[Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences
Alice Andrews
aandrews at hvc.rr.com
Wed Apr 27 21:18:00 UTC 2005
Michael, are you on EP-Yahoo list? I very recently queried the 3,000+ membership about something similar to this and got back some interesting replies...Here are ones from Charles Murray and Herbert Gintis ( in case you're not member of EP-yahoo):
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:19:04 -0000
From: "Alice Andrews" <andrewsa at newpaltz.edu>
Subject: BG studies with progressive social policy implications?
dear group,
Just read about a BG IQ/SES twin study that supports a progressive
social policy. In his 'landmark' study of 600 twins last year, Eric
Turkheimer showed that
"in the most impoverished families,hereditability of IQ is
essentially zero, with environment accounting
for almost 60 percent of the differences in IQ among individuals.
The impact of environment declines as socioeconomic level improves,
playing a nominal role in the most affluent families, for which
virtually all variability in IQ is attributed to genes."
And Turkheimer says:
"It suggests that if you're going to work with people's environment
to try and increase IQ, then the place to invest your money is in
taking people in really bad environments and making them OK, rather
than taking people in pretty good environments and making it
better. "
Now, I've had some pretty intense arguments with sociologists here
at my university about this stuff, and it would be nice to know of
some more studies to back up the position that, in addition to the
fact that such biological etiology studies (with their bad history)
should be supported because as humans we have a need 'to know'; that
such studies can actually support progressive ideology/policy.
Can anyone point me toward such studies?
Thanks!
Alice
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 10:10:40 -0400
From: Charles Murray <charlesmurray at adelphia.net>
Subject: Re: BG studies with progressive social policy implications?
ALL studies showing high heritability in traits important to success in
life, whether IQ or any other important trait, have a natural
interpretation supporting Rawlsian redistributive social policies (If
it's not your fault that you lack smarts, charm, industriousness, or
whatever, it is just that the state compensate for nature's
unfairness.)
The reluctance of the left to use this implication of high heritability
of important traits has always puzzled me. The left's standard position
instead is that people and groups can differ only for reasons that the
right policy intervention can fix at the source. Innate equality of
abilities trumps equality of outcomes. Not only is this the standard
position; it is usually infused with enormous emotional commitment. I'm
trying to think through why this should be, for an article I'm writing,
and welcome any thoughts on the subject.
Charles Murray
Message: 7
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:36:19 -0400
From: Herbert Gintis <hgintis at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Re: BG studies with progressive social policy implications?
What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think is
genetic (i.e., is wired in so you can't do anything about it)? I can only
think of homosexuality.
What socially relevant difference does the Left treat impartially
as genetic or environmental (the idea of dividing the phase space into
genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but totally common except
for experts)? Mental illness, athletic ability, beauty, physical maladies,
many other.
What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think is
environmental (again, the idea of dividing the phase space into genetic vs.
environmental is a monumental error, but totally common except for
experts)? Racial differences in everything and gender differences in
everything except for the physiology of reproduction.
You argue that if blacks are "genetically inferior" (same caveat),
they should get compensatory income transfers because "it's not their
fault." Why does the Left (by which I simply mean liberals in the American
meaning of the term) not use this argument? It is certainly used to support
transfers to the mentally or physically incapacitated, and this is also
accepted by the Right as legitimate. Why not to lower IQ for blacks? I
think that the answer is very simple. The evidence is far too weak to be
overwhelming (our models of IQ determination are not great, the Flynn
Effect, the effect of aspirations on performance, the effect of self-esteem
on performance, and so on), and there is probably a strong self-fulfilling
prophecy: a social ideology of inferiority for a race is very likely to
lead to statistical discrimination against its members.
I am not a liberal (or a conservative, or a member of any other
easily categorized ideological political grouping), but I think the liberal
position is correct on this point. Most experts in the field (I am not one,
but I have a fairly solid track record in the field of social inequality,
and know the experts) are scientists, not politically motivated hacks, and
they would agree with me.
Categorizing a group as intellectually inferior changes their
status from that of equal to that of inferior. We can treat inferiors nice
(like our dogs and cats) or nasty (like our chickens and steer), but they
lose the status of being fully and functionally human. We are happy to
label those with Down's syndrome as intellectually inferior and we can
respect their humanity, but we still are treating them as inferiors to
which charity and paternalism must be applied. To do this for those of
African decent would be a gross, gross, gross (repeat the term 100 more
times) injustice. Or so I believe, and many who are not "liberals" would agree.
Of course, I have considerable contempt for those who would try to
silence the debate and cast aspersion on those who try to show that there
is a genetic basis for the inferiority or superiority of a group (I
defended Larry Summers in this group, and was assailed for ding so). People
who "want to throw up" when they hear an argument they don't like should go
into theology, not science.
Best,
Herb Gintis
>
Herbert Gintis
Professor, Central European University, Budapest
Visiting Professor, University of Siena, Italy
External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute
775-402-4921 (USA Fax)
Recent papers are posted on my <http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis>web site.
Get Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, 2000) at
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691009430/qid=1057311870/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-8882889-4632849?v=glance&s=books>Amazon.com
Look for Moral Sentiments and Material Interests (MIT Press, 2005)
Get Unequal Chances: Family Background and
Economic Success (Princeton UP, 2005)
Get Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments
and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale
Societies (Oxford UP, 2004).
Quote of the week:
There is no sorrow so great that does not find
its background in joy.
Niels Bohr (1938)
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:11:24 -0400
From: Charles Murray <charlesmurray at adelphia.net>
Subject: Re: Re: BG studies with progressive social policy implications?
This is interesting, but the point I was making is much broader than
race or, for that matter, gender, and much broader than IQ. My
experience is that there is passion about denying the heritability of
traits that contribute to success in life, period. Thus to say that
(for example) white people below the poverty line have higher
genetically-based impulsivity than whites above the poverty line, and
are poor partially for innate reasons would be distasteful to most
people on the left for some deep-seated but (to me) mysterious reasons.
Charles Murray
PS I assume that when you talk about people categorizing blacks as
"genetically inferior" you were referring to some hypothetical person,
not me.
On Apr 26, 2005, at 5:36 PM, Herbert Gintis wrote:
> What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think
> is genetic (i.e., is wired in so you can't do anything about it)? I
> can only think of homosexuality.
> What socially relevant difference does the Left treat
> impartially as genetic or environmental (the idea of dividing the
> phase space into genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but
> totally common except for experts)? Mental illness, athletic ability,
> beauty, physical maladies, many other.
> What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think
> is environmental (again, the idea of dividing the phase space into
> genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but totally common
> except for experts)? Racial differences in everything and gender
> differences in everything except for the physiology of reproduction.
> You argue that if blacks are "genetically inferior" (same
> caveat), they should get compensatory income transfers because "it's
> not their fault." Why does the Left (by which I simply mean liberals
> in the American meaning of the term) not use this argument? It is
> certainly used to support transfers to the mentally or physically
> incapacitated, and this is also accepted by the Right as legitimate.
<Snip>
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Christopher
To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 4:47 PM
Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences
>>Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least
50% genetic, major law review journal concludes<<
--If this is true, how should society change to deal
with it? Also, what is the IQ difference for someone
with a male or female parent of a different race, or
for various blends?
Michael
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