This response, written by someone who thinks she "is not as naturally quickwitted and sharp as my other comrades" reminds me of the Scott Alexander article characterizing his followers who worried that they had a low IQ:
"“Help, I got a low IQ score, I’ve double-checked the standard deviation of all of my subscores and found some slight discrepancy but I’m not sure if that counts as Bayesian evidence that the global value is erroneous”.
In short, toots: you'll do fine until smart comes along.
This idea that intelligence makes some people superior to others is why the book is called the Cult of Smart: “It is the notion that academic value is the only value, and intelligence the only true measure of human worth. It is pernicious, it is cruel, and it must change.”
1. There is some portion of the racial gap which is due to residual racism/bias. That can be addressed. If there is indeed a significant genetic component to racial disparities in IQ scores then as long as IQ remains strongly correlated to income then the gap can never be completely eliminated.
But at the end of the day why should anybody care? There are going to many millions of people who don't come out ahead in terms of the genetic lottery from across the racial spectrum. Examining whether or not they can achieve financial stability is a larger concern than what their racial breakdown happens to be.
2. Human beings in general are not up to the task of dealing with complex systems, and that includes the brightest of us. For example, the oversimplification about the debate between Hayek and Keynes has been that Keynesians view the economy as a gasoline engine. You put gas in, you step on the accelerator and it takes off.
Hayek disagreed because he felt that the economy was organic--there are too many variables for poor, underequipped human beings to really get ahold of. Sometimes the economy takes off when you step on the pedal. Sometimes though it stalls out, sometimes the engine explodes and sometimes it spits our unicorns. Why? Who knows? Given that the deviation between the brightest and dullest of humanity probably isn't significant compared to the complexity of these issues I am not convinced that a coalition of the smart would be all that better at running society compared to any other form of government. And that assumes that all of the high IQ folks could even come to agreement in the first place, which is an even more ludicrous proposition in my book.
Re: 1 - the issue is that we can't measure it. That means that the portion of the gap due to environment might well be 110%, or 150%. But we can all see that the environments that black kids and white kids are operating in are very different. So we should, as a society, work on mitigating that as much as we can. And in the meantime, people who insist that yes, there's an environmental component, and we don't exactly know how to measure it, but they're just sure that's it's less than 100% and therefore black people are dumb are insisting on a thing that they themselves will admit they can't know.
In academic terms it's an interesting question. Science marches on though and what is impossible today is conceivable tomorrow.
In practical terms, again, why do you care what the racial makeup of the blue collar labor pool is? Is the goal addressing racial disparities or is it just helping people in need? If it's the latter doing something to address the challenges facing blue collar workers will incidentally disproportionately affect blacks, regardless of why precisely blacks are more inclined to blue collar work.
Because I think that we, in effect, burden our black folks, including our black kids, with a backpack full of rocks, and then measure how fast they can run a mile.
The Charles Murrays of the world see that they run more slowly, insist the backpack isn't there, and declare that there's nothing we can do, black folks are just slow runners. (You might call it a ban on noticing things.) I think that's horseshit, and we should instead be trying to take rocks out of the backpack.
I'm *also* all for making the world more just for blue collar workers. I think justice is important, and I think we're less than just along several axes. I'd like to see more justice for blue collar workers and more justice for black people.
Murray has never claimed that blacks score lower on IQ tests due to genetics. The science just isn't there.
But let's say that 20 years from now the state of the science gets to the point where it is possible to state that genetics are some of the culprit. Who cares? Regardless of the "why" the current state of affairs is that blacks score lower on IQ tests. That has all sorts of implications for what types of public policy are going to have an impact and what won't.
Reexamining whether it's really a good idea to base income on educational attainment is killing two birds with one stone. It helps blue collar workers and as a side effect also disproportionately aids blacks. What's not to like?
>Murray has never claimed that blacks score lower on IQ tests due to genetics. The science just isn't there.
He says it likely is, and Human Accomplishment is a paean to the inferiority of the African.
>Reexamining whether it's really a good idea to base income on educational attainment is killing two birds with one stone. It helps blue collar workers and as a side effect also disproportionately aids blacks. What's not to like?
Nothing. I'm not arguing with you on that. I'm saying that there are other things we ought to be trying to do.
I'll be reading Harden's book for sure. Sounds like required reading alongside yours, and Human Diversity by Charles Murray. (I know you invoke his name in the article but it bears repeating: Human Diversity is - for now - the last word in group diversity written for a popular, non-scientific audience.)
You are right - we can either grapple with the facts and try to build just social outcomes based off those, or we can snarkily stick our heads in the sand. I fear that, despite a few voices like yours, we are, as a culture, choosing the latter. Race and identity and gender are everything to us, but also nothing. The label matters more than anything; the reality not at all. It's utterly unsustainable but, as you allude to, the technology and its exploitation will be here, bagged and sold before we, as a culture, have a chance to reckon with it.
I actually admit that I read Murray's latest book as I had never read anything by him. I read out of curiosity and the fact that it's about 120 pages. You may want to check out Dr. John McWhorter's review of it......
Very enjoyable review - and I skipped this book for the reason that McWhorter criticizes it. For anyone conversant with the facts already, the "well, now what?" is the only question that matters. I can see the value in a short volume for people who simply don't know the reality of crime and intelligence, but given that they're also the people least likely to read this, I'm not sure about the use of the book.
It's ludicrous and tragic that this topic gets instantly sucked into our obsession with race. Anyone who hasn't encountered large quantities of great brilliance and great stupidity in people of all possible "races" hasn't left their mother's basement.
The unfinished sentence is purposeful. He's rhetorically interrupting himself. It's unusual in that such a technique is still typically punctuated in some way (with an ellipse or dash, usually), but that's what he's doing.
Great post Freddie--you have made me question my faith in the charter system (I think you are one of the few writers that has had this affect on me). However, in the locale where I am most familiar, the most common reason parents line up for hours (sometimes days) to get into a charter school (many times ANY charter school), even ones that are complete frauds and snake oil, was the ability to have their kids attend school where your child was not at risk of getting shot, did not have to enter the school through a metal detector, and where there was order and calm in the classroom. (One fraud charter school I knew about had almost no human attendants let along teachers, the kids were given an iPad, and the few adults in the school sat in the hallway and chatted among themselves--all the while the owners were laughing all the way to the bank.)
It seems like there's a group of people who just deny any notion of physical reality. They don't believe in genes, they don't believe in biological sex. There's even "fat acceptance" people who don't believe fat causes diabetes - it's all caused by far stigma.
I'm trying to understand who all these people are who do not believe that academic ability has a large genetic component. Apparently none of them use google, because if I type "are grades genetic" into google, I get this as the answer:
70 per cent good grades owe to genes
"Around two-thirds of individual differences in school achievement are explained by differences in children's DNA," said Margherita Malanchini, a psychology postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas.
In my experience, people are more accepting of this at an individual level - all of us knew smart kids and not-smart kids, just as we knew fast kids and not-fast kids - than they are at a group level. It is, unfortunately, at the group level where public policy really makes itself felt, and that people identify with most strongly. People then understandably resist acknowledging the truth, and our culture makes it very easy for them to do so. (It is taboo to acknowledge gender genetic differences in the US in anything but the most cosmetic, and indeed patronizing way, e.g. unless you're waffling about why women were actually better at STEM all along or something. It is taboo to acknowledge genetic racial differences in academia at all.)
I'm always surprised by it as well. The linked New Yorker Profile gives specific examples of who these people are. She sends a paper by respected researchers in a prominent journal to colleagues and it results in questions about holocaust denial. Otherwise smart and reasonable people suddenly have the reading comprehension of a six year old when the topic comes up.
“ knew in their heart back then that some kids were just smarter than others”
A lot of people think studiousness is a choice. If you’re good looking and athletic you have other things to occupy your time. The ugly clumsy nerd doesn’t have anything better to do than study.
The key flaw in that analysis is the soccer player going to Colombia with his 1580 SAT score knew enough to play up the sports and play down the 4.5 GPA.
I think smart kids with good social skills downplaying their grades and SAT scores to enhance their social status helps explain a lot of resistance to the statistical reality.
If someone can only get something by luck, then having it doesn't make them special/better, it just shows they got lucky.
People who think their own academic aptitude makes them special/better can't admit that "academic aptitude" is one of those "luck" things.
And they can't even be okay with thinking that it's their academic achievements (degrees, tenure, what-have-you), i.e. what they DID with their academic aptitude, that makes them special/better, because getting lucky in the academic aptitude thing made all those achievements easier for them than for their high-school classmate who didn't get academic aptitude and instead became a plumber or electrician or some other trade.
And they'll pay lip-service to how those trades are "noble" and no less "valuable" than being an academic... but the "rude thing" is: I don't believe they actually think that (to borrow the phrase from Freddie). Because if they did actually think that, then they'd be fine with admitting that getting lucky in their genetics made it much easier for them to pursue the path they did.
They also say things like "Skilled tradespeople can make good money! Like $80K!" when they'd never accept $80K for themselves. An attorney making $80K is viewed by BigLaw partners as a major failure.
I've told this story here before, but I have a friend who broke his leg as a kid and never went to the doctor. Consequently it didn't heal right and it pains him when he has to walk for any length of time. He hoofs it for half an hour each way to the local grocery store where he works in the meat department. The same grocery store that, immediately after the new scheduling software went in, booked him for 70 hours one week and less than 10 the next so that the store wouldn't have to reclassify him from part time.
When I mentioned this to some people the response was "What is he doing to better himself? Is he planning on going to college? Why should we care if he isn't taking any steps to improve his own situation?"
What do you think they would say if you said, “Like 40 million other Americans he has an IQ below 80 and as a result something like college is basically impossible.”?
Try below 100, although lord knows colleges are doing their best to give degrees to everyone regardless of achievement or demonstrated ability. But typical college until recently requires an IQ of 100 or really low standards.
My question is regardless of IQ why is a college diploma a requirement for financial stability? That seems to me to be insane. What are the ramifications for a society where 2/3 of the population lacks a four year degree?
I gladly admit that most of my success in life is due to luck. Luck of the genetic draw, luck to have at least loving parents, luck to be born when I did and where I did so that my talents and interests were useful and valued.
When I was younger I was more of the "I am the Captain of my soul" sort, but as I have gotten older and more successful I don't think my choices had much to do with it.
"When they say that they think all people have the same innate ability to perform well in school or on other cognitive tasks, that any difference is environmental, what I think inside is, I don’t believe that you believe that." Would you believe me if I said I *used* to believe that? I was explicitly taught in high school that we're all tabula rasa. And I knew I had advantages -- stable family, enough food, safe schools, etc. So it seemed very reasonable that kids in terrible environments would have had my good outcome if they'd had my good environment. It was only as I got older (and older) and saw more about how the world works that I began to realize that how we are hardwired makes a huge difference.
One of the problems that I have with the NYorker piece is the assertion that the pushback that Paige Harden is getting from the right is from "genetic determinists" who think that environment counts for nothing. But the piece fails to produce even a single individual who asserts that nurture is completely irrelevant compared to nature. n Instead the forces of the right are personified by Charles Murray and the argument is that genetic differences may play a significant role in IQ differences in populations (races). That is not even close to the same argument.
And at the end of the day isn't the most important aspect of Murray and _The Bell Curve_ the fact that in terms of remediations that he agrees with the left on so many issues? The fundamental issue is that the game is increasingly rigged against blue collar workers, a group that on average will have a lower IQ than so-called knowledge workers and urban professionals.
That kind of terminology is exactly the problem. They are knowledge workers because they have an easier time than others acquiring knowledge. The problem is, struggling to acquire knowledge is no more a personal failing that being 5’2” and struggling to reach things. It’s just a fact.
Cerebral as they are reputed to be, I wonder if most knowledge workers could keep up with the lyrics of a good rap song. Talk about brain training, you really have to prune and focus your attention and triple your processing speed not to miss anything.
My apologies. How could I phrase it better? A world view based on intellectually or emotionally comforting fiction? You’ve certainly run into that with your book. It’s a lot more comforting to believe that anyone can accomplish anything if they set their mind to it
I work in tech so I am probably biased. But the explosive growth in compensation in IT has led to a massive lowering of standards, to the point where people who are absolutely incompetent are able to find and hold jobs for decades, even for the duration of entire careers.
Plus there is the epidemic of accreditation, where a job that a high school graduate would have been eligible for in the 1950's is rebranded with a more glamorous title (but no more compensation) and the requirement of a college diploma. The progression of "secretary" to "executive assistant" springs to mind.
But they at least know how to change a tire. When things get dire, many (of course not all) of the knowledge workers and urban professionals will be helpless.
I mean, I know how to change a tire, but I pay a bit extra on my insurance each month so I don't have to. The modern world encourages specialization, and I'd rather hire it done.
I lived for almost 40 years with a man whose entire world was destroyed when the Soviets occupied Romania at the end of WW2. He and his sister were made labor prisoners in the coal mines of the Donbas. She died, he came close. Their parents were expropriated and put to work on menial jobs....It doesn’t even take war or invasion. Our civilization right now is a teetering house of cards, incredibly vulnerable to a grid-disabling cyberattack or a natural disaster. Plus, we’re spoiling for a civil war.
I'm very sorry for your man's life experiences, and I can certainly see how that would leave you with a very different point of view on these sorts of things. I'll certainly acknowledge that if I lived somewhere like Ukraine or Latvia or Kashmir I expect that I would have a different point of view.
But, I think you dramatically over-estimate the degree to which our civilization is teetering. Short of the super volcano under Yellowstone going, I don't see what sort of natural disaster would be a problem. We have pretty bad natural disasters regularly, and we weather them reasonably well. As for spoiling for a civil war, I think that's wildly unrealistic.
I can't help but think that the people who scream the loudest that nothing is genetic, that they secretly believe that yes, things are genetic, and that they somehow break down on racial lines, and that this information must be hidden for obvious reasons. So yeah: racists.
"And when the monetary elite uses genetic science to further strengthen the unearned dynastic advantages of their progeny, locking in the privileges that they already enjoy and pass down through inheritance, DNA, and our rotten system … what will the people attacking Paige have to say about it? What arguments will they be able to muster, against genetic engineering for those who can afford it, after decades of denying that genes matter in human behavior at all? What smarmy little jokes will the liberal gene denialists tell then?"
Dude.
No one will remember they said this, least of all, them. The genetic technology will emerge slowly enough that they will accommodate themselves to the new reality, and it will be seamless. Sure, *you* might remember this, but what will you do? Bring it up to them? Wider society will see that as gauche on your part; why are you spending all this time researching these people's past views? What is your REAL agenda?
Anyway, the left of today will not be the left of tomorrow. Political movements have many heads, and the heads they need show up when they need them, and the other heads recede when they become embarrassing.
Even without the technology this is already happening. When you have a corporate lawyer having kids with a software executive both of whom went to Ivy leagues, there's a lot of genetic sorting that's already happened.
This is one of the most succinct, spot-on articulations of this phenomenon I've ever seen. Well, probably the only one I've ever seen, actually, but nevertheless. It's usually the mark of a good insight when one immediately and viscerally recognizes a thing's truth but has never experienced its enunciation.
I was looking for The Cult of Smart in the library and they didn't have it. Picked up randomly, Intelligence and how to get it by Richard Nisbett and realized the premise of it ran counter to what I take to be your position on environmental factors. Now it was from 2009 so I take it it's old. But curious if you were aware of that book, or the general position that perhaps environmental adjustments could make up some of the gap. One example given was that when children were adopted into a family of a higher socioeconomic class they could pick up 10 IQ points and similar markers in academic accomplishment. If it's covered in older articles please point me in the right direction. Thanks.
Turkheimer found 7 points from the biggest difference between adopted and initial environment. So less than one half of a standard deviation in IQ from the single biggest environmental intervention that we could ever make and which we neither could nor should attempt to make at scale.
This response, written by someone who thinks she "is not as naturally quickwitted and sharp as my other comrades" reminds me of the Scott Alexander article characterizing his followers who worried that they had a low IQ:
"“Help, I got a low IQ score, I’ve double-checked the standard deviation of all of my subscores and found some slight discrepancy but I’m not sure if that counts as Bayesian evidence that the global value is erroneous”.
In short, toots: you'll do fine until smart comes along.
This idea that intelligence makes some people superior to others is why the book is called the Cult of Smart: “It is the notion that academic value is the only value, and intelligence the only true measure of human worth. It is pernicious, it is cruel, and it must change.”
1. There is some portion of the racial gap which is due to residual racism/bias. That can be addressed. If there is indeed a significant genetic component to racial disparities in IQ scores then as long as IQ remains strongly correlated to income then the gap can never be completely eliminated.
But at the end of the day why should anybody care? There are going to many millions of people who don't come out ahead in terms of the genetic lottery from across the racial spectrum. Examining whether or not they can achieve financial stability is a larger concern than what their racial breakdown happens to be.
2. Human beings in general are not up to the task of dealing with complex systems, and that includes the brightest of us. For example, the oversimplification about the debate between Hayek and Keynes has been that Keynesians view the economy as a gasoline engine. You put gas in, you step on the accelerator and it takes off.
Hayek disagreed because he felt that the economy was organic--there are too many variables for poor, underequipped human beings to really get ahold of. Sometimes the economy takes off when you step on the pedal. Sometimes though it stalls out, sometimes the engine explodes and sometimes it spits our unicorns. Why? Who knows? Given that the deviation between the brightest and dullest of humanity probably isn't significant compared to the complexity of these issues I am not convinced that a coalition of the smart would be all that better at running society compared to any other form of government. And that assumes that all of the high IQ folks could even come to agreement in the first place, which is an even more ludicrous proposition in my book.
Re: 1 - the issue is that we can't measure it. That means that the portion of the gap due to environment might well be 110%, or 150%. But we can all see that the environments that black kids and white kids are operating in are very different. So we should, as a society, work on mitigating that as much as we can. And in the meantime, people who insist that yes, there's an environmental component, and we don't exactly know how to measure it, but they're just sure that's it's less than 100% and therefore black people are dumb are insisting on a thing that they themselves will admit they can't know.
In academic terms it's an interesting question. Science marches on though and what is impossible today is conceivable tomorrow.
In practical terms, again, why do you care what the racial makeup of the blue collar labor pool is? Is the goal addressing racial disparities or is it just helping people in need? If it's the latter doing something to address the challenges facing blue collar workers will incidentally disproportionately affect blacks, regardless of why precisely blacks are more inclined to blue collar work.
Because I think that we, in effect, burden our black folks, including our black kids, with a backpack full of rocks, and then measure how fast they can run a mile.
The Charles Murrays of the world see that they run more slowly, insist the backpack isn't there, and declare that there's nothing we can do, black folks are just slow runners. (You might call it a ban on noticing things.) I think that's horseshit, and we should instead be trying to take rocks out of the backpack.
I'm *also* all for making the world more just for blue collar workers. I think justice is important, and I think we're less than just along several axes. I'd like to see more justice for blue collar workers and more justice for black people.
Murray has never claimed that blacks score lower on IQ tests due to genetics. The science just isn't there.
But let's say that 20 years from now the state of the science gets to the point where it is possible to state that genetics are some of the culprit. Who cares? Regardless of the "why" the current state of affairs is that blacks score lower on IQ tests. That has all sorts of implications for what types of public policy are going to have an impact and what won't.
Reexamining whether it's really a good idea to base income on educational attainment is killing two birds with one stone. It helps blue collar workers and as a side effect also disproportionately aids blacks. What's not to like?
>Murray has never claimed that blacks score lower on IQ tests due to genetics. The science just isn't there.
He says it likely is, and Human Accomplishment is a paean to the inferiority of the African.
>Reexamining whether it's really a good idea to base income on educational attainment is killing two birds with one stone. It helps blue collar workers and as a side effect also disproportionately aids blacks. What's not to like?
Nothing. I'm not arguing with you on that. I'm saying that there are other things we ought to be trying to do.
3. Also, can anybody really deny that natural inequality between individuals is just reality?
I'll be reading Harden's book for sure. Sounds like required reading alongside yours, and Human Diversity by Charles Murray. (I know you invoke his name in the article but it bears repeating: Human Diversity is - for now - the last word in group diversity written for a popular, non-scientific audience.)
You are right - we can either grapple with the facts and try to build just social outcomes based off those, or we can snarkily stick our heads in the sand. I fear that, despite a few voices like yours, we are, as a culture, choosing the latter. Race and identity and gender are everything to us, but also nothing. The label matters more than anything; the reality not at all. It's utterly unsustainable but, as you allude to, the technology and its exploitation will be here, bagged and sold before we, as a culture, have a chance to reckon with it.
I actually admit that I read Murray's latest book as I had never read anything by him. I read out of curiosity and the fact that it's about 120 pages. You may want to check out Dr. John McWhorter's review of it......
https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/why-charles-murrays-new-book-is-his
Very enjoyable review - and I skipped this book for the reason that McWhorter criticizes it. For anyone conversant with the facts already, the "well, now what?" is the only question that matters. I can see the value in a short volume for people who simply don't know the reality of crime and intelligence, but given that they're also the people least likely to read this, I'm not sure about the use of the book.
Human Diversity, on the other hand, is superb.
It's ludicrous and tragic that this topic gets instantly sucked into our obsession with race. Anyone who hasn't encountered large quantities of great brilliance and great stupidity in people of all possible "races" hasn't left their mother's basement.
This was supposed to be tomorrow's post but I fucked up and with an email newsletter there's no taking it back so... enjoy.
2 really good posts in one day....we get alot more than our moneys worth. Thanks.
Even though it was an accident, I was impressed that we got 2 long posts on a holiday
A couple of things that probably would have been normally caught prior to publication:
1. paragraph 6- you don't finish a sentence, the one that ends with "advanced....no of course not"
2. paragraph 7- you mention "Paige" without specifying who she is, which you do one paragraph later.
The unfinished sentence is purposeful. He's rhetorically interrupting himself. It's unusual in that such a technique is still typically punctuated in some way (with an ellipse or dash, usually), but that's what he's doing.
Great post Freddie--you have made me question my faith in the charter system (I think you are one of the few writers that has had this affect on me). However, in the locale where I am most familiar, the most common reason parents line up for hours (sometimes days) to get into a charter school (many times ANY charter school), even ones that are complete frauds and snake oil, was the ability to have their kids attend school where your child was not at risk of getting shot, did not have to enter the school through a metal detector, and where there was order and calm in the classroom. (One fraud charter school I knew about had almost no human attendants let along teachers, the kids were given an iPad, and the few adults in the school sat in the hallway and chatted among themselves--all the while the owners were laughing all the way to the bank.)
It seems like there's a group of people who just deny any notion of physical reality. They don't believe in genes, they don't believe in biological sex. There's even "fat acceptance" people who don't believe fat causes diabetes - it's all caused by far stigma.
But they do have lawn signs that declare "Science is real."
I'm trying to understand who all these people are who do not believe that academic ability has a large genetic component. Apparently none of them use google, because if I type "are grades genetic" into google, I get this as the answer:
70 per cent good grades owe to genes
"Around two-thirds of individual differences in school achievement are explained by differences in children's DNA," said Margherita Malanchini, a psychology postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas.
In my experience, people are more accepting of this at an individual level - all of us knew smart kids and not-smart kids, just as we knew fast kids and not-fast kids - than they are at a group level. It is, unfortunately, at the group level where public policy really makes itself felt, and that people identify with most strongly. People then understandably resist acknowledging the truth, and our culture makes it very easy for them to do so. (It is taboo to acknowledge gender genetic differences in the US in anything but the most cosmetic, and indeed patronizing way, e.g. unless you're waffling about why women were actually better at STEM all along or something. It is taboo to acknowledge genetic racial differences in academia at all.)
I'm always surprised by it as well. The linked New Yorker Profile gives specific examples of who these people are. She sends a paper by respected researchers in a prominent journal to colleagues and it results in questions about holocaust denial. Otherwise smart and reasonable people suddenly have the reading comprehension of a six year old when the topic comes up.
didn't read the whole nyorker thing. i think paige's endeavor probably futile but that's life
“ knew in their heart back then that some kids were just smarter than others”
A lot of people think studiousness is a choice. If you’re good looking and athletic you have other things to occupy your time. The ugly clumsy nerd doesn’t have anything better to do than study.
The key flaw in that analysis is the soccer player going to Colombia with his 1580 SAT score knew enough to play up the sports and play down the 4.5 GPA.
I think smart kids with good social skills downplaying their grades and SAT scores to enhance their social status helps explain a lot of resistance to the statistical reality.
If someone can only get something by luck, then having it doesn't make them special/better, it just shows they got lucky.
People who think their own academic aptitude makes them special/better can't admit that "academic aptitude" is one of those "luck" things.
And they can't even be okay with thinking that it's their academic achievements (degrees, tenure, what-have-you), i.e. what they DID with their academic aptitude, that makes them special/better, because getting lucky in the academic aptitude thing made all those achievements easier for them than for their high-school classmate who didn't get academic aptitude and instead became a plumber or electrician or some other trade.
And they'll pay lip-service to how those trades are "noble" and no less "valuable" than being an academic... but the "rude thing" is: I don't believe they actually think that (to borrow the phrase from Freddie). Because if they did actually think that, then they'd be fine with admitting that getting lucky in their genetics made it much easier for them to pursue the path they did.
They also say things like "Skilled tradespeople can make good money! Like $80K!" when they'd never accept $80K for themselves. An attorney making $80K is viewed by BigLaw partners as a major failure.
I've told this story here before, but I have a friend who broke his leg as a kid and never went to the doctor. Consequently it didn't heal right and it pains him when he has to walk for any length of time. He hoofs it for half an hour each way to the local grocery store where he works in the meat department. The same grocery store that, immediately after the new scheduling software went in, booked him for 70 hours one week and less than 10 the next so that the store wouldn't have to reclassify him from part time.
When I mentioned this to some people the response was "What is he doing to better himself? Is he planning on going to college? Why should we care if he isn't taking any steps to improve his own situation?"
What do you think they would say if you said, “Like 40 million other Americans he has an IQ below 80 and as a result something like college is basically impossible.”?
Try below 100, although lord knows colleges are doing their best to give degrees to everyone regardless of achievement or demonstrated ability. But typical college until recently requires an IQ of 100 or really low standards.
My question is regardless of IQ why is a college diploma a requirement for financial stability? That seems to me to be insane. What are the ramifications for a society where 2/3 of the population lacks a four year degree?
I gladly admit that most of my success in life is due to luck. Luck of the genetic draw, luck to have at least loving parents, luck to be born when I did and where I did so that my talents and interests were useful and valued.
When I was younger I was more of the "I am the Captain of my soul" sort, but as I have gotten older and more successful I don't think my choices had much to do with it.
"When they say that they think all people have the same innate ability to perform well in school or on other cognitive tasks, that any difference is environmental, what I think inside is, I don’t believe that you believe that." Would you believe me if I said I *used* to believe that? I was explicitly taught in high school that we're all tabula rasa. And I knew I had advantages -- stable family, enough food, safe schools, etc. So it seemed very reasonable that kids in terrible environments would have had my good outcome if they'd had my good environment. It was only as I got older (and older) and saw more about how the world works that I began to realize that how we are hardwired makes a huge difference.
One of the problems that I have with the NYorker piece is the assertion that the pushback that Paige Harden is getting from the right is from "genetic determinists" who think that environment counts for nothing. But the piece fails to produce even a single individual who asserts that nurture is completely irrelevant compared to nature. n Instead the forces of the right are personified by Charles Murray and the argument is that genetic differences may play a significant role in IQ differences in populations (races). That is not even close to the same argument.
And at the end of the day isn't the most important aspect of Murray and _The Bell Curve_ the fact that in terms of remediations that he agrees with the left on so many issues? The fundamental issue is that the game is increasingly rigged against blue collar workers, a group that on average will have a lower IQ than so-called knowledge workers and urban professionals.
“ so-called knowledge workers”
That kind of terminology is exactly the problem. They are knowledge workers because they have an easier time than others acquiring knowledge. The problem is, struggling to acquire knowledge is no more a personal failing that being 5’2” and struggling to reach things. It’s just a fact.
They're called "knowledge workers" because they don't work with their hands. In my experience most of them know very little.
And that’s exactly the kind of glib sentimentality that causes so many problems.
Silly response, but not surprising. It's neither glib nor sentimental but it is true.
Y E S
Cerebral as they are reputed to be, I wonder if most knowledge workers could keep up with the lyrics of a good rap song. Talk about brain training, you really have to prune and focus your attention and triple your processing speed not to miss anything.
Is your entire world view based on feel good nonsense?
Hey, that's not polite. Be polite.
My apologies. How could I phrase it better? A world view based on intellectually or emotionally comforting fiction? You’ve certainly run into that with your book. It’s a lot more comforting to believe that anyone can accomplish anything if they set their mind to it
I work in tech so I am probably biased. But the explosive growth in compensation in IT has led to a massive lowering of standards, to the point where people who are absolutely incompetent are able to find and hold jobs for decades, even for the duration of entire careers.
Plus there is the epidemic of accreditation, where a job that a high school graduate would have been eligible for in the 1950's is rebranded with a more glamorous title (but no more compensation) and the requirement of a college diploma. The progression of "secretary" to "executive assistant" springs to mind.
But they at least know how to change a tire. When things get dire, many (of course not all) of the knowledge workers and urban professionals will be helpless.
What does that even mean? The meek shall inherit the earth? They’ve been waiting a long time.
I mean, I know how to change a tire, but I pay a bit extra on my insurance each month so I don't have to. The modern world encourages specialization, and I'd rather hire it done.
I’m just sayin’—if things get really bad. We can’t even imagine that. But it can happen fast.
Can it? I mean really? If things get really bad like they did in . . .
You mean like in the Walking Dead or something? What do you have in mind?
I lived for almost 40 years with a man whose entire world was destroyed when the Soviets occupied Romania at the end of WW2. He and his sister were made labor prisoners in the coal mines of the Donbas. She died, he came close. Their parents were expropriated and put to work on menial jobs....It doesn’t even take war or invasion. Our civilization right now is a teetering house of cards, incredibly vulnerable to a grid-disabling cyberattack or a natural disaster. Plus, we’re spoiling for a civil war.
How old are you? It’s all movies to you.
I'm very sorry for your man's life experiences, and I can certainly see how that would leave you with a very different point of view on these sorts of things. I'll certainly acknowledge that if I lived somewhere like Ukraine or Latvia or Kashmir I expect that I would have a different point of view.
But, I think you dramatically over-estimate the degree to which our civilization is teetering. Short of the super volcano under Yellowstone going, I don't see what sort of natural disaster would be a problem. We have pretty bad natural disasters regularly, and we weather them reasonably well. As for spoiling for a civil war, I think that's wildly unrealistic.
BTW, KPH requests that we buy her book from PUP https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/the-genetic-lottery
Freddie, is there a channel you prefer to sell _tCoS_ through?
I assume these same progressives are eager to invoke the Scientific Consensus when the topic is climate change.
I can't help but think that the people who scream the loudest that nothing is genetic, that they secretly believe that yes, things are genetic, and that they somehow break down on racial lines, and that this information must be hidden for obvious reasons. So yeah: racists.
"And when the monetary elite uses genetic science to further strengthen the unearned dynastic advantages of their progeny, locking in the privileges that they already enjoy and pass down through inheritance, DNA, and our rotten system … what will the people attacking Paige have to say about it? What arguments will they be able to muster, against genetic engineering for those who can afford it, after decades of denying that genes matter in human behavior at all? What smarmy little jokes will the liberal gene denialists tell then?"
Dude.
No one will remember they said this, least of all, them. The genetic technology will emerge slowly enough that they will accommodate themselves to the new reality, and it will be seamless. Sure, *you* might remember this, but what will you do? Bring it up to them? Wider society will see that as gauche on your part; why are you spending all this time researching these people's past views? What is your REAL agenda?
Anyway, the left of today will not be the left of tomorrow. Political movements have many heads, and the heads they need show up when they need them, and the other heads recede when they become embarrassing.
Even without the technology this is already happening. When you have a corporate lawyer having kids with a software executive both of whom went to Ivy leagues, there's a lot of genetic sorting that's already happened.
Sure, but if you don’t believe in genetics this example won’t convince you! You’ll just chalk everything up to socialization.
This is one of the most succinct, spot-on articulations of this phenomenon I've ever seen. Well, probably the only one I've ever seen, actually, but nevertheless. It's usually the mark of a good insight when one immediately and viscerally recognizes a thing's truth but has never experienced its enunciation.
I was looking for The Cult of Smart in the library and they didn't have it. Picked up randomly, Intelligence and how to get it by Richard Nisbett and realized the premise of it ran counter to what I take to be your position on environmental factors. Now it was from 2009 so I take it it's old. But curious if you were aware of that book, or the general position that perhaps environmental adjustments could make up some of the gap. One example given was that when children were adopted into a family of a higher socioeconomic class they could pick up 10 IQ points and similar markers in academic accomplishment. If it's covered in older articles please point me in the right direction. Thanks.
Turkheimer found 7 points from the biggest difference between adopted and initial environment. So less than one half of a standard deviation in IQ from the single biggest environmental intervention that we could ever make and which we neither could nor should attempt to make at scale.