Comments on: Charles Murray vs. Charles Murray

by: TGGP

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:11:42 +0000

Karl Smith hypothesizes that the genetic component of IQ is preference here. That would gel with Seth’s “exceeds the interest” comment.

by: seth

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:47:09 +0000

The Flynn Effect implies that Factor X exists. If American social scientists failed to find it . . . they failed to find it. That failure doesn’t affect the point I’m making.

“Perhaps you should review what Murray has actually written.” I read The Bell Curve. As far as I can tell from your comments so far, my criticism of that book is correct. I am happy to be corrected however; if you would tell me on what page of The Bell Curve the authors refute or even show an understanding of my point about the Flynn Effect I would be happy to look at it.

by: Steve Sailer

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:01:22 +0000

Once again, I believe Herrnstein and Murray coined the term “Factor X.” Finding Factor X was a huge obsession of American social scientists from the 1960s into the 1980s, when they started to give up out of frustration with repeated failures. For a lot of subtle reasons besides the repeated failure to find Factor X, the black-white IQ gap doesn’t look much like it’s caused by Factor X. It looks more like a larger version of the genetic driven differences in IQ found among biological siblings raised in the same households.

Perhaps you should review what Murray has actually written before denouncing him?

by: seth

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:14:00 +0000

“I don’t think they ignored its implications.” If I remember correctly, here is what Herrnstein & Murray ignored. The Flynn Effect implies that there are one or more powerful environmental effects on IQ. They can raise or lower IQ on the order of 20 points. For simplicity, let’s say there’s just one factor, Factor X. If you are high on Factor X, your IQ will be 20 points higher than if you are low on Factor X. Herrnstein and Murray speculated on the possible genetic cause of Black/White differences and other group differences without knowing (a) what Factor X is and (b) where Whites, Blacks, and other groups fall on this factor. Once those two pieces of info were known, there might be nothing left to explain. Differences in Factor X might entirely account for the observed group differences.

by: Steve Sailer

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:51:12 +0000

Considering that Herrnstein & Murray coined the term “Flynn Effect,” I don’t think they ignored its implications. The problem with the popular theory that the Flynn Effect will solve everything is that very little convergence has been observed in group average IQ scores over the last 90 years. For examples, see the graphs in:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/060423_lynn.htm

by: seth

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:01:46 +0000

Why was the IQ/heredity chapter wacky? Because it ignored the implications of the Flynn effect. That effect implies that environmental effects on IQ can be just as large as the effects that the authors wanted to explain.

The army data are interesting. Many people, including Herrnstein and Murray, seem to take the predictive value of IQ as permanent, whereas I believe that in a different society — ancient Sparta, say — its predictive value would be less. In a world where we don’t force everyone to go to college, its predictive value would probably be less, for example.

by: Steve Sailer

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:59:03 +0000

IQ has validity for predicting plenty of non-academic outcomes in life. That’s why the U.S. military began using IQ tests in 1917 and spends a fortune on IQ testing of would-be enlistees and correlating the results with their performance during their military career. Higher IQ soldiers are less likely to die in combat, to die in truck driving accidents, to drop bombs accurately on targets, etc. From 1992 through 2004, only 1% of new enlistees were allowed into the military with IQ scores on the AFQT from the bottom 30% of the IQ distributions. The new data in the long second part of The Bell Curve was delivered to Murray by the chief psychometrician of one of the services.

by: Half Sigma

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:20:34 +0000

Don’t understand why a chapter explaining how intelligence is hereditary is “whacky.”