Diplomacia e Relações Internacionais
Thomas Sowell on “The Bell Curve”
Abagond, Fri 3 Dec 2010
Thomas Sowell, an economist, scholar and black right-wing thinker, says that Herrnstein and Murray’s “The Bell Curve” (1994) was an honest, fair-minded and well-written book, one that was far more level-headed than many who disagreed with it. It is certainly nowhere near as extreme as many made it seem. It has its faults, but it raises important questions and needs to be taken seriously.
The part that got everyone upset, of course, was the part on IQ and race, even though it is a small part of the book. Black thinkers and “leaders” (those are Sowell’s air quotes) made two mistakes in how they reacted to the book:
Straw man arguments: They painted the book’s position as being more extreme than it was. The book never says that the difference between black and white IQs is necessarily genetic or that genetics determines intelligence. It leans in that direction, certainly, but the science is not clear-cut enough to go that far.
Name-calling and mud-slinging: By reacting more with anger than with substance, they made it seem like the substance lay mainly with Herrnstein and Murray.
Blacks mainly argued that IQ tests are too cultural – they are written by middle-class whites, so they do not work well on blacks.
Sowell disagrees:
Blacks do best on the more cultural parts, the very parts that do in fact assume middle-class vocabulary and experience, and worse on the parts that do not, like those that test reasoning.
Any functioning IQ test should give blacks a lower score. Because blacks generally do worse at school than whites. The tests should catch this and they do. As it turns out, the tests work all too well.
A “culture-free” test would be useless because no one lives in a “culture-free” world. IQ tests, to work properly, have to be written by the mainstream culture.
But “The Bell Curve” has holes of its own:
Correlation is not cause. There are plenty of correlations between IQ and interesting things like future success in school, future income, divorce, infant mortality, crime, etc. But none of it proves cause. Nor are some of these correlations particularly strong.
The Flynn Effect: IQs have risen by 10 to 15 points in many countries in the space of 30 years. For some, like Jewish Americans, it has risen even faster. Genetics cannot account for this. The book brings up the issue, but avoids drawing the common sense conclusions.
Herrnstein and Murray fear that overall IQ will drop because low-IQ women tend to have more children. That makes sense but it is dead wrong: the Flynn Effect more than cancels it out.
There are way more black women with IQs over 120 than black men. That cannot be genetic either. Among whites there is no difference. The book does not even touch this one.
Sowell says the book should not be accepted unquestioningly, but then neither should it be dismissed out of hand.
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Diplomacia e Relações Internacionais
Thomas Sowell on “The Bell Curve” - Abagond
Thomas Sowell on “The Bell Curve”
Abagond, Fri 3 Dec 2010
Thomas Sowell, an economist, scholar and black right-wing thinker, says that Herrnstein and Murray’s “The Bell Curve” (1994) was an honest, fair-minded and well-written book, one that was far more level-headed than many who disagreed with it. It is certainly nowhere near as extreme as many made it seem. It has its faults, but it raises important questions and needs to be taken seriously.
The part that got everyone upset, of course, was the part on IQ and race, even though it is a small part of the book. Black thinkers and “leaders” (those are Sowell’s air quotes) made two mistakes in how they reacted to the book:
Straw man arguments: They painted the book’s position as being more extreme than it was. The book never says that the difference between black and white IQs is necessarily genetic or that genetics determines intelligence. It leans in that direction, certainly, but the science is not clear-cut enough to go that far.
Name-calling and mud-slinging: By reacting more with anger than with substance, they made it seem like the substance lay mainly with Herrnstein and Murray.
Blacks mainly argued that IQ tests are too cultural – they are written by middle-class whites, so they do not work well on blacks.
Sowell disagrees:
Blacks do best on the more cultural parts, the very parts that do in fact assume middle-class vocabulary and experience, and worse on the parts that do not, like those that test reasoning.
Any functioning IQ test should give blacks a lower score. Because blacks generally do worse at school than whites. The tests should catch this and they do. As it turns out, the tests work all too well.
A “culture-free” test would be useless because no one lives in a “culture-free” world. IQ tests, to work properly, have to be written by the mainstream culture.
But “The Bell Curve” has holes of its own:
Correlation is not cause. There are plenty of correlations between IQ and interesting things like future success in school, future income, divorce, infant mortality, crime, etc. But none of it proves cause. Nor are some of these correlations particularly strong.
The Flynn Effect: IQs have risen by 10 to 15 points in many countries in the space of 30 years. For some, like Jewish Americans, it has risen even faster. Genetics cannot account for this. The book brings up the issue, but avoids drawing the common sense conclusions.
Herrnstein and Murray fear that overall IQ will drop because low-IQ women tend to have more children. That makes sense but it is dead wrong: the Flynn Effect more than cancels it out.
There are way more black women with IQs over 120 than black men. That cannot be genetic either. Among whites there is no difference. The book does not even touch this one.
Sowell says the book should not be accepted unquestioningly, but then neither should it be dismissed out of hand.
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CAPITAL IDEASRethinking Affirmative ActionThe New York Times, October 13, 2012 THE founding principle of affirmative action was fairness. After years of oppression, it seemed folly to judge blacks by the same measures as whites.“You do not take...
- Livros E Cultura: O Mundo Complexo E Seus Descontentes - Brink Lindsey
DALIBOR ROHACA Complex World and Its DiscontentsWho’s lagging behind in the modern economy, and what can we do about it?The City Journal, 28 September 2012Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter—and More Unequal, by Brink Lindsey...
- Stephen Jay Gould On “the Bell Curve”
Stephen Jay Gould on “The Bell Curve” Abagond, Sat 10 Jul 2010 Disclaimer: I have not read “The Bell Curve” for myself. The following is based instead on Stephen Jay Gould’s take on it. As a professor of biology at Harvard he knows the science...
- A Ignorancia Historica E O Politicamente Correto - David Mccullough
O politicamente correto é uma praga que começou na sociedade americana, dominou rapidamente toda a academia, e está se espalhando pelo mundo com uma velocidade impressionante. Ele tem o poder de censurar os mais ousados e promover a ignorância accross...
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A proposito de recente debate acrimonioso neste blog (isso costuma acontecer com frequencia, revelando que certas verdades chocam pessoas...), meu leitor Rubens enviou em comentário um trecho do intelectual americano (não preciso chamá-lo de negro,...