Wed 29 Nov 2006
What is the most non-PC event involving an Eph this week? Probably a debate on Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute on “The Black-White IQ Gap: Is It Closing? Will It Ever Go Away?” Readers interested in an overview should go here. (PC-hardliners should avert their eyes.) The Eph connection? Jen Doleac ‘03 gets thanks for her research assistance on the paper (pdf) which is the focus of the debate.
November 29th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
David,
I can always turn to you to find new and insulting ways to piss me off. impressive. a link to VDARE now too? And back to the tired argument about IQ scores when IQ itself is an extremely imperfect idea imperfectly measured…yawn.
November 29th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Rory,
Please make your point more clearly. Jen Doleac ‘03 did part of the research for the paper that I linked to. Is that not reason enough to link to it? Do you think that the paper was flawed, that the authors are idiots? Do you suspect the quality of the work that Doleac did in supporting it? Judging by the quality of her Williams thesis, I bet that her work here was excellent.
I gave fair warning about the VDARE link. The author, Steve Sailer, is quoted (approvingly) by people like Mickey Kaus (in Slate) and John Tierny (in the New York Times). It is the best overview of the issues involved with this topic that I could find. I’d wager that you can’t find a better one.
Again, if you don’t think that I should highlight the work done by Ephs like Jen Doleac, just say so. Otherwise, I don’t know what your complaint is.
November 29th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
No, I just hate VDARE. And I think the IQ thing is really tired.
I’m also sure there are dozens of papers published by Williams alumni each semester, considering how many of us are in academia. So you may note that I didn’t disparage Jen or her work (just the subject matter, which I find to be a tired debate. Not that sociology doesn’t have tired debates on issues around race also: see, culture, oppositional). I do like hearing about them, it was the steve sailer piece that got to me.
When Tierney was disgracing (in my opinion) the NY Times editorial page, he made David Brooks’ misuses of social science seem brilliant in comparison.
here’s a quote from Sailer (from wikipedia) on hurricane katrina:
“”What you won’t hear, except from me, is that ‘Let the good times roll’ is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society. … In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren’t blacks.”
Perhaps, then, the discovery that the “best overview of the issues involved” is by Steve Sailer should indicate that this is a debate a little bit outside of the mainstream of the american academy.
And there’s a reason:
The IQ debate that Murray, the AEI, and Sailer want to have is flawed because “IQ” is never actually tested. Aptitude sans environment is never possible to measure. For an entire book on such points (a little dated, but sociology kinda stopped looking at IQ tests because of this. besides, tests like the SAT have much more impact on society than the AFQT in general. except when doing a study of the armed forces, of course), see: inequality by design by practically the entire UC berkeley sociology department of the time (Ken: an anecdote about them might be fun if you have the time).
I’m that “pc hardliner” (I think. I certainly play that role here!) even though I believe the term “PC” has lost any meaning except as a slur cast about. And as such, I don’t avert my eyes, and shouldn’t have to do so unless there’s a good reason. I doubt there is.
I cast aspersion only on one part of your post: the link to VDARE. Doleac and Flynn might have done fine, fine work. but the non-eph connection part was unnecessary.
November 29th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
I don’t think PC has lost any meaning; in contrast, I think it’s actually gotten more coherent over the past decade or 2.
PC is a broader category than any of its constituents, which include but are not limited to (all terms mine, and yes they’re somewhat inexact): cultural relativism (e.g., refusing to say that clitorectomies are bad because that’s just how part of culture X does things), epistemological relativism (e.g., “you can’t measure intelligence with a test” “how can you say that X is better than Y”), underdog righteousness qua underdog status (i.e., the party that is losing or powerless is morally and factually correct while the side that is winning or powerful), socio-linguistic engineering (e.g., “herstory”, “womyn”, “of color” as a good term despite the semantically identical “colored” being a slur, “differently abled”, “intersexed”, “X-challenged”), and most relevant to this discussion, the idea that some truths are too dangerous for “society” and thus should be ignored or altered, like people being willfully blind about BiDil or average differences between self-identified races in things like test performance, physical performance, height, weight, fat distribution, genetic diseases, lactose tolerance, and too many other things to name.
November 29th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
PC is used predominantly in the slogan-esque term “This might not be PC…” or “the PC police won’t like this” followed by some overgeneralized bullsh*t about race or inequality. To disagree is to be “pc” and thus to hold illegitimate views that need not be respected. Just like you did here: “and most relevant to this discussion”.
Who said a truth is too dangerous? I’ve said that the IQ issue has been thoroughly handled and that IQ is a tired measure and debating Charles Murray about it is a waste of time. I’ll point you to all sorts of pieces on test differences by racial groups. I’ll also say that anyone who wants to write about these issues should consider Troy Duster or Tukufu Zuberi’s criticism of racial/genetic explanations of social experiences.
the academy–and the “pc” police by extension–hasn’t hid from these debates at all. But it get accused of that because its easy to do so without dealing with the academy’s overwhelming evidence that all of these issues are much more complicated than the simple “non-pc” explanations would claim.
“PC” is used, I’d argue, for the exact reasons you claim it is bad by those who claim to not be PC, namely, to avoid actually addressing criticisms.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
I do not think that “thoroughly handled” means what you think it means. The lead author of the paper that I linked to is William T. Dickens of that famous hotbed of extremists kooks, the Brookings Institute. He obviously believes that IQ is an important concept, that it is measured well by standardized tests like the SAT and that it predicts important life outcomes.
But no worries! “IQ is a tired measure.” We can safely ignore scholars from Brookings. Nothing to see. Move right along.
November 30th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Actually, I’d argue this is one of those cases in which economists are over-reaching their field. Quantitative economists like Dickens do very impressive quantitative work, but as such, generally do not read/consider the non purely quantitative argument that sociologists like Zuberi and Duster (both of whom can do large quantitative studies in their sleep if they want) put forward that the argument itself rests on tired and incorrect grounds.
So were Dickens in front of me, yeah, I’d ask him why he’s still talking about IQ tests because it is tired. And the proof that is tired is that its still Charles Murray (and Rushton) he’s arguing against.
btw, they don’t use the SAT to measure IQ. And Dickens never says IQ is important to success in the article. And his bibliography includes none of the arguments that IQ as measured by tests is a fundamentally flawed idea. so those were all inferences you picked up from yourself, not from Dickens.
November 30th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
David,
I think you just never understood the point of these debates.
The debate is NOT over whether material facts about race and performance on various measures.
The debate is over the definition of the word “intelligence”.
Some people argue that it should be axiomatic (i.e. part of the definition of the word) for “intelligence” to be, on a statistical basis, race-neutral. Others argue that this should not be part of the axioms for the word “intelligence”.
Arguments over definitions should not be in terms of what is more truthful, but rather in terms of what is more useful [b]for our actual world[/b]. They can be influenced by empirical study, but are not dictated by them. (This is because “utility” is in part an ethical judgement.)
November 30th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
When we arrive at a useful but untruthful definition, are we willing to acknowledge that it is untruthful? Probably not, for that would be politically unuseful.
November 30th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
I really can’t believe that you posted about this.
It is truly unacceptable. Maybe your white privelege is blinding you from seeing that.
November 30th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
And that’s the PC attitude I’m talking about — “some things are too dangerous to talk about”.
I guess proper orthography is another one of those Eurocentric Phallocratic Heterosexist forms of Zionist-Capitalist Pig-Dog oppression!!!1111one
December 1st, 2006 at 12:26 am
I guess I am missing the point, beyond the very peripheral fact that a research assistant (!) had some role in, well, I would assume research assisting (!!), the paper at the heart of this debate. How many Ephs are academics or journalists or writers? I daresay that on that hierarchy, a research assistant (!!!) ranks pretty low.
And so that leaves us with this: using an at best flawed matric what have we learned? Not much. That the “average” black person has a lower IQ than the “average” white person. Is IQ our gauge of intelligence? Or, as I would suspect, is it our gauge of who does well on IQ tests? I am not certain I actually know anyone who has taken an IQ test, and I work in a world sort of tied into what we might call “intelligence gauging.” I’m pretty certain that most colleges, never mind Williams, don’t admit “the average” black or white person and that when they are busy not admitting our “average” racial representative they are not using IQ not to do so.
As for the whole PC question, I’ll second what some here have said or implied — that the only people who use PC in 2006 are critics of straw men. (You know it’s coming when you read some variation on: “It might not be PC . . .” or “The PC police might disagree . . .”.) I guess people feel heroic fighting battles against things that don’t really exist (it’s easier to win those arguments than those against real people not trapped in some cardboard cutout version of 1991 as it never really even existed then at about 15 universities and colleges mostly named “Brown,” “Wesleyan,” and “the Duke English department.”) So huzzah! to the anti-PC warriors for waging a nonexistent war against a fictive enemy. I, for one, salute you. And don’t forget that tramp Murphy Brown — give her what for!
dcat
December 1st, 2006 at 12:44 am
For the record, I was Bill Dickens’ research assistant on this, not Flynn’s.
Also, though I should probably know better than to go near this discussion: If you think Murray’s conclusions–based on statistical analysis of widely available data–are wrong, it’s rather useless to simply call his ideas disgusting. Do your own analysis and prove that they’re wrong. That’s what Dickens & Flynn have been doing for years. Simply ignoring research results that don’t fit into your worldview isn’t constructive–nor is insulting the messenger (Murray) or his challengers (Dickens & Flynn) for daring to engage in the debate.
December 1st, 2006 at 7:30 am
Live by the numbers - die by the numbers. I find subjective judgment to be the better.
December 1st, 2006 at 8:31 am
I’ve been the one arguing we should walk away from the debate. I’m not saying no one should argue with Murray, but once the original charge they make has been answered (like it was with, say, inequality by design. I feel with how much I push that book, I should get paid by them…), to continue to debate Murray gives him far too much room to speak.
I don’t know who called his ideas disgusting. The terms I see are “flawed” (for the metric) and “tired”.
For an analogy to politics: after the swift boat veterans were shown to be lying about important parts of their story, for how long do we have to argue with them before we say “forget it, you’re just not worth the time. we’ve proven you wrong enough!” instead of continuing to give them a chance to make their untruthful claims?
December 1st, 2006 at 9:55 am
Most political partisans lie about politics when it suits them (i.e. when they believe that both (a) it is to their advantage and also (b) the risk of getting caught at it does not outweigh the reward). There is ordinarily very little integrity in politics of any stripe and often very little good judgment in assessing (b).