you don’t. We push back because letting these points go uncommented is allowing racism to thrive. And I, at least push back because I’m an African-American who loves science, and has since he was a kid, and it hurts me to the fucking core to see people like Sully abuse it to make my heritage look bad.
Fair enough?
Redshift
@Shinobi: Fair point. I think in this context, “moron” is actually as uselessly one-dimensional as “IQ” (perhaps not surprising, since they come from the same era of pseudoscience.) Sully does seem to have the conservative trait of stubbornly clinging to certain beliefs that confirm his worldview, and declaring opposing arguments to be the product of bad motives without engaging them, even if they do engage his arguments and scrupulously avoid the obvious projection about motives.
Brian R.
@FlipYrWhig:
“Pistol taken away by … JEFFERSON! Rifles seized by … JEFFERSON!”
Veritas
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill:
Yeah, but you’re assuming the IQ Test has anything to do with something as amorphous and undefinable as “intelligence”. I wouldn’t even grant them that. I’ve known plenty of people in my time who bomb on tests and do great in school. Having a high IQ doesn’t mean you have high intelligence–it means you do well at taking an IQ Test (or standardized tests in general).
mclaren
@El Tiburon:
He’s a gay conservative. That’s about like being a black klansman. It’s unusual enough that when you encounter somebody like that, you rock back on your heels and say, “Whoa!”
Unsympathetic
Based on vast amounts of data that nobody disputes, Andrew Sullivan is an idiot.
Redshift
@Special Patrol Group:
Woo. That’s… it’s hard to find words to describe that degree of wrongness.
Special Patrol Group
Sully’s reaction to being called out on the Murray bullshit reminds one of:
Also, too: McMegan’s defense of damn near anything she ever wrote/did and got exactly wrong.
Veritas
Let’s face it–if you sit around all day getting a woody by thinking about how you happen to be a member of some random, socially constructed, ill-defined group (white) that happens to have a slightly higher average score on a certain standardized test than some other socially constructed ill-defined group (black), you need to get a life.
RealityCheck
RossinDetroit
@Redshift:
Wrong ^ n as n approaches infinity?
Comrade Luke
@danimal:
I also love the first few comments.
“I’m going to guess this guy is also a Republican”
“He’s a small-c conservative, not a Republican”
Classic.
When is he *not* on a stupid kick. The times he makes any sense whatsoever approaches blind-pig-finds-an-acorn territory.
burnspbesq
Simple question, asked with utmost sincerity:
Why should I care about any of this?
Redshift
@Veritas:
Where in the comment you’re replying to is there anything like that statement?
Yes, Sully assumes that, as do the people who buy his BS, but there’s no indication that Woodrow is granting the validity of any of the argument; quite the opposite. Saying you really really really ignore Sully is not a response to anything that Woodrow said.
Turgidson
@Redshift:
Yep. They paintstakingly collected data with, uh, dubious statistical merit and made some obnoxious proclamations about what the data meant. Heroes, they are. Maybe they should be given Knighthood.
PIGL
@Brachiator: What are broad racial groups? Let me a hazard a guess: ni**ers, pakis, and gooks.
The only excuse for this a**hole would be tertiary syphilus, which would be too good for him.
Roc
@cathyx: And then roll in the fact that trying to define “race” is only slightly less subjective and arbitrary than trying to define “intelligence”.
Ruckus
@El Tiburon:
He really sounded like an immature, spoiled little brat.
You sir have a good ear.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@Veritas:
I went for a minor in Psychology, so I know pretty damn well the flaws and uses of the IQ test, thanks.
My point wasn’t about if IQ is useful, and a debate around it’s merits. It was exactly, and explicitly, about the quote from you I used vis a vis the kind of racial profiling this discussion is about. These guys aren’t really caring about the point you’re making. They aren’t invested in really debating IQ — feel free to read around on the BELL CURVE debate to see how it actually plays out, and why it infuriates so many scientists to see this come up again and again.
It’s why I didn’t engage your point around IQ– which, honestly, is moot and not something I think anyone actually interested in the science would debate. It’s your attitude that “everyone” should know this, so why should we be yelling at Sully about it? And the point is that “they” don’t know, in point of fact, and people like Sully live in ignorance of that knowledge. You’re not going to get to them by saying “no you’re wrong” — but their insistence on this does real damage to the cause of Civil Rights and science, both internally and in the greater culture.
And that, again is why we fight back. Clearer?
THE
As a dedicated transhumanist I’d have to say: that I think all unmodified humans have very low-IQ.
Redshift
@burnspbesq:
As usual, because ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.
Winston Smith
@cathyx:
I confess: it’s me.
Now that I’ve gone public, I would like to add that “IQ” is not official. Intelligence is pass/fail.
Sullivan fails.
Veritas
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill:
Sure, no problem.
RealityCheck
Ken
@cathyx: Or as Terry Pratchett put it, “Civilized means knowing important things, like what a pronoun is or how to find the square root of 27.4. Savage means you only know unimportant things, like which of sixty nearly-identical species of sea snakes are the deadly ones, or how to prepare a nutritious gruel from the poisonous sago root, or how to navigate across an ocean using only two sticks and a small figurine your grandfather carved. It’s odd, but once people become civilized, everyone knows about the pronoun, but no one knows about the sago root.”
Steeplejack
@Special Patrol Group:
Who is the first quotation from?
WereBear (itouch)
Sigh. All you need to know about Sullivan is that he’s a suckup. Conservatives are the ones with money and power and he’s going to dance as long as they throw coins.
I wish y’all would quit him.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
Because, unfortunately, there are people out there who base policy on this sort of utter crap.
Which will fuck up your life, if they’re allowed to apply it.
srv
What Special Patrol said, why?
Always found the Sullivan Emotional Alert Level funny.
If we’ve reached a point at which the most interesting thing in the world is Sully’s Bell Curve evangelization, someone needs to update that chart.
driftglass
One of the 17,855 reasons why the World’s Greatest Blogger does not permit comments :-)
The soft cotton batting of Tina Brown’s money covers the clatter of the Apostate Right building their own, brand-new Alternate Reality: a fun-house of historical revisionism where it is simultaneously safe to mock Rush, Sean and the Palinites, but the Dirty Hippies are somehow still shrill and polarizing.
Setting up a Witless Relocation Program for the Apostate Right where they will be treated as credible sages and no one will rub their noses in their own incredibly inconvenient pasts is, unsurprisingly, turning out to be a VERY profitable enterprise.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/11/revisionism-never-sleeps.html
Bludger
Man, we sure do love to hate Sully.
Special Patrol Group
@Steeplejack:
Jonah Goldberg talking about his awesome book: Hillary Clinton is Just Like Mussolini and Hitler.
THE
@Ken:
A brain that was hardwired to the Internet, would know all of those things. In an instant.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@El Tiburon:
@FlipYrWhig:
Further refined for greater accuracy.
cathyx
@Ken: One of the reasons that I bring this up is I remember reading several years ago about a study of the fairness of SAT tests. Students had quite a different vocabulary and life experience coming from inner city schools vs the suburbs. The questions were geared more toward the knowledge gained living in suburb than in inner cities, thus giving inner city students a disadvantage over the suburb students.
trollhattan
@Ken:
Oh, that’s good!
jl
I have nothing to add on the badness of the statistics of the Bell Curve. Very expert statisticians such as James Heckman, Arthur Goldberger and Charles Manski did a very good job in their reviews. I can’t find an online version right now, but here is the reference to the Goldberger Manski review, which goes through all the statitsical problems of the Bell Curve in detail:
Arthur S. Goldberger and Charles Manski, “Review Article: The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray,” Journal of Economic Literature 33 (June 1995):762-76.
Edit: As I said yesterday, better review than Heckman’s because Heckman loses his temper half way through and essentially starts yelling rather than analyzing.
What I do want to repeat, is the that I think the charge that researchers have been ‘scared away’ and no good research is done regarding IQ or other measures of intelligence because of political correctness is total bunk.
I think applied researchers have been ‘scared away’ from old methods that maybe were defensible when statisticians (and unfortunately also racists and eugenicists) such Galton and Egon Pearson (who may have also advocated race wars for conquest and elimination of inferior breeds) long long ago, but are now known to be defective.
What about interesting new research on the effects of environment/genetic interactions on brain function? How about research on the effect of stereotype effects on performance in different tasks?
These strands of research provide a lot of information about how to interpret measures of human performance, and how to think about gene/environment/social interactions.
Sullivan doesn’t know what he is talking about, and so is so vague it is hard to know exactly what kind of research he thinks has been stifled.
As far as I can figure out from reading his latest outburst is that he thinks research in this field should consist of factor analysis applied over and over and over again using data from bad sample designs that do not permit unbiased estimates of anything at all about in utero or early child development, genes, social environment or anything else.
And I think Sullivan’s outburst is worth paying attention to because it is part of a trend of people with no expertise, and no evidence of attempting to gain expertise, smearing scientific research based on… what I do not know… uninformed prejudice about the technical aspects of how research should be done? They don’t like the conclusions? What? Who knows?
trollhattan
@Bludger:
Something to keep us occupied between McMegan rants. I understand she got herself an expensive new kitchen appliance.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2011/11/26/been-there-bought-that/
Also, too, has anybody assigned a taxon to the badger attacking Sully’s face?
Donut
Not just no, but hell no.
Why do you torture yourself? You need a Sullivan pie filter, dude.
ChrisNYC
At what point will all these people who rose to prominence in the nineties go away? A. Sullivan, Tina Browne, Naomi Wolf. Gingrich, Carville, Bill Clinton (though I still like him). Maureen Dowd, David Brooks. When does their dotage begin? When can we stop rehashing their golden oldies?
LT
I just sent that Gawker link to a friend who continuously posts Sullivan links on his FBook page. Oy. And another thing to expect over the next couple of days: A bunch off “Moore Awards,” as the boils of Sully’s pettiness burst as, as you said, a succession of bigger guns weigh in, and things begin to dawn on that sadly-insuffereable very smart person.
jl
@jl:
Big big oops. ‘Egon Pearson’ should be ‘Karl Pearson’ Egon was Karl’s son, and as far as I know, did not have his father’s prejudices. Karl Pearson worked in the early 20th century.
Edit: and ‘bad sample designs’ should really be ‘uninformative data from bad samples using bad study designs’
Catsy
Any time anyone attempts to base an argument or line of discussion on intrinsic distinctions between “races”, you can more or less automatically assume that their opinion is worthless. There is no such thing as “race”. It an arbitrary way of dividing up people into categories based loosely on their nationality and superficial physical traits. It has almost no scientific basis.
There are, of course, specific genes that are behind physical traits like height, epicanthic folds, skin tone, and facial structure. Some genes can be used to identify a person’s ancestry. But those traits do not make someone of one “race” or another, they are a collection of largely independent physical attributes that we attribute to a person’s “race” because human beings need to categorize things and the only way most people are capable of categorizing complete strangers is by what they can see.
eemom
Could we at least do this? Could we at least stipulate that each new Sully thread shall henceforth incorporate by reference all the pointless existential angst that has been expended on this man on this blog infinity gazillion times before — so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel EVERY fucking time with the EXACT SAME stupid argument about WHETHER TO READ HIM OR NOT??
jl
@ChrisNYC: “When does their dotage begin?”
I think for most of them, their mental dotage has already begun, which is the problem.
FlipYrWhig
@ChrisNYC: Ann Coulter was almost entirely gone, then sprung back to quasi-life recently. At least Camille Paglia seems to have gone extinct.
jl
@FlipYrWhig:
“At least Camille Paglia seems to have gone extinct.”
Will there be chapter on Paglia in Dawkins next book? I am interested in her odd evolution.
LT
@eemom: You’ve spawned a Fundamental Internet Template:
Good work!
ChrisNYC
@FlipYrWhig: Good catch on Paglia! One down. Eighteen thousand to go.
Donut
@LT:
I dunno…how do we define “very smart person”? Personally, I do not think this guy Sullivan is very smart. Well educated? Yes. Able to read, and write well? Maybe (though even that is debatable, at this point, as he has lackeys draft his blog posts, so who even knows?).
But very smart? Please. The man is a proven bigot and an obvious chauvinist (in the broad sense). These are labels we apply to people who are ignorant. Fools. Sure, he is well-educated, and obviously he is not stupid, per se. But he continually goes out of his way to act like an ignorant bastard. I mean, not just every so often. It’s a life-long habit – and doubly worse, he criticizes other people all the time for being bigots when it comes to sexuality or religion, so he’s a damned hypocrite, too. Ugh.
slag
@Redshift: Actually, I believe that’s:
Nobody could have predicted that Sullivan was sock puppeting here as moko loco.
Mike Furlan
@Catsy:
That is it, exactly. The argument stops right here.
“Race” is a scientifically dead concept.
The parrot is definitely deceased.
‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker!
‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!!
jeff
In all fairness, many of the best respected geneticists do agree with Sullivan. Razib Khan is the most famous, and he is not usually considered racist. Khan does not believe in “race” as defined by society, but, if I understand correctly, he does believe in natural groups (separated by isolation from other populations).
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/08/the-end-of-environmental-inequality-means-the-rise-of-genetic-inequality/
I find it disturbing, and I do think this is accepted in mainstream science. It comes down to genetic determinism in every sense–not specifically about intelligence.
I think he would certainly agree with the interpretation that his view is liberating, since there will be many minorities with high genetic merit, and that they will be able to take their rightful place in an objectively defined meritocratic future.
Chilling stuff, and I think totally overreaching and premature.
Then there was the famous study about Ashkenazi intelligence, which really would sting me if I were Sephardic. The book was approvingly reviewed wherever I looked.
It’s certainly not just Sully, though his reliance on really bad research makes him doubly suspect.
I think it’s possible, if unfruitful, to discuss population genetics and intelligence…I just don’t see any possibility of getting clear, meaningful results from it. Populations and disease makes more sense, since we know what disease is, and it can lead to discoveries that might help everyone.
Maude
@ChrisNYC:
2052.
Steeplejack
@Special Patrol Group:
Oof. I should have known.
Samara Morgan
The only interesting thing about this endless bellcurve wankfest is this one question.
do you believe scientific research should be controlled and/or moderated?
@Catsy: heres an argument
Keith G
@El Tiburon:
Considering Sully:
1) He has middling writing talent. There are many who are better.
2) As a cute (yes he was) young gay guy, he must have learned the value of attachment to older powerful men (as many ambitious and forward thinking gay guys of the 80s and 90s learned).
3) Holding advanced degrees from Harvard indicate that either he is actually intelligent in some way, or can act thusly when appropriate.
4) For whatever reason, the late eighties saw a wave of Brits being hired by East Coast publishing houses and Sully was in great position to be a protege of Martin Peretz at the New Republic becoming a relatively young and inexperienced editor.
5) Add in a dogged talent for self-promotion and a good (if occasionally errant) ability to spot emerging trends…and there you go.
faway koten tree na fin fo se
@Brachiator:
I guess that’s how a highly educated bigot refers to the one-drop rule these days.
[edit for brevity]
jl
@jeff: Yes, I have read about this point of view. Problem I have with it is that evening out environmental effects is a long long way off, so I do not see the practical significance. The estimate that 90 percent of current variation in height is due to genes versus environment doesn’t have much bearing on intelligence.
And research indicates that social stereotyping effects are large, not small, in lots of aptitude tests, not only for intelligence. If that line of research holds up, then the mere fact that there continues to be a social consensus on racial stereotypes (even if based on flawed research) will itself affect the development, and average test scores of different groups of people.
I remember reading an interview with the famous African American mathematician, and unfortunately, late, David Blackwell, who said that he knew several fellow African Americans who were very intelligent in his estimation, but early on abandoned their interest in math and science in favor of business or the professions, simply because they felt there would be insurmountable prejudice that would prevent them from making a living following their interests. Think how that has in turn affected society’s view of the abilities of African Americans.
Samara Morgan
@jl: well…where is the better model?
the publication/book/paper that refutes murray’s thesis and advances a new hypothesis?
Svensker
Thanks, front page person.
Samara Morgan
@Cole
shouldnt you guys be having an equal-opportunity freakout about this?
NATURAL HISTORY OF ASHKENAZI INTELLIGENCE
LT
@Donut:
Well, he’s obviously an enormously curious person, and he is actually very highly educated (I don’t know why anyone would mock him for saying so, he simply is – Oxford followed by Masters and Ph.D. at Harvard at least qualifies for that, doesn’t it?) – and has read and to some degree remembered a great deal of stuff. I think that has made him at least some definition of “smart” (and I think it’s the explanation for the popularity of his blog, too). Doesn’t mean he’s not capable of grand dumbness, but still…
slag
@jeff: Khan? You mean this guy?
jl
@Samara Morgan: I mentioned today and yesterday a number of recent research developments that suggest a number of ‘better’ models (if by ‘model’ you mean factor analysis (or MANOVA, or any other kind of standard multivariate analysis) of test scores on data without enough information in them to disentangle genetic, environmental, developmental and social effects.
Redshift
@jeff:
That is a fundamental distinction, and by definition makes him not agree with Sullivan. Genetic ethnic groupings exist biologically; Sully’s “broad racial groups” do not.
I agree that the post you cited is pretty chilling, but I don’t think it could be categorized as mainstream science (or rather, the biological concepts it uses may be mainstream science, but the way it extends them to social policy certainly isn’t.) At best, it’s “spherical cow” reasoning — he starts out with the ludicrous conservative assumption that we will shortly have no differences in the environmental influences on “intelligence,” which unsurprisingly leads to the comfortable conservative conclusion that all the remaining differences are genetic, so everyone must end up where they deserve to be on their own merits.
I think it’s safe to say that the idea that if people aren’t starving in the streets, there must be no intellectual advantages from wealth and privilege is not mainstream science.
LT
@Ken: Why can’t google fiind a good source for that Prachett quote?
gwangung
O, dim one, what do you make of peer review?
Brachiator
@Samara Morgan:
Hmmm. Ashkenazi Jews, not a “broad racial group.” So here, as is almost typical, you make up a group to fit expectations. And the notion that Sephardic Jews might be less … blessed? Dumbass.
This kind of thing is the equivalent to shooting at a wall, and then drawing a target around it, and then declaring that you have discovered some pattern about shooting.
Similar crap gets done when “East Asians” supposedly are more IQ blessed than “Asians psych weenies don’t like as much.”
slag
@jl:
Funny thing is…for all this terrible suppression of truth going on by the pc police, very very few (if any) would dispute the fact that we have an achievement gap in this country. It’s only the
racist white folkmorally courageous among us who are more than happy to attribute that gap to the innate inferiority of certain socially-defined groups.Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Short answer: no.
jl
@Samara Morgan: No, because the methods of this line of research, whether the conclusions are right or wrong, are not demonstrably wrong.
Their conclusion that there could be selection effects that effect the average performance in a human population over a span of a few hundred years seems remarkable, and am not sure how reasonable that is from a population genetics point of view, though. I read through how to calculate the time span needed for such a thing to happen long ago, but do not remember how to do it now. Guess it is a good time to look it up.
Brachiator
Here is more grist for the pseudo science mill
Have at it.
Anoniminous
@mclaren:
FTW
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Nice straw man you have built there. The Bell Curve was written and published. It was then critically demolished for bad math, bad methodology, and the result bad conclusions (Did I miss anything?). This demolition has been cited and linked to repeatedly on this blog. It had been cited and linked to in response to you in the past. I do not intend to do it again. None of this constitutes controlling or restraining science or, indeed, any form of research. Excoriating crap does not discourage quality.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@jeff: From the Discover mag post:
…he’s trying to say…something about how his theories on IQ relate to a set of data on the average heights of people of varying African backgrounds (as slaves were) with the delta of various people in the UK, of 2 different classes — and then comparing them to all Germans. That’s a statistical mess waiting to happen, and a perfect example of the “extraordinary claims” concept.
Doesn’t it strike you as…odd that he assumes the same set of mechanisms work for both height and IQ? I mean, seriously, a 3-5 cm different in height amongst slaves and lower-class English folk in data taken 2 centuries ago strikes me as a slender rod to support a claim that we’re all ignoring the importance of “hereditary IQ factors”.
On refresh, and as others have said, no, this isn’t really like what Sully is trying to say. It doesn’t mean his arguments are mainstream however — even he notes in the prior blog on this topic that he links to that the IQ research he quotes as proof of genetic IQ expression doesn’t go that far, that he’s drawing that conclusion from their work. Indeed, in the very first paragraph, and in so much else he writes, you read his instance that he’s seeing key data that other scientists in this line of work are missing. That’s not the sign of a guy working in the mainline of his field.
gaz
@Omnes Omnibus: hear hear!
Despite what Andrew Sullivan’s Beard(tm) would have us believe, the “Bell Curve” is not science.
Samara is a toad. She doesn’t really give a fuck whether or not it was scientific. She’s 100% committed to being wrong about everything, all the time, and arguing her (wrong) positions to everybody, at every opportunity. That’s a lot of work to do consistently, and so she simply does not have the time left over to learn any actual science, the scientific method, or the difference between a research project and a poll.
gaz
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill: The only reason none of this strikes me as odd, is because I have pretty low expectations when it comes to the crap espoused by this “research” **snort** **chuckle**
Sorry I just can’t call it research with a straight face. If it was, that ham-fisted attempt to abuse statistics would be appalling. But since it’s just a gladwell-esque (minus the wit) attempt to be clever by pushing a shocking bit of supposed “truth” upon the unwashed, I take it in that respect.
It’s pulp.
gaz
@Winston Smith:
LOL. You win the thread.
gaz
@Veritas:
And now why do you suppose that is?
Can’t you tell when you’ve overstayed your welcome?
Rihilism
Cole, I was just going to ask you to do so. Thank you.
Arm The Homeless
@Rihilism: We have a bunch of young-Republicans running around our campus handing out some photo-copied newsletter called Veritas. The difference between RealityCheck and the newsletter is that the pamphlets can be used to wipe one’s ass, which makes it far more useful than this fuck-nugget.
4jkb4ia
I am thinking back to an old Tom Maguire post. But if the issue was whether torture “works” Sully would not be the lone, persecuted blogger fighting for academic freedom along with Steve Sailer.
jeff
@jl:
I think that’s how I feel, too.
Rihilism
@Arm The Homeless: Perhaps “Stercus” would have been a better choice for their newsletter.
I was actually referring to another turd, who may have been removed before your arrival, hence you may have thought I was referring to our lovely little Venerealis…
jeff
@Redshift:
Yeah, I shouldn’t have said “agree” and I implied the opposite elsewhere in my poorly thought out post. Sullivan is not reflecting mainstream thought, just by his construction of “race” to begin with.
Caz
What good is diversity if there are no differences between groups as far as areas of talent and abilities? It makes sense that when God created the different races, He endowed them with different characteristics and different talents.
Clearly, blacks are better at basketball than whites. White are better at tennis. So why should we purposefully, for political correctness, be naive in thinking that there aren’t differences in all sorts of areas. Maybe intelligence is one are in which the races differ. Athletics may be another.
But I wonder why it’s not racist to say that blacks are faster and stronger than whites (most NFL players are black), but it is racist to say that whites are smarter than blacks. Isn’t this just two sides of the same coin? Pretty hypocritical to say one is racist while the other’s not. But if they are both facts (I don’t know if they are or not), then neither is racist, because facts aren’t racist.
Arm The Homeless
@Rihilism: Shucks, I was so hopeful too. Oh well, I am sure it will show it’s ass soon enough and burn another ‘nym.
gwangung
@Caz: Even you can do better than this. sigh
kay
Why… what? That just doesn’t ring true to me. Sorry.
I am glad he started this, because then TNC responded, and that response was true and wonderful to read. So there’s a silver lining :)
Mnemosyne
@Caz:
Venus and Serena Williams are white? Who knew?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: If you are going to feed the troll, shouldn’t you wait until it puts some effort in?
Rihilism
@gwangung: Exactly what I was thinking. Maybe the Caz enterprise is like Sully’s blog, and one of the interns is filling in…
Caz
Well, I admit that I was thinking only of men’s sports when I trolled. Is that right, “trolled?” Anyway… I guess since I’m a guy I was thinking only of guy sports, since guys are better at sports than women. See, it applies to gender too, not just race! ;-)
Samara Morgan
@jl: a good time to look it up.
no need.
Have you read Cochran’s book?
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: not so.
DougJ thinks we shouldn’t study IQ because our tools are bad.
good thing these guys didnt give up because they had no tools to study the Very Small.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: There is a difference between studying IQ qua IQ and studying the human mind with respect to how and why intelligence manifests itself and can be developed. DougJ said he objects to one; he did not say he objects to the other.
RSA
@jl:
Thanks for the reference–it’s readable and often entertaining. My favorite line: “To us, HM’s treatment of genetics and race is akin to standing up in a crowded theater and shouting, ‘Let’s consider the possibility that there is a FIRE!'”
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: and like i said, im not very interested in a 16 year old book by a conservative political “scientist”.
except in the hold it has over the juicitariat….wallah, you guys attribute magical powers to it! how could it ever convince anyone if it has been as thoroughly debunked as you say?
I am interested in the study of intelligence, however, and it is undeniable that race and IQ are socially contentious topics of study.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
so DougJ is advocating controlling research?
Sloegin
Too many people making the mistake of Mr. Sullivan getting advanced degrees at prestigious schools somehow equals him having some kind of sound understanding of numbers, economics, and statistics.
From a quick scan of his wiki CV, more than likely his understanding of those topics never got much beyond primary school.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s very fitting that m_c is posting so much with a thread with this title.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Oh for fuck’s sake, Samara, you have been told multiple times why the book has significance. It is not, and was not, a significant piece of scholarship. It is, and was, a several hundred page excuse for right wing assholes to advocate retrograde social policies. The fact that someone with as big a megaphone as Andrew Sullivan continues to point to his involvement with it is a reason for people to be concerned. It is not a shibboleth. A concern about its continued prominence is not opposition to science; the book is not scientific.
Also too, please stop conflating IQ and intelligence. IQ is a flawed measurement of a few aspects of what constitutes intelligence.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
IQ is a metric of cognitive ability.
eg, intelligence.
David in NY
@Samara Morgan: Geez, Samara. What’s your real point? People should give black folks more IQ tests or something? I mean, nobody here is trying to stop them. But, on balance, that’s not meaningful research. That is, it’s stupid. Lots of scientists do stupid research, but you can’t make us say that’s an honorable thing to do.
As I noted above, since you evinced interest in artificial intelligence, nobody gives a computer an IQ test to determine if it’s “intelligent.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Read the rest of my comment.
David in NY
@Samara Morgan:
Actually, you are quite wrong, unless that’s a definitional thing, in which case it’s merely tautological, and thus meaningless. And see my prior comment, no. 161.
Mnemosyne
I think John and DougJ are posting these threads just so we can all point and laugh at Samara/matoko-loco.
I think the “intelligence and cognitive ability are the same thing!” gambit is her best one yet. It’s like having our own little McMegan right here in our thread.
Samara Morgan
@David in NY:
in your opinion.
intelligence is not binary. Intelligence Quotient is a relative scale.
possibly you could give a cohort of Strong AIs an IQ test….if we had a cohort of Strong AIs.
my point.
its not just race– its religiosity, political affiliation, sex.
its all taboo.
how can we study intelligence with all the forbidden co-variants?
SoINeedAName48
Settle down there, little bucko
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Who is forbidding you from studying anything? Go for it. If you produce crap like The Bell Curve, please expect to feel abject humiliation.
Samara Morgan
@Mnemosyne: i didnt say that.
cant you read? i said IQ is a metric.
it is used to measure different cognitive abilities.
g is the metric used to describe general cognitive ability– or how well the different brain modalities cooperate.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: so you too believe in “good” research and “bad” research?
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Nice try. Define your terms.
bago
Well granted, the non augmented amongst us are behind. Being proud of ignorance easily cleared up by the work we put into the internet? Please.
El Cid
Well, if Andrew Sullivan is convinced that Evil PC Science is blocking us from understanding why some races are smarter than others, then, by God, I’m convinced too.
Too bad, though, that we’ve never had scientists working on the questions of why some races are dumber.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: It’s okay; toko is going to handle it.
gwangung
@Samara Morgan:
How can you keep commenting when you don’t know what’s been studied, o dim one?
And it’s clear you don’t know the literature.
THE
I think there have been many attempts to define other measures of intelligence, other dimensions if you like, and mostly they end up correlated with g. So it is easier to just measure g with a high g-loaded test.
So its not that there are no other measures of intelligence, its that g is a good measure of general intelligence. It does a pretty good job of predicting your performance on a whole range of stuff.
FWIW I tend to think that IQ is not terribly interesting for people in the broad middle. But it is important in the tails. If you are very low or very high IQ this has significant impact.
Omnes Omnibus
@THE: What would you say constitutes very high or very low?
El Cid
@gwangung:
There is no literature, because it simultaneously exists and doesn’t exist.
Study after study after study establishes the crucial differences in broadly placed general intelligence capabilities between peoples of different races; and, also, these studies don’t exist, because PC liberalism has run mad and prevented them from being done.
We simply refuse to study this subject upon which so much good study has been done; and we ignore the widespread and established evidence.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Schrodinger’s Literature?
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: So did you get your goose?
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: No, it was turkey. But two of the pies (pumpkin) were made by my grandmother and she is awesome at it. At 90, she limits her involvement in the hands-on cooking to a couple of things. Luckily, pie is one of them.
By the way, is there any literature in your box?
Plantsmantx
@Caz:
Who is better at soccer?
THE
@Omnes Omnibus: I suppose something three standard deviations or over might be a good threshold. The thresholds probably vary in different countries.
So a person in the lower tail would have problems in a regular classroom say, and would be classified as “Special Needs”. A person in the high tail would have special abilities and might warrant extra attention too to develop their unusual potential, so a “gifted child”.
Omnes Omnibus
@THE: Okay, thanks.
Samara Morgan
@El Cid:
.oh, noes.
you have greg cochran.
he once called me an asshole at GNXP.
kinda like here, eh, juicers?
;)
Jamey
And then apologizing to all us coastal fifth columnists 18 mos ex-post-facto, most likely to rousing applause for having the courage to admit that he was wrong…
Take away his accent, Oxford/Fleet Street pedigree, and the whiff of exotica that being a gay Conservative confers, and Sully’s little more than another reasonably talented wordsmith with a VDare platform.
AxelFoley
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill:
This. ALL this.
Mnemosyne
@Samara Morgan:
This is what you said:
Cognitive ability =/= intelligence. They are not synonyms. IQ is either a metric of cognitive ability or it’s a metric of intelligence, but it’s not a metric of both, because they are two different things.
Caz
Well what data do you think is reasonable to use to judge intelligence? Surely there has to be some data set that can be used to measure intelligence. Success in career/business? College graduation rates? SAT scores? High school grades?
What happens if you can’t find any data set that doesn’t show disparities between different groups? Does that mean you’ll just claim that it is impossible to measure intelligence because you can’t find a data set that supports your theory that all groups are identical in intelligence?
The way it works is you find data that is reliable and then draw conclusions based on it, and whether you like the conclusions or not, that’s the fact and you have to accept it. What you don’t do is come up with a politically correct, fantasy land, Buffoon-Juice opinion and then look and see if you can find data to support it, and in the process summarily dismiss any facts/evidence/data that is contrary to your opinion.
So enlighten us – is intelligence measurable? If so, what do you use to measure it? If not, then surely you must realize how much rationalization and political correctness have warped your view of reality.
Denying facts does not make them cease to exist. Get it?
Samara Morgan
@Mnemosyne: your semantic gotchas are incredibly boring.
intelligence is a set of cognitive abilities. forgive my shorthanding it but this is a combox on a fucking blog, not a dissertation, retardia.
Emma
@Caz: No, “intelligence” in terms of racial groups is not measurable, because individuals each have their own genetic/environmental mix. Even in family groups that is easy to see. Example: My great-grandfather was what used to be called a “lightning calculator.” He could do terrific things in his head. My father and I are both pretty good at math; but during my sister’s elementary, high school, and even college years, I had to tutor her in math; on the other hand, she is brilliant at music, including having a voice that ranges from mezzo to lyric soprano while I have a range that goes, on a good day, from A to B-flat, though I can read piano scores fairly well.
My whole view on the question of intelligence is that IT DOESN’T MATTER. I’ve met geniuses who couldn’t find their way out of a telephone box, and mechanics who could take apart an engine, machine new parts, and put it all back together in a day, but who can’t discuss literature. Each one of us brings his or her own gifts to the mix, and the proper role of society is making sure that those gifts can be developed as far as the individual can take them.
Samara Morgan
@Emma:
no, it doesnt matter to YOU.
It matters to AI researchers and theory of consciousness researchers and SBH theorists and a whole lot of the scientific community.
Ken
@LT: Why can’t Google find a source for that Pratchett quote?
Because I mangled it by merging two similar quotes. http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/Popular/SciFi/Terry_Pratchett.html has:
and, though I can’t find it, there’s definitely another one about the loss of knowledge when people become civilized.
Coincidentally, I have just finished Rob Dunn’s The Wild Life of Our Bodies, and he has a section on the great loss of knowledge that happened/happens when agriculture was/is invented/introduced – when, that is, humans go from hunter-gatherers with a huge knowledge of the several hundred species found in their area, to agriculturalists raising a dozen or so species.
The basic point, of course, is that modern IQ tests never quiz the students on identifying sea snakes or edible roots, but they often assume everyone should know the capitals of Europe, the rules of tennis, or how to multiply decimal numbers.
Ken
I take that (@192) back. Another on-line source gives a longer version of the quote:
I guess I’ll have to re-read Hogfather this evening. ‘Tis the season, after all.
LT
@Ken: Thank you, Ken.