Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
They asked for an honest conversation on race, right? Enter this week’s guest Charles Murray, author most recently of Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America. He and guys jostle on this most sensitive of subjects, but do so with the kind of generosity you can only find on Ricochet (We let things be too chummy around here!) Rob, Peter and James also get into the G7 and a rudderless Biden on the world stage, along with Jon Stewart on Stephen Colbert’s stage. They even do their best to find some optimism, but we may need our friends at Ricochet to cheer them up in the comments!
Music from this week’s podcast: Ball of Confusion by The Temptations
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
The other thing is, Austrian economics provides the most prosperity and opportunity to the most people, regardless of their IQ etc. What we are doing now is a disaster. It shows in our current political chaos.
I’ve seen one good alternative, but nobody’s going to do it.
Yes, Mr. Hare Pepper…Bravo! I had very much the same thought and about to post a message that concludes with it.
As a Charles Murray reader from way back, I was delighted that he was this week’s guest, even though I very much wished for happier tidings…
Years ago I was moonlighting as a teacher at a posh Catholic women’s university in Tokyo. Though as a Catholic myself, loath to show anything but deference to those in holy orders, I enjoyed politely sparring with a late-middle-aged Euro-American nun of what I can only call notoriously “progressive” views. (The Japanese female professors there would smilingly roll their eyes when I mentioned her.) She taught English literature, in English, especially African-American literature. She never bothered to learn Japanese. (My students, almost entirely upper-class demoiselles, would sometimes quietly confide in me that they had no idea what she was talking about.)
One day I happened to mention that I was reading The Bell Curve. She angrily told me that it is an evil book and that I was committing a grave sin just by owning a copy. “How do you know that it is evil if you haven’t read it?” I asked. “I don’t need to read it!” she exclaimed, as she slammed her office door in my face.
The irony is that I feel no incentive to accept what appear to be the disheartening conclusions—perhaps of Dr. Murray’s latest book as well. But I have now ordered it and am reading it, genuinely intent on understanding it.
Of my four Eurasian children, I have one who as a student could ace any test, especially in science and mathematics. He has no social skills. He has a sister who wouldn’t know quantum mechanics from Jeffrey Toobin but makes more money as a stockbroker than I ever did as an academic—and more than her lawyer husband. Such personal observations, however statistically meaningless, incline me to shrug my shoulders over IQ. (But then what do I know?)
American “progressives” make much of “diversity” but obviously don’t believe in the reality of it. Human beings have wildly different abilities and interests, and, at the very least, such are to some extent culturally conditioned.
If we believe that we are all children of God, we can at least hope to be able to accept, respect, and love one another, whatever our differences. Secular liberals seem to suspect that any acknowledgement of those differences will lead to murderous Social Darwinism. And so they insist on patently obvious lies.
Jerry Giordano is skeptical of most things. I would hardly expect him to believe anything I say. He analyzes things and make up his own mind. Now, as I have a medical background, I’m hardly saying genes don’t have any impact. I was studying the Metabolic Basis of Inherited Disease 50 years ago. I studied at the Hopkins Genetics Clinic when it was run by Victor McKusick, and his Mendelian Inheritance in Man was available only in print rather than online. Charles Murray basically espouses a genetic determinism that he admits is “a little fuzzy at the edges.” That, in my view, is the understatement of the millennium.
I don’t believe that IQ testing is meaningless. I don’t think it tells us what the social scientists insist that it tells us.
IQ testing history is a fraught history indeed. Psychometrics were invented by Francis Galton, a racist by every definition; were underpinned by a widely held “Scientific Racism” promulgated based on no data, only personal revulsion in relation to Africans, by Louis Agassiz, and perpetuated by everyone from David Starr Jordan to James Watson and Linus Pauling (Pauling trained Watson and inculcated in his pupil his Eugenicist views). Consider Louis Terman’s long term “genius study” at Stanford. No convincing correlation with IQ and achievement. The history of IQ testing is completely intertwined with the history of Eugenics, and the reliance on IQ testing, particularly for policy purposes, is fraught. Eugenics was the quintessential Progressive project of the first half of the 20th Century, espoused by the entirety of the political spectrum. And it is with us still, not least in the use of IQ testing, apparently approved by many Ricochet commentators.
How does IQ for a population (racial group?) change with time? If you are measuring an inherent genetic trait it shouldn’t change over a decade or so. If you are measuring educational or developmental achievement, that may change. Giordano’s analysis implies the latter.
Thomas Sowell has pretty much refuted every point Murray has made.
I invite you to read Noesis, the book, linked to above.
Read that: “a massive amount of social scientism research.” Social science is not science. Ditto Economics, and Murray Rothbard. Saying that “..all Men are created Equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..” is not a revolt against nature. It is not a claim that individual differences do not exist. To the contrary.
Gould was discussing the history of Eugenics and IQ testing. Of course he was going to discuss what was going on in the first half of the 20th Century. He is critiqued by Wikipedia because he presents science. To say that Stephen J. Gould, one of the foremost paleontologists/evolutionary biologists of the 20th Century was presenting left wing propaganda is utterly preposterous. He knew more about genetics than Charles Murray, whose knowledge of genetics is superficial at best, and wildly misconstrued in large part, ever dreamed of. Gould was involved in actual science. Murray, not so much.
If you design a test that is intended to tell you something about skills that are of value in certain settings, you will get results that corroborate your effort. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen engineers who try to analyze how to control their blood sugars, only to discombobulate themselves completely, while an illiterate farmer figures out the practical aspects of how to control his sugars and succeeds admirably with seemingly no effort. The skills that made the top- flight engineer were utterly useless in another context, while the farmer, who succeeded effortlessly in one setting, could never have figured out how to analyze a spectrum to extract meaningful information.
I probably should’ve clarified. I mean a book for conservative students that’s meant to help them get through it, maybe even to encourage some of them to pursue PhD’s, but of course that won’t be for everyone – but we could really benefit our cause by helping the ones who want to.
It seems like there could be a lot of material that would be useful to rest of them, too: like ways to sort out the professors who will waste your time with nonsense; how to speak out effectively (in my experience, conservatives are quiet-except the ones who can be a little arrogant); how to figure out which of your professors won’t kill your grade if you write what you actually think, etc.
I don’t think that helped us much in this last election. It’s hard to say how many Republicans that didn’t vote for Trump were persuadable, but I noticed a lot more badgering than I did earnest attempts to convince a skeptical, potential buyer.
It won’t save the Left to go that route either. Not in the long run.
Monday afternoon, Buffalo, TX. Just had a chance to listen to this and must say I really enjoyed the opening segment. Great insight from Rob and Peter. Good job, guys.
We’ll have to see if we can get ‘em talking about USCCB vote on the Eucharist, and the expected backlash, for the next show. I suppose that’ll still be big news come Friday. Hope you tune in, Scott.
Yes. Peter is Catholic. I’d like to hear what he thinks about the issue.
Your example is a comparison of specific skills that can be taught. That isn’t a great measure of what I.Q. is.
I.Q. is a measure of how quickly you can learn those skills. In most top level jobs, things change all the time. Scientific researchers, lawyers and top CEOs have to deal with things changing all the time. Those jobs are the ones that most require a high I.Q. No one has been able to raise it significantly over time and everyone wants to.
No he has not. I pointed that out on Jerry’s Post about how Thomas Sowell’s reference to the children of black-American soldiers who had kids with German women in Germany.
Have you read Charles Murray at all? There are those who have read his works and there are those who have read about his works.
I feel disinclined to read most works of science that are over ten years old. No disrespect to the great works of our scientific forefathers but I like keeping abreast of more current data.
As far your comment,
Blacks and other groups were miserably treated and part of their low I.Q. had alot to do with bad nutrition and prejudice. Southern Italians and Irish had these hurdles as well as black people. This is the data that Thomas Sowell too often uses. We have raised the I.Q.s of genetically intelligent blacks quite quickly but we can’t seem to raise the I.Q.s of less ingtelligent blacks. Honestly, we can’t seem to raise anyone with a low I.Q.
At this point in time, it is not unreasonable to assume that on average the median I.Q. of black-Americans is lower because of genetics.
In my opinion, this needs far more emphasis in this country. They got shafted so bad by reconstruction. Generations of human and financial capital stomped on.
I’m not an expert on any of this, so I’m not going to get into a big argument.
What I’m saying is that the whole idea of IQ, a single number that supposedly represents an inherent ability, is a specious concept. It is hardly a measure of anything that matters for human society. Many people with high IQs use their number to join MENSA to remind themselves of how smart they are, while the world goes it’s merry way ignoring them. IQ represents more of a self fulfilling prophecy that confirms the biases of its advocates. I’m saying Murray is part of that great Progressive scan that purports to use “science” to get the attention of government. to get grants, to obtain positions of influence in governance, in public policy, etc., etc. I would further assert that anyone who supports such a scam is a devout Progressive. And, per Eric Vogelin, Progressivism, like Communism, Fascism, Marxism and all the modern ‘isms’ is at base a lie. Yes I’ve read Murray, specifically The Bell Curve, and do find it tendentious, nauseating, and baseless. He’s made a great academic career out of a lie.
I equate IQ testing with that abominable pseudo-science, Eugenics, from whence the idea sprang. Have you read that execrable book, “Hereditary Genius” by Francis Galton? Galton was the ultimate dilettante and bigot. He stratified the “races”. With Anglos on top. His is the ultimate vision of the anointed.
When IQ researchers would give tests to anyone who would sit for them, one of the things they found was that, to reach the top level of a great many professions, an IQ of 120 was the necessary buy-in. After that, other psychological factors took over.
I always thought that the 2004 election illustrated this nicely in the sphere of politics, because the military IQ scores of the two major candidates had leaked. John Kerry had a score of 120 — plus had a knack for marrying wealthy women. George W. Bush had scored a 125 — plus had the ability to remember thousands of people.
In terms of attaining success in one’s career, hard work can substitute for standardized test scores, a point I remember the great Prof. Walter Williams making.
That’s hanging a lot of disparagement on a single thesis — that of the meaninglessness of the IQ measurement.
I suspect you’re mistaken. There is a lot of evidence that what we call IQ is a measure of something real and predictive about an individual’s cognitive facilities. It tends to apply broadly to a wide range of problem-solving and cognitive skills, and it is a repeatable measurement that can be sampled through a variety of tests that correlate well with each other.
I’ll join you in a blanket condemnation of eugenics, and also in your criticism of much of what passes for publicly funded “science.” But I think Murray is a serious and thoughtful academic, and a thoroughly decent man.
These are fascinating scientific questions, but perhaps they should be held in abeyance until the power of the teachers unions is broken and we start actually educating poor black kids.
Similarly, there may well be a genetic component in obesity and heart disease — but there are miles to go in fixing lousy diets first.
It might be nice, too, if we started encouraging marriage among the poor (of all races), instead of discouraging it.
Of course, the current (bad) situation serves the interests of the Democratic Party, so …
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And yup.
Premise 1: Some people are smarter/more intelligent than other people.
Premise 2: Assuming premise 1 is true, it should be possible to measure that difference.
Whether you call that measurement IQ, or G, or something else, it still exists.
I reject your premise #2, does that mean premise #1 is rejected?
What do you think of these two assertions:
Not really analogous. Your premise #2 should be something along the lines of “it is possible the measure the difference in temperature between two places.”
It seems that the claim that a meaningful IQ can be tested in individuals is itself a testable hypothesis. We could, for example, use various IQ measurement techniques across a sample population, and then attempt to correlate the results with performance on a range of cognitive tasks. We could see how quickly people solve logic problems, how quickly they understand and process new information, how capable they are at tasks requiring spatial analysis, how effectively they filter out incidental details, etc. If we discover that there is a statistically meaningful positive correlation between measured IQ and the ability to perform these cognitive tasks, and particularly if that collection of cognitive tasks was fairly broad, that would tend to indicate that IQ — whatever it is — is a meaningful metric.
And, in fact, there’s a lot of evidence that this is precisely the case.
I’m not sure what you guys are talking about. I’m talking about a fair structure to society with intelligent incentives.
I think that we all agree that our society needs less crony corporatism and less self-serving government overreach. My argument is that I.Q. still matters quite alot.
And I’m saying that this issue is far worse than it needs to be. We need a more libertarian economy and so forth.
It’s my opinion that both issues are important. The libertarian economy is more important in my estimation but I still think it entirely worthwhile to discuss I.Q. In fact, I think it worthwhile to discuss Shakespeare and what the Old Testament means. There are many important things in life even if classically liberal economics is the basis of all wealth.
I think it was this week that I heard Ben Weinstein, the guy that writes for the Federalist, talk exactly like that Archie guy that is a member of ricochet. How the tech people and the people that make money off of government think. Extremely anti-libertarian and basically gated community liberals that don’t really like average people and the poor. It was when he was filling in for a buck Sexton. That guy is excellent.
It’s a very complicated route but we need to get to the opposite of the heart.
Something else that I think doesn’t get enough attention. We aren’t there yet, but it could end up coming, and what do you do with people who aren’t smart enough to have a real function in a high-tech economy – and especially if they aren’t even NEEDED due to automation etc – if everyone is still expected to work for a living?
I’m not up on this subject like you guys, but I can tell you from personal experience it’s a big mistake to deviate much off of what your standardized SAT scores tell you to do. Murray was talking specifically about this on Prager today and I think he’s right.
You make friends with deflation.