PZ Myers. 2004 Dec 09. Sailer fans, meet Rivka. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/sailer_fans_meet_rivka/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 19.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Thursday, December 09, 2004
Sailer fans, meet Rivka
Respectful of Otters has a fine, fine post up on the Brooks/Sailer bigotry. I'll also mention here some of my objections.
One problem is that Sailer's argument is selective. If "natality" or birth rate is the key criterion, why throw out a sizable chunk of the sample by explicitly disregarding the entire non-white population? There is a casual disregard of African-Americans that is simply appalling: all of the issues that Sailer claims are so important—security and education—are equally important to all of us. Blacks are excluded simply because they do not fit his predetermined hypothesis.
Once he has filtered his data to get the result he wants, he then uses that result to draw unwarranted and odious conclusions. Take, for example, this comment:
Focusing on children, insulation, and population density reveals that blue-region white Democrats’ positions on vouchers, gun control, and environmentalism are motivated partly by fear of urban minorities.
Look at that. He has "revealed" that we white Democrats are motivated by fear...but notice how he arrived at that conclusion: from the fact that birth rates are low and population density is high in urban regions. I presume everyone with any perception at all is able to see that he has not in any sense measured "fear"…that is simply his unjustified interpretation.
He continues this pattern of drawing absurd conclusions throught the piece. Why have Democrats historically been rather more supportive of gun control?
The endless gun-control brouhaha, which on the surface appears to be a bitter battle between liberal and conservative whites, also features a cryptic racial angle. What blue-region white liberals actually want is for the government to disarm the dangerous urban minorities that threaten their children’s safety.
Mr Sailer is certainly projecting here, isn't he? Yeah, all those white Democrats are quivering in terror at the murderous black mobs out to slaughter their children. As a white liberal who worked and lived in Philadelphia, it's just nonsense. I was concerned about urban crime, but I was also quite aware that the city slums were more than just lairs for those dangerous black people—there are brutal white neighborhoods, too, and safe middle-class black neighborhoods. I would have liked criminals to be disarmed, sure; but unlike Sailer, I did not have this biased preconception that they were all black. And now that I'm living in one of those thinly-populated lily-white parts of the country, I still have the same feeling that some moderate gun control is a good idea (but I probably think it less important than people like Sailer believe I do).
He continues to claim to speak for us, and continues to play the race card in a ridiculous way.
White liberals, angered by white conservatives’ lack of racial solidarity with them, yet bereft of any vocabulary for expressing such a verboten concept, pretend that they need gun control to protect them from gun-crazy rural rednecks, such as the ones Michael Moore demonized in “Bowling for Columbine,” thus further enraging red-region Republicans.
That first bit is just bizarre beyond words. I don't understand how anyone can come to that conclusion—does he really believe that we white liberals are sitting around, fearing the black mob that surrounds us, and resenting the white Republicans for not coming to our rescue? Our neighbors are our friends and colleagues and fellow voters, people we work with and with whom we share common cause. We really aren't secretly pining away for the redeeming love of white racists, I swear.
I don't think I ever heard a Philly denizen confess to worrying about our country cousins coming to town and shooting us, either. There were plenty of guns in the city itself, so the redneck rampage scenario would be just…laughable. Besides, I thought Sailer was claiming we were afraid of "dangerous urban minorities." I guess when you are busy flinging baseless stereotypes around, you don't have time for consistency.
I don't even see why people think Sailer's odd little correlation is even interesting. It just doesn't explain anything. It looks to me that the racialists saw some of their favorite buzzwords ("white breeders vote Bush") in close proximity and had a creepy kind of orgasm, nothing more significant than that.
Rivka comes far closer to the truth than Sailer. It isn't an issue of black or white, it's a matter of a common, universal human response that has been observed all around the world. Give people a choice, give them an education and economic opportunity, and they voluntarily limit the number of children they have. In thinly populated regions where religion and ignorance reduce people's liberty, birthrates go up. In urban areas where people are more diverse and less limited in their views, people choose to have fewer children—rather than spreading their resources thin over many, they prefer to invest heavily in a few. And you don't have to arbitrarily look at only white people to see the phenomenon in action. All Sailer has done is to take socioeconomic and historical facts about the distribution of people in this country, and painted them with a simplistic black vs. white brush.
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From Steve's response to the Tapped diatribe:
Franke-Ruta seems to be convinced that I drew a correlation between Bush's share of the vote by state and the total fertility of white women by state because I am a racist. No, I did it because I am interested in the facts. I of course also looked at the correlation of Bush's share and the total fertility of all the women in the state, but the r-squared of that nonracial correlation was only 37%, compared to 74% for the correlation between Bush's share and white fertility. For Franke-Ruta's benefit, let me point out that 74% is twice as big as 37%. As for explaining to her what an r-squared is, well,...
The reality is that white fertility correlates with Bush's share of the vote better than total fertility or nonwhite fertility does.
Compare with PZ's comments above:
If “natality” or birth rate is the key criterion, why throw out a sizable chunk of the sample by explicitly disregarding the entire non-white population? [...] Blacks are excluded simply because they do not fit his predetermined hypothesis.
#: Posted by God Fearing Atheist on 12/09 at 09:41 PM - Why, yes. That's what I said. He threw out non-white fertility data because it doesn't fit his hypothesis. Breeding rates have nothing to do with whether one votes for Bush or not.
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I have poasted several more blogosphere responses to Sailer (and Brooks) on the bottom of this post:
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2004/12/terrorism-fascism-nativism-whats.html -
Respectfully, PZ, among "whites", they do.
#: Posted by on 12/09 at 11:29 PM
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jaimito, et al. My post from the 'slapdown' thread. It fits here, too.
“it assumes that people across the country and across the political spectrum have similar underlying motivations: they want what’s best for their children.”
People across the political spectrum and across the country (and the world) want what is best for their children. White people, brown people, Democratic people, Asian people, old people, young people, female people, male people, white-collar people, educated people, ignorant people human people, people, people …
but for some reason SS, you can only study white people, talk about white people and cite data about white people. No doubt if you had been around a hundred years ago you would have found some reason to leave Irish immigrants out of your studies, just as you leave Latino and African immigrants out now.
In short your work is designed to find that white people are somehow unique and special, and miraculously you pose the hypothesis and parse the data so that is what you find.#: Posted by on 12/09 at 11:44 PM -
jaimito,
The point you seem to miss is that the specious correlation between whites breeding and Bush voting is not a causation. That fact that SS is capable of finding these types of correlations does not mean they deserve any hearing beyond him talking to himself in the shower.
Political decisions are not driven by biology.#: Posted by on 12/09 at 11:50 PM -
seems to be part of a broader Republican strategy of trying to cast Democrats as racists.
For example here's an Ann Coulter column where she rants about how the democrats aren't so multi-cultural when it comes to Condi Rice:
http://www.anncoulter.org/
(It's the latest one, December 8 2004; I don't seem to be able to link directly).
Or this from last year:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/8/5/165021.shtml
Or just type the words "Racist democrats" into Google and see what it spews out...#: Posted by on 12/10 at 03:32 AM -
You're accusing Mr. Sailer of bigotry, while you accuse religious and rural people of being inhernetly anit-liberty?
"In thinly populated regions where religion and ignorance reduce people’s liberty, birthrates go up."
The fact of the matter is that there is a correlation between white fertility and Bush's share of the vote. You may disagree with Mr. Sailer on what it means, but it exists and it almost certainly has to mean something (it's too good a correlation to be random chance).
Another point: no one here is suggesting that only white poeple want to do what's best for their children. What's being suggested is that white people may be more likely to see the GOP as being good for their children, and so the more child-oriented they are, the more pro-GOP. Thsi doesn't work with minorities because they are less apt to see GOP victories as beneficial to their offspring.#: Posted by Glaivester on 12/10 at 04:42 AM -
To Desert Donkey aka Equus asinus, asno, burro ("Political decisions are not driven by biology"): Yes, they are.
Many human behaviours were thought to be unrelated to evolutionary pressures, but now we are learning that marriages are not made in heaven, that getting pregnant has little to do with chance and so on. I do not know how evolutionary forces have sculpted our way of selection of leaders, but how could it be unaffected by biology? Of course, I know that there are exceptions: the Chinese Emperors rule by Mandate of Heaven, the Japanese Emperor is a direct descendant of the Sun God, and most European Monarchs were put on their thrones by God himself.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 05:06 AM - Calling someone a racist is not bigotry if they are, indeed, a racist. Pointing out fundamentally flawed statistical methodology is not an ad hominem if one has experience with such matters and can make valid critiques. This methodology is fatally flawed and makes no sense as PZ has presented if the writer is hoping to use valid data to make reasonable inference. It does however make sense if the writer is hoping to validate an a priori ideology and doesn't give a hoot how transparently he cooks the numbers to do it. Stating apossible motivation to solve that mystery and laying out that case is perfectly legitimate.
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Glaivester
You may disagree with Mr. Sailer on what it means, but it exists and it almost certainly has to mean something (it’s too good a correlation to be random chance).
Repeat after me: "Correlation does not always mean causation". A statistical correlation, especially one that ignores a variety of other possible variables, is essentially useless until you can prove a causal link. Things can have a very high correlation and have no connection. Furthermore, anyone can run a statistical examination of a set of data until something comes up, but that doesn't mean that it actually is documenting a causal relationship. The very fact that it doesn't explain the higher rates of infant mortality or teenage preganancy that Rivka mentions means it's likely a farce.
What’s being suggested is that white people may be more likely to see the GOP as being good for their children, and so the more child-oriented they are, the more pro-GOP. Thsi doesn’t work with minorities because they are less apt to see GOP victories as beneficial to their offspring.
That's just horrible. Not because of the racial content mind you, but because you're putting the cart before the horse here. We haven't even got an explanation for why these states have a higher birth rate, or at least one that supports the idea presented, yet you're already using the correlation to explain things. Trust me, it's not clearing up the ambiguities present. - So, jaimito, care to explain how some cultures have managed to remain essentially egalitarian when they are surrounded by much less egalitarian societies? It would seem that, considering our evolutionary history, that they would be more likely to be our evolutionary heritige and the more modern, less egalitarian societies like ours are the aberrant, evolutinarily contradictory, state.
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Give people a choice, give them an education and economic opportunity, and they voluntarily limit the number of children they have. In thinly populated regions where religion and ignorance reduce people’s liberty, birthrates go up. In urban areas where people are more diverse and less limited in their views, people choose to have fewer children—rather than spreading their resources thin over many, they prefer to invest heavily in a few
Also, don't forget that the marginal cost of raising an extra child goes up with income levels - It is a lot more expensive for a highly paid women to give up the time (and lost income) necessary for each extra child than it is for lower paid women or stay-at-home-moms.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 07:02 AM -
(“Political decisions are not driven by biology”): Yes, they are.
This is the heart of Sailer's problem. They're not. People don't vote for Bush because they are driven by some biological property associated with white skin; all the phenomena he claims to have driven the white vote are also present in blacks and hispanics and asians. What's driving the white vote for Bush is ignorance of diversity and bigotry and history.
It's not something to be proud of, as Brooks and Sailer seem to regard it. Treating it as a race issue ignores the root causes. -
white people may be more likely to see the GOP as being good for their children
It's not race, it's religion.
Much of the white population in this country is Christian, and many of them think that "non-Christian/non-white is wrong," and so they want their children to think that "non-Christian/non-white is wrong."
So, they vote GOP, because it is the party pushing bigotry and that bastardization of the constitution.
These biological suppositions aren't just racist, it's in someways politically motivated.
It's not just saying that minorities don't care for their children, but also that those whites who voted Democratic must be the statistically "bad" parents of the race.
White people: If you want to be a good parent, and a good white person, and a good bigot...
...vote GOP!
I guess I have an excuse because I don't have children yet. But once I have a few, I can only hope that I'll instantly turn into a nice, white racist - for my children's sake, of course.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 09:07 AM -
Well written post. I wish David Brooks would read and absorb it, but that can't happen. It would disrupt his neat and tidy worldview. (This Sailers character appears to be beyond hope. What possible objective could "research" like this have beyond advancing racist stereotypes, giving them a scientific-looking veneer?)
Thanks PZ, for casting some sunlight on this fetid swamp.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 10:12 AM -
MattH: You got some issues, boy. (wipe the smirk off your face Jeebus, you's another of them "I slit my wrists out of middle-class guilt" good orthodontia with a facial piercing types) You lurk thru all the science discussions but the minute somebody mentions race relations, you're on it like a Victorian prude on a raised hemline. Breathe, for crying out loud. Go on a Peace Corps tour or Mormon Mission or Jamaican Ganga cruise or something where you get some exposure. Open a clinic on the South Side or whatever.
The only thing that pisses me off more than the social-justice whining of a limosine liberal is a fallen Republican, the kind that wants vouchers but hires illegals, the kind that likes his deer rifle but is edging toward gun control because there was a gang shooting down in the bario and his son is sparkin' a girl down there.
Think globally, act locally. Treat people decently and enforce the laws. Mark my words: If we don't fix this tiny little issue of overpopulation and border control, the sunset of all of our lives will spent watching, participating in or being participated upon, genocides of unimaginable proportions.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 10:41 AM -
Richard, I dont want to lower the level here, but you seem to lay in wait for MattH to give you an opening to apply some of your redneck analysis. My opinion is that it isnt very charming anymore.
#: Posted by on 12/10 at 10:52 AM
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DD: You're probably correct, but it's always the same prim, smarmy superior didacticism. I think the actual correct term would be sophomoric. As Matt very correctly pointed out once, a lot of my information IS anecdotal, an opinion which has been the germ of a lot of analysis on my part. So I do take what he says into account. I just don't like political correctness any more than PZ likes Thumpus bibliocii*.
As an aside, I have never been accused of being charming. It's part of my, er, charm.
*sorry, no italics#: Posted by on 12/10 at 11:05 AM -
Great post, PZ. The gun control stuff you quote is just bizarre. There's not a word about why blue-state urban black Democrats favor gun control laws, you'll notice, because that would destroy his neat sociological analysis about white liberals projecting their fear of blacks onto rural Republicans.
I live in a large city with a homicide problem. It doesn't take a demographer to notice that most of the victims of handguns in this city are black. Urban folks tend to favor gun control because, in cities, guns tend to be used to commit crimes - not for hunting. Howard Dean pointed out this rural-urban split in quite sensible ways during his campaign, without having the slightest need of playing the race card. -
PZ: "All the phenomena (Sailer) claims to have driven the white vote are also present in blacks and hispanics and asians." Touche, the point is valid. Sailer's correlation works only for whites, indicating that something may be incomplete or wrong. However, intuitively I feel evolution must have operated on how a group selects its leader and why people vote for one instead of the other. Social and political sciences are so ignorant of biology in general and evolution in particular that they have left the whole field open to research. They seem to be working on the basis of a "creationist" paradigm, ignoring that we (voters, leaders) are all product of evolutionary forces.
#: Posted by on 12/10 at 12:02 PM
- Guess what? If you looked at the people who put Confederate flag decals on their pickup trucks, you'd find an even stronger correlation with whiteness. And there would also be a strong correlation with voting for Bush. Why, the appreciation of the ideals of the Confederacy must be biological, and we should study it as an evolutionary process!
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Rivka: Excellent first para, although I could pick at it a little, it seems he has left a very large omission.
I would differ on your second, however. First, most guns used in urban areas are intended for defense. However, in the sense that they never get used at all, aside from occasional range time, means that the vast majority of firearms in urban areas are for peace of mind. Tens of millions of American city dwellers don't talk guns, don't even think of themselves as gun owners, but they are comforted that they have one at arm's reach. The very archetecture of our nation's residential neighborhoods is based on two things: law and order, and the ability to defend from within—open plans, lack of fences and barless groundfloor windows. The European, Middle-Eastern and Latin American plan is enclosed with windows on the upper floor only and an outer defensive wall.
Anecdotal example: A decade ago, my extremely liberal (and highly talented) neighbor in Echo Park showed me, with tremedous guilt, a Mossberg 590 12-gauge he had under his bed. His equally anti-gun wife turned a blind eye. I asked him why he felt he needed to have it and he said that after all was said and done and the statements of equality, compassion and tolerance were said, defense of the home fell on his shoulders.
So, depending on the BPM (bricks per minute), this guy might vote Republican on a given day to preserve his right to self defense. The same goes for Americans of color, rural AND urban. There would have been fewer lynchings if more Negros had been armed early on. I don't remember the name of the the hugely liberal Negro columnist in DC who wrote endlessly on GC but then shot at some kids in his pool with a borrowed handgun.
In Los Angeles today, the most heavily armed community in the city is that of the Hassidic Jews. Permits or no, they pack.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 12:27 PM -
In Los Angeles today, the most heavily armed community in the city is that of the Hassidic Jews. Permits or no, they pack.
Of course, one might want to mention that Hasidic Jews are to a great extent reactionaries who froze their religion sometime in the Middle ages, support a colonialist policy in Israel, make up a large percentage of the colonists in the Occupied Territories, and tend to believe (relative to other Jews) that Palestinians are subhumans who should be shot on sight if one can get away with it.
They're hardly an advertisement for the sensibility of gun ownership.
I am, BTW, neutral on gun control -- just want to point out that the Hasidim, especially the Chabad Lubavitchers so prevalent in LA, are roughly equivalent to the Fundamentalist Christian Right -- they even have their own messiah.#: Posted by paperwight on 12/10 at 01:10 PM -
I don't see how anyone can come to believe, as Bertolt Brecht (Communist writer in the 1920s and 1930s) did, that all social problems/disparities are solely "a product of history, not of nature," which seems the apparent belief of many here. Given what we know about biological factors that can affect intelligence (such as NMDA and GABA activity during development), what we know from twin studies (which PZ *completely* denies the validity of out of hand), and what we know about the correlation between white matter in the brain and IQ (just to name a few), Brecht's conclusion simply seems loony.
Add to that the ineffectiveness of trillions--if not tens of trillions--spent on all kinds of social interventions to close both individual and group disparites, and I think there's a pretty clear cut case that Brecht and his fellow travelers were/are clearly wrong in denying (for all practical purposes) the effect of genetic variation on society.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 01:16 PM -
"Repeat after me: “Correlation does not always mean causation”. A statistical correlation, especially one that ignores a variety of other possible variables, is essentially useless until you can prove a causal link."
No one is saying that correlation proves causation. But it does prove that there is some relationship there.
Repeat after me: "The correlation is too large to be random chance."
And the correlation, even if we don't know the other variables, is NOT useless from a study standpoint. There must be some reason or reasons why high white fertility correlates so strongly with % Bush vote. Whether high fertility causes GOP voting or vice versa, or whether both are caused by some third or fourth factor and are correlated indirectly, something somewhere must explain the correlation.
Also, Sailer never said that correlation implies causation. He noticed a trend, and based on what he sees in society, posited a hypothesis of why this might be so. I don't see his hypothesis as being that unreasonable; if you want to question it, poke holes in it, or suggest alternate hypotheses, fine, but to dismiss it as disproven because it hasn't been proven is ridiculous.#: Posted by Glaivester on 12/10 at 01:41 PM -
paperwight: Point (and in 3 hours, pint) well taken. I was using it as an example of a non-WASP/Redneck population refusing to be intimidated and taking their defense into their own hands. It's not like there are Hasidic drive-bys:
"What do we have here, Officer?"
"Well, Detective, there are these 9 by 19 casings strewn down the street and this weird fur hat leaning up against the curb. Two actors wearing Arab costumes were wounded as they walked toward The Ivy"."
"Hmmm....whaddya make of that tiny book on the man-hole cover?"
Believe me, having lived as a Goy in Israel, I have been the target of Hasidic intolerance and bigotry (stone-dents in the van are cool). I'll still drink a beer with them.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 02:31 PM -
Glaivester
No one is saying that correlation proves causation. But it does prove that there is some relationship there.
All you've done is used different words to say the same thing. A meaningful relationship between two things is a causal relationship, in one direction or the other, or they have a common cause. For example, there's a correlation of 1 between my age and the distance between the earth and certain galaxies, yet there's no causal relationship between those two things.
It is possible that they have a common cause, but that's not what Sailers hypothesis is stating. In fact, the hypothesis presented by Rivka is just that, which in my book does a much better job of explaining the correlation presented.
Richard, I have over 120 posts here. Perhaps there's another reason that I don't post all of the time, or in the topics you think I should be posting in. Besides, I'm pretty tired of your constant harping that anyone who disagrees with you is being PC. Perhaps instead you could actually argue with substantive facts instead of simply insulting others. But that would require you to actually take the time to understand the arguments being presented instead of just making a caricature out of them. -
As a member of the EU I'm staying out of this with an expression of stunned amazement on my face (what is Sailer saying? Does he know how idiotic it sounds?)
But this nonsense demands response:
The European, Middle-Eastern and Latin American plan is enclosed with windows on the upper floor only and an outer defensive wall.
I don't know about the Middle East and Latin America, but this is just not true of Europe. I don't think I've ever seen a European building with 'windows on the upper floor only' (the lower floors would be remarkably unpleasant to live in), and outer defensive walls are only present in stately homes, added centuries ago as defence against what was then a fairly high probability of attack, or added in the last quarter-millennium or so as pure ostentation.
You might do well to consider the noun phrase 'French windows'. You don't see them on upper floors --- but you do see them on a very high proportion of residential homes.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 04:50 PM -
Er. That is, a citizen of a member of the EU. I'm not claiming to be a nation-state.
#: Posted by on 12/10 at 04:51 PM -
MattH: I'm going to take a cliched woman's exit out of this and say that it's not what you write, it's the way you write it that gets my undies in a knot. But as for simplifying things, I had always been taught that true genius is the art of making complex concepts easy to understand. As for the number of posts, it's like saying, "I fired 120 rounds". Doesn't mean they hit the target. I USUALLY understand the arguments presented and I often agree with them. If everyone is posting endorsements of an opinion, then my voice isn't needed. But if I see wanton buffoonery I'll jump in with both feet. I respect you as an academic. Sometimes you're on target (as with para 1, post #28), sometimes outside the five-ring. FWIW: Besides a BA, my education has been working experience in a wide variety of fields so I can't quote too many textbooks. The people, places and work I've known are my references.
OK, what is NMDA and GABA? Should I know what these are?#: Posted by on 12/10 at 04:51 PM -
NMDA: N-methyl-D-aspartatic acid. It's an agonist to a particular kind of glutamate receptor; it isn't found naturally in the body, but is a handy compound for distinguishing that one class of receptor.
GABA: gamma-amino-butyric acid. A neurotransmitter.
He could have gone on about glycine and acetylcholine and serotonin and tetra-ethyl ammonium and conotoxin, other compounds that neuroscientists tend to slosh around inside brains. It's about as relevant.
Mr Dude was pretty much just babbling out biology buzzwords to make you think he knew something about the topic. It's kinda funny...like if I want down to the hardware store and start shootin' the breeze about 3/8" ceramic bits and grouting compound to impress the regulars. Pretty soon they'd be smirking and asking my opinion of left-handed grommet wrenches. -
What is it with these people and their determination to make something out of "the effect of genetic variation on society"? If they are trying to prove "white people are better", why don't they just say so? And if they aren't, what value can there possibly be in this "research"? Even if the statement "This correlates with that" is factual, none of the conclusions Sailer derives from the correlation are legitimate or meaningful, and they ignore mountains of contradictory evidence, as PZ and several other posters above have clearly shown.
#: Posted by on 12/10 at 05:23 PM
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"left-handed grommet wrenches" Things are getting pretty loose around here and it isnt even the drinking hour on the west coast yet. Also known as beer-thirty in some quarters.
#: Posted by on 12/10 at 05:23 PM
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PZ: Your powers of metaphor are undiminished. Thanks for the hip-pocket class on chemistry o' the brain. If'n y'all got a ballistics question, consider my hat thrown in the ring. In the mean time, I'll keep following the posts with a growing reference library at hand.
Nix: Sorry, should have written "traditional". I've been to most of Europe (N, W, S, limited east) and up until the Belle Epoc it seems the model, especially in the south, was the Roman/Moorish inner courtyard. Regarding French windows, homes nice enough to have them would tend to have an outer wall (and night watchman), as do their farm houses. French villages still shut up everything tightly at night. As with all things, throwing out a generalisation invites criticism, and yours was justified. I was hoping for brevety. Major cities in the US are now preserving the open archetecture but placing the alarmed homes in gated communities with controlled entry.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 05:27 PM -
ggw ... That is a tough one. I seem to have lost track of the gene that turns white guys into Republicans. I couldnt find it when I lived in big cities or suburbs. No luck while working on the road crew or digging ditches or driving truck. NASCAR watching and motorcycle racing didnt work.
I am at a complete loss as to what triggers this gene or why I am a white guy without one. So I went to more school and started working in higher education and am an atheist so I can pretend I am superior to all those people who have the white guy's Republican gene. But I still live in a small town, just in case there is a time based component. Heck I even know about left handed grommet wrenches .. and muffler bearings, too.
What is with these people? Beats the hell out of me.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 05:36 PM -
OK, what is NMDA and GABA? Should I know what these are?
Forgive me for rambling here a bit...but since a person here asked, here goes.
The NMDA receptor is the receptor for glutamate, as well as N-methyl d-aspartate (which is a more powerful agonist of the NMDA receptor than glutamate, thus the name NMDA receptor). The NMDA receptor is involved in learning and memory, among other things. Schizophrenia is often associated with low NMDA activity, and high NMDA activity is often associated disorder called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. High NMDA activity may also be associated with excessive self-conciousness; many of those who most enjoy the dissociative drugs (see below) say they do becuase "they help to take away a near-constant self-consciousness, an almost self-absorbing embarrassment or "inner critic."" (from William White's essay "This is your Brain on Dissociatives"-- http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=9299).
There is a class of drugs called 'dissociatives,' including PCP, ketamine("special K"), nitrous oxide (laughing gas), and dextromethorphan (over-the-counter cough suppressant), that block the NMDA receptor. Heavy doses of dissociatives can cause symptoms indistinguishable from schizophrenia (note that for DXM it takes a dose roughly 20 times the normal cough suppressant dose to induce psychotic symptoms--accidentally ODing on cough syrup won't land you in the loony bin).
There are also common dietary additives that agonize the NMDA receptor, including MSG and aspartame (Nutrasweet). Researcher John Olney has expressed concerns about these additives causing 'exitotoxicity,' which results from excessive NMDA activity.
GABA is gamma-amino buytric acid, and the GABA receptor is the major receptor targeted by alcohol, as well as benzodiazepines (such as Valium) and barbituates.
Alcohol targets the NMDA receptor and the GABA receptor, and alcohol's effects on both these receptors during development is a major factor in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:
"Drugs of abuse that block NMDA glutamate receptors include phencyclidine (PCP or "angel dust"), ketamine (special "K") and nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Both ketamine and nitrous oxide are used frequently in pediatric anesthesia. GABA receptor activators that are frequently abused and/or used in pediatric anesthesia include benzodiazepines, barbiturates, isoflurane and propofol.
"In light of this new evidence, it obviously is prudent for expectant mothers to avoid any of these drugs," Olney said. "It also will be important to carefully reevaluate how these drugs are used in pediatric medicine with an aim toward developing guidelines that ensure an adequate margin of safety."
The death of neurons by apoptosis occurs naturally. It enables the brain to get rid of unhealthy cells or cells that are not needed for normal brain development. "But what we saw was cell death at many times the normal rate," Ikonomidou explained. "And alcohol and these other drugs don't just cause cells that are going to die anyway to die more quickly. They cause cells that never would have died under normal circumstances to commit suicide. And millions are involved.""
http://medicine.wustl.edu/~wumpa/news/2000/olney.html
William White (who has researched DXM and other dissociatives heavily) also warns of the dangers of dissociatve use during pregnancy:
"All dissociatives are extremely toxic to developing fetuses and they should never be used during pregnancy (this probably includes cough-suppressant doses of DXM, by the way). Severe brain damage and mental retardation may result."#: Posted by on 12/10 at 05:52 PM -
What is it with these people and their determination to make something out of “the effect of genetic variation on society”?
Well...maybe because so many destructive quasi-Utopian beliefs are based on the idea that if we just spend enough money, if we just passed enough programs and regulations, if we just had a truly "fair" society, we could have a society in which people were basically equal. Or to put it another way, a society in which if we took 1000 random kids from South LA, or 1000 random white or Asian kids for that matter, and put them in the right environment, we could raise them all to be successful college students in the major of your choice. Even our Republican president passed the NCLB act on only somewhat less grandiose assumptions.
To be fair regarding the last statement, many of the Rush Limbaugh types have their own Utopianism--they believe that if we just gave poor people a good kick in the butt, and let them sink or swim, the overwhelming majority would swim on their own. That view is severly flawed as well.
I'm not going to say that the Utopians on either the left and right are 100% wrong--but they should realize that the best we can hope for is *some improvement*, and that many if not most of the measures they would like to take are likely to turn out to be completely worthless or counterproductive.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 06:32 PM -
wipe the smirk off your face Jeebus, you’s another of them “I slit my wrists out of middle-class guilt” good orthodontia with a facial piercing types
Who the fuck are you?
You hate politial correctness?
I have been the target of Hasidic intolerance and bigotry... I’ll still drink a beer with them.
Oh, really? Wow, that is so very commendable.
But, I would think that's a little too correct for you.
If you've got a problem with something I've said, then don't be a prick about it.
Actually, my teeth ARE nice (no braces, though). And, I'm not middle class. I'm rich as hell - because I'm a spoiled brat. Yep, I've got a fucking Porsche. So, what's your point? I don't feel guilty about what has been out of my control.
What does this have to do with the fact that I don't necessarily agree with what Glaivester said?
I think it is YOU, who has the problems. But, I won't make an unrelated assumption about your life. That is what we are trying to prevent, here!
I will just say that you are wrong - not because you are trying to make up for some horrible childhood nightmare, but because you are an idiot.
And, if MattH doesn't know anything about science, I hardly think that means anything about what he says about society. Being an elitest is perfectly okay, but you have lowered yourself to the likes of the people you supposedly (and hypocritically) hate "more than anything."
Regardless, I am certainly interested. Why don't you tell us all about your past, and then we can make some great assumptions about why those events are the reason you are a moron.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 06:48 PM -
Or to put it another way, a society in which if we took 1000 random kids from South LA, or 1000 random white or Asian kids for that matter, and put them in the right environment, we could raise them all to be successful college students in the major of your choice.
Rather, I think the goal would be to reduce the radical disparity in the percentages who succeed and fail based on their class. Some will always swim, and some will always sink, but if one group has a jet ski, they'll skim over the water a lot faster than the group who has the ankle weights, no matter how incompetent any particular jet ski owner is.
You'll never get rid of the jet skis, and that's basically OK, but you should at least try to lighten the ankle weights.
(Paperwight, torturing metaphors for fun and profit since 1968.)#: Posted by paperwight on 12/10 at 06:54 PM -
Actually, the one-to-one correlation between your age and the distance between galaxies does prove a meaningful realtionship, whether you want to define it as causal or not. The galaxies are moving away from Earth apart at a constant rate, at least from your temporal perspective.
Therefore, the position of these galaxies relative to Earth is a function of time, and age is essentially a measurement of time that is zeroed at a person's birth. So in essence, the passage of time is causing both your age (or more precisely is your age, and also is related to the position of the galaxies relative to Earth, whether you want to think of time passing as "causing motion" or not.
As for the hypothesizing, I don't think that Steve was saying that his hypothesis is proven by the data, simply that his hypothesis fit the facts that he presented. Rivka has produced a competing correlation. The best way to choose between them is to make predictions over what else would be true if the hypotheses were true and then see if it holds up. What Steve and Rivka have presented so far is mainly speculation , and people seem to be rejecting Steve's explanation out of prejudice against it rather than from showing data that refutes it (I'm not certain yet if anyone has explicitly challenged Rivka's answer, but to disprove it, they also would need to find evidence that contradicts it).#: Posted by Glaivester on 12/10 at 07:08 PM -
So in essence, the passage of time is causing both your age (or more precisely is your age, and also is related to the position of the galaxies relative to Earth, whether you want to think of time passing as “causing motion” or not.
Two years ago my truck was t-boned by a red-light runner, and it rolled with me inside, causing minor injury to me and total loss of my truck.
Today you spent several minutes writing this marvel of inane non sequitur and mixed metaphor masquerading as logic.
The two events are, by your own admission, connected, by virtue of both having taken place.
You may expect a communication from my attorney.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/10 at 07:25 PM -
Having taught at Temple University, a public university in North Philadelphia with a very diverse student body, I would say that yes, we could take 1000 black kids, give them the right opportunities and the right environment, and make them all successful college students. There were brilliant minds and time-wasting slackers in the student body there, and I can assure you that neither category was restricted to any one race.
The very idea that that minority students are less capable and that it is impractical and utopian to give them an opportunity is racist, and is precisely why I don't hesitate to call the so-called "h-bd" crowd a gang of pseudoscientific racists. -
YeeeeHaahhh! I stayed on for the full 8 seconds of the blast. Damn, Jeebus but you attacked into the ambush. Good tactics and effort! Makes me ready to hit a local brewery and pop a cold one.
Never cared for Porsche even though I have serious respect for their engineering and quality control (tho' Cayenne esta muy picante!). OK, you're rich. Due to your own efforts or those of talented parents? In either case it's modern indicator that you have good DNA. So stop being spoiled. Invent something. Sign up and do a hitch. I served with a DuPont and he had sand, ditto the Liddy brothers. They didn't let their wealth get in the way of character building. Noblesse Oblige (sp?).
By the way, in a cinematic metaphor, your response was similar to the strafing scenes from Billy Wilder's WWII propoganda piece, "Thunderbolt". The planes are shooting at random targets with a smart-assed voice over. Suddenly, gun-camera shows tracers going into an unassuming hut and the voice says, "Wonder what's in this one?" and the thing blows up like Krakatoa. LOL.
Dude: Thank you for the detailed explaination. A couple of trips to Webster's and I'm a new man. That was a valiant academic effort even if it was harvested and replanted. PZ, do you think it was original?
CC: You are priceless. A kingdom for your subdued wit, something I've had to realize I am without and will never have. Sorry about the wreck. We're fortunate you made it out so we can be dazzled by soto voce brilliance.
As for education, NCLB has dealt a severe blow to the education of the average students from rural areas and modest means. Severely emotionally, behaviorally and educationally disabled students can tear apart a classroom with no consequense. The worst thing your child can be now is normal. Normal kids have no rights. Even some violence by disabled students, regardless of their disability, is permitted. In my time as a teacher, whenever the rules didn't apply to criminal behavior, we teachers were told, "Sorry, there's nothing we can do because of NCLB." This may sound like an exaggeration but it's true. In a small school it's really hard on everyone. The regular kids are usually so well adjusted that they put up with unbearable pressure before they complain. This new policy has led to a much higher teacher turnover.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 08:04 PM -
Having taught at Temple University, a public university in North Philadelphia with a very diverse student body, I would say that yes, we could take 1000 black kids, give them the right opportunities and the right environment, and make them all successful college students. There were brilliant minds and time-wasting slackers in the student body there, and I can assure you that neither category was restricted to any one race.
That is a complete distortion of what I said. Here is what I said, again: Or to put it another way, a society in which if we took 1000 random kids from South LA, or 1000 random white or Asian kids for that matter[emph added this time], and put them in the right environment, we could raise them all to be successful college students in the major of your choice. Yes I believe race makes a difference, which is probably enough to get me excommunicated in your world, but that was not my main point here. My point is that in *both* those groups very few of the 1000 random kids could cut it in many majors, no matter what their upbringing. To believe that all 1000, or close to it, could get (say) a 3.5 GPA in (say) an engineering major, or even do well enough to scrape by and get a bachelor's degree, is downright loony.
You may think that it is a terrible thing for so much potential to be wasted. But my contention is that the potential is *simply not there*. Most people (of any race) if not the vast majority are simply not capable of doing what it takes to be an engineer or scientist or doctor. Yes, improvements can be made. But don't expect any miracles. And please, when the miracles don't come, don't try to say that society is EEEEVILLLLL and needs to be exorcised because the miracles didn't come.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 08:33 PM -
Do Democrats want to learn the underlying mechanisms under voter behavior and use that knowledge to figure out how to beat the Republicans ... or do they just want to shoot the messenger and congratulate themselves on their morally superior ignorance, while Karl Rove continues to clean their clocks?
Judging from this discussion, it sure looks like the latter.
If you guys knew anything about how election strategists, Democrat and Republican, do their jobs, you would know that when dividing up the electorate to understand it better, they always start with race/ethnicity. Go to the website run by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, for example, or Ruy Teixiara's Emerging Democratic Majority site. Learn something before you start demonizing me.
Why do whites and blacks vote for different reasons? Look, Republican family values rhetoric does indeed hold some attraction to blacks. For example, in the 2002 midterms, 14% of blacks who were married voted for GOP candidates for the House, while only 5% of blacks who were single voted for GOP candiates. But the vast majority of married blacks make what strikes me as the perfectly rational decision that, as attractive as GOP family values may or may not be, the Democrats' policies are better for them on the pocketbook issues, and they need to vote on the pocketbook issues.
In contrast, the average net wealth of married whites is significantly higher (often due to inheritances) than that of blacks. So, many whites decide that GOP policies such as eliminating the inheritance tax are either in their own self-interest or that they can afford to vote against Democrats' pocketbook issues and in favor Republican family values issues. This is all Election Analysis 101.
Because white people are better able to afford to vote for candidates on quasi-symbolic family values grounds rather than bread and butter grounds, you see a much greater sensitivity among whites to family size. You see more than a 30% range in Bush's share of the total vote between New Englands states with no more than 1.6 children per women and Utah with 2.45 kids per woman.
In contrast, there is just not a very big range in Bush's share of the black vote by state. It ranges from slim to very slim. Typically, the GOP does better with blacks in states that were less racist than average in the past, like Washington (25%), California (18%), and New Jersey (17%), and worse in the old Jim Crow states like Alabama (6%). Black variation in voting does not appear to be closely driven by family size -- for example, Bush won 18% of the black vote in California, where black fertility has been dropping sharply in recent decades. And the black vote is only 1/7th as large as white vote, so any model of who votes for whom needs to concentrate first on white voters.
Look, Karl Rove understands all these facts. Don't you think Democrats need to understand them too. Or do you prefer getting beat?#: Posted by Steve Sailer on 12/10 at 09:40 PM -
Richard -
Relax, guy!
I thought I made it pretty clear. I am rich, mostly because of my parents. So, what does that have to do with anything?
You told me to stop smirking, and that I feel guilty about my social standing.
Huh? Come on man, patronization does not suit you well - you're a smart guy.
If you knew me, it would be obvious that money doesn't mean shit to me. But, I guess you're right. The first day I learned that my parents had money, I should have killed them on the spot, so that I could have gone and done things on my own, and so everyone could feel bad for me.
You know very little about what I have accomplished on this earth, and yet you proclaim to know everything about me.
What do you know about my character?
It was you who attacked me for no reason. When I read your "profound" statements, I think about them, and respond if I feel like it. I don't make smart-ass comments out of the side of my mouth, and then move on to cryptically bash the next person.
Are you campaigning to become the new Pharyngula troll?
Ya got my vote!#: Posted by on 12/10 at 09:57 PM -
Do Democrats want to learn the underlying mechanisms under voter behavior and use that knowledge to figure out how to beat the Republicans … or do they just want to shoot the messenger
When the messenger is a Vdare racist?#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/10 at 10:08 PM -
Is it so impossible to believe that difference races have different mixes of talents?
Do you deny that Black people (African Americans from certain parts of Africa) have genetic traits that make them more suited for many types of sports including track and field?
The reality is that these traits known and are present in overwhelming amounts - fast twitch muscle, long legs, long thin calves and narrow hips are the ones that have been identified so far.
If the genetic advantage in sports is true, could it then be possible that "white" people have a genetic advantage to some races with regard to certain cognitive abilities? (And perhaps a genetic disadvantage relative to other races).
It just doesn't seem like so far fetched a conclusion to come to.
Now, that doesn't mean anyone is advocating unequal treatment or unequal opportunity under the law. In fact, I am sure everyone is strongly advocating equal treatment and equal access to employment, housing, etc.
However, if it is true that abilities are present in different amounts then all the policies were pursuing to try and close these gaps have about as much likelihood of success as a program to increase the total population of white people that can dunk a basketball You might be able to increase it a little bit, but I really don't think you will ever get white people dunking at the same rate as black people. You won't get close, really.
And if we conclude that doing the best we can do then we can move on to the more serious question of what should we do, if anything, about differences in ability that fall along racial lines.
It is a tough question, but I don't believe pretending that difference between the race don't exist is the answer.
-d#: Posted by on 12/10 at 11:01 PM -
I'm not a biologist, but my simple common sense tells me that the differences between individuals, due to their unique characeristics, is far greater than the differences between races. My siblings and I are the same race, have nearly identical genes, and grew up in the same environment and socioeconomic conditions. And yet, our abilities (athletic, academic, etc.) are very different. All this obsession with "differences in ability that fall along racial lines" seems to have one objective: to rationalize not spending money to help those Other People.
And I certainly hope the Democratic Party does not adopt these notions as a campaign strategy.#: Posted by on 12/10 at 11:54 PM -
Do you deny that Black people (African Americans from certain parts of Africa) have genetic traits that make them more suited for many types of sports including track and field?
See, this is exactly the problem with you racists. You take a minor and interesting statistical anomaly (some small populations in Africa have a somewhat higher percentage of an allele which is nonetheless present in all races) and turn it into "you got to hand it to them blacks: they sure are better at sports."
And then, building on your misunderstanding (whether deliberate or through stupidity) of that simple and interesting gene frequency datum, you think you've built enough of a case that you can then step into the light, confident that your brilliant reasoning will so dazzle us that we won't notice your pointy hood:
If the genetic advantage in sports is true, could it then be possible that “white” people have a genetic advantage to some races with regard to certain cognitive abilities? (And perhaps a genetic disadvantage relative to other races).
The fact is, if this is the most persuasive argument you can muster, and if you have any kind of following among whites, you provide a handy counter to your own thesis.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/11 at 12:40 AM -
Well, I don't think many have seriously contended that between-race variation in intelligence and personality factors is greater than within-race variation. Even The Bell Curve does not contend that. Even a two-thirds standard deviation difference between two groups (equivalent to 10 IQ points on a standard IQ scale) would only translate to 10% of variation between the groups, and 90% of variation within.
You can get the 10% figure with this calculation:
% of V (between) = 100% * .5S^2/(2+.5S^2), where S is the number of standard deviations between the means of the groups (assuming both groups have the same standard dev)
Inserting 2/3 as S gives a value of 10%.
To give an example of between group vs. within-group variation, I could make up two sequences of numbers:
Set 1 = {109, 88, 82, 119, 127}--mean 105, variance 302.8, std dev 17.4
Set 2 = {99, 78, 72, 109, 117}--mean 95, variance 302.8, std dev 17.4
If I mixed the two sets together, the new mean would be 100, and the new variance would be 327.8
So, the percentage of variation within these two sets is the variation within over the total variation with the sets mixed together. This gives 100% X 302.8/327.8 = 92.4%, so the percentage of variation between must be 100%-92.4%=7.6%
The percentage of variation between vs. within these sets can also be calculated using the formula 100% *.5S^2/(2+.5^2) for the variation within. The number of standard deviations between sets 1 and 2 is 10 (the difference in mean between the sets) divided by 17.4, which comes out to roughly .575.
Inserting this into the forumla, one gets 100% *.5(.575^2)/(2+.5*.575^2), which comes out to 7.6%, the same result for percentage of variation within the sets as I obtained before.#: Posted by on 12/11 at 12:47 AM -
The last entry of Steve Sailer completes my confusion. "White people are better able to afford to vote for candidates on quasi-symbolic family values grounds rather than bread and butter grounds, you see a much greater sensitivity among whites to family size", he says. He even estimates, if I understand it correctly, that 30% of the white vote is driven by quasi-symbolic family values. Blacks too are affected by family rethoric, but only marginally, as they are concerned primarily with urgent bread-and-butter issues.
Steve, if white people can be influenced (not once, but twice in a raw!) by empty quasi-symbolic rethoric, what are they, stupid?
Your idea was that there is a clear, powerful, causal correlation between a basic biological variable (having children) and voting (for Bush). I think the idea is important and it also explains why children-hating Europeans feel such a visceral repulsion towards Bush.
Now put on your thinking sombrero and tell us the mechanics of this thingie. BTW, let me point out to you that sexual organization is NOT correlated with the number of children.#: Posted by on 12/11 at 01:16 AM -
Jaimito says, "Steve, if white people can be influenced (not once, but twice in a row!) by empty quasi-symbolic rethoric, what are they, stupid?"
Thomas Frank makes a plausible case for that in his recent book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" And, I could make up a long list of GOP initiatives that I consider stupid: invading a country that didn't have anything to do with 9/11, eliminating the estate tax on billionaires, etc.
However, my article provides a clearer understanding of why exactly so many white people voted for Bush despite his mediocre to bad performance on conventional "issues" like the economy and foreign affairs. You may well still think the reasons are stupid, but you will understand the voters' reasons much better than you do now, which is obviously useful in politics.
As for the mechanism, I explain in very down to earth details how the higher cost of living in densely populated blue areas inclines people to either limit their family size or move to a cheaper red area. Please get it out of your head that I'm proposing some exotic genetic theory. This is all basic real estate talk -- you will find that you've had these discussions dozens of times with friends and real estate agents. The most important step toward understanding is PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE:
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_12_06/cover.html#: Posted by Steve Sailer on 12/11 at 03:52 AM -
No, we will not understand any better. As I pointed out in my article above, you say incredibly stupid things and draw incredibly stupid conclusions. You seem to believe a large majority of 'white people' believe as you do, that 'brown people' are a threat, and that they vote according to their racial fears.
There are people who do that, and it is a problem. It is a problem that will not be overcome by pandering to racists, something the VDARE bigots wish would happen; it will be defeated by educating people and pointing out the nasty little flaws in the racialist line. -
Well, I don’t think many have seriously contended that between-race variation in intelligence and personality factors is greater than within-race variation.
So when a lefty presents data showing that black people score lower on tests than white in an effort to show that a) we need to spend more money to education black people b) black people are not receiving a quality education c) black people experience racism in the classroom or d) some other half-baked scheme, I should respond:
Sure blacks are scoring a standard deviation below whites, but the overall variation in white scores is far greater than the difference between black and white scores, so your concerns are unfounded.
If you say the difference is meaningless for purposes of determining abilities, it also must be meaningless for investigating other issues.
Fact is, the difference is far to large to ignore for any purpose.
To put this another way, no one is saying some black people are smarter than some white people. (Which is what you are addressing when you talk about within-group varation vs group-to-group).
What they are saying is that if you grab one white person from and one black person randomly from a crowd, the white person is more likely to be smarter and the black guy is more likely to be better at many sports. (Not an earth shattering observation really).
Now, what the policy implications of these differences are is another very important question. But that is not the question being discussed here.
-d#: Posted by on 12/11 at 09:42 AM -
What they are saying is that if you grab one white person from and one black person randomly from a crowd, the white person is more likely to be smarter and the black guy is more likely to be better at many sports. (Not an earth shattering observation really).
This is palpably bullshit, and you are a goddamn racist. Not an earth shattering observation really.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/11 at 10:31 AM -
Daveg--
I was actually responding to another post by ggw. My point in saying that the vast majority of variation in IQ and almost any factor one can think of is between races is not to say that it's not important--10-15% of variation in some factor between two groups is actually quite significant (assuming the variation within the groups is not trivial), and represents a difference in means of roughly .7 to .8 standard deviations. If it were someday found that 10% of variation in intelligence really were due to genetically based racial differences, The Bell Curve would essentially be vindicated.#: Posted by on 12/11 at 10:55 AM -
My point in saying that the vast majority of variation in IQ and almost any factor one can think of is between races...
That should read within races.#: Posted by on 12/11 at 11:43 AM -
This is palpably bullshit, and you are a goddamn racist. Not an earth shattering observation really.
Sigh.
I will refine the statement slightly. If you grab one white person and one black person from a truly random crowd, the white person is much more likely to score higher on all sorts of tests that attempt to determine intelligence. Again, there are other races that will score higher than white people, on average.
This is an indisputable (and provable) fact. The only question is why - nurture or nature?
If, for example, large amounts of money were spent trying to improve the scores of black people via all sort of government programs, and over many decades little change was observed, then that would lead one to conclude nature does play a role.
If, on the other hand, you could show that placing black kids in a certain learning environment - boarding school or something comparable - caused the gap to go away for a sufficiently large sample, then that would point to nurture.
Knowing the true answer will then allow you to determine the proper course of action going forward (or at least debate it intelligently). Not knowing the answer will cause you to pursue all sorts of wasteful actions that will not give you the desired result.
I think people take statements like these and improperly extrapolate them to mean "we therefore should not bother allowing blacks to go to college" or some other similar piece of nonsense. This is completely untrue.
Everyone should still be allowed to pursue their dreams, of course.
-d#: Posted by on 12/11 at 04:44 PM -
I will refine the statement slightly. If you grab one white person and one black person from a truly random crowd, the white person is much more likely to score higher on all sorts of tests that attempt to determine intelligence.
Thanks for refining your statement. My judgment of your intent and character has been significantly reinforced.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/11 at 07:53 PM -
I think there are a couple of assumptions being made in your post. The first is that tests for intelligence are accurate. Let's assume that they are, because to disprove that would be beyond my abilities (though I always scored pretty well on them, which is why I have my doubts) and I have read that childhood IQ scores correlate well with adult income.
(Adult income is, of course, the only valid indicator of intelligence...
The second is that one could separate the notions of 'nature' and 'nurture' in either of the ways you suggest. I doubt this is the case. As far as I can tell, people are fundamentally irrational, and it's impossible to eliminate any one factor. Well, maybe that's not _quite_ true, but you'd have to work bloody hard at it. And, to go back to the specific case of black children in America, it would be impossible to provide for them an upbringing and thus process of socialization that does not include some element of racism, either in literal terms (racial abuse, etc.) or, more indirectly, via some awareness of the racist aspects of the history of America. (<-- The usual disclaimers apply. I omit them, with apologies to any offended American readers, in the interests of brevity.)
Of course, I don't really know to what extent this will have an effect, so I hope the reader will forgive some vagueness. I am exhibit A for this, too. My privileged upbringing by loving parents and subsequent expensive self-affirming education has enabled me to shrug off any suggestion that I am anything other than the sharpest tool in the box, despite any evidence to the contrary. It exists, most surely, and I am aware of it at an intellectual level, but my basic self-belief at some level remains, regardless. I don't like to bring this up, because it's tiresome for the reader, and poor style, but I mention it because it is what has lead me to believe that the more intangible aspects of one's childhood -- what you might term the 'background noise' in one's formative years -- can have a profound effect, irrespective of one's native abilities. (I have noticed something similar in my peers, as well.)
The upshot is that I am sure that this background noise, this general rumbling coming from the idea that there may or may not be some innate difference between black people and white people, cannot be eliminated and cannot be assumed to have no effect. And until it has died down, I'm not convinced that it is possible to separate in any meaningful way "nature" from "nurture", and I suspect that its presence will skew in some direction -- probably negative -- any attempt to measure innate intelligence. That's not guaranteed, but, as I said, people are irrational, and it's not possible to determine for sure what effect a given set of inputs will produce. But my guess is that the general effect will be negative.
You'd have to have a set of white people brought up in an equivalent environment, with an equivalent type of 'background noise', in order to be sure. As it stands, I feel there are too many other factors in play. - (I'd like to apologise to all for the abomination that appeared in place of my colon followed by a closing bracket. There appears to be no way to make these things appear correctly. I would never have written it had I realised.)
-
PZ, re #55:
I'd agree with you that Sailer makes some unfair generalization about what blue-people want - something I don't think he really has any experience about. I.e I don't think white liberals want gun control to "disarm the dangerous urban minorities that threaten their children’s safety". I think they want gun control to disarm everybody (including minorities but in no way focusing on them), and they think that will be good for everyone's safety (not just their childrens' though that is good too). Sailer puts a very negative spin on this. Well, that sells magazines.
But I could be wrong about that - I'm not a liberal.
However, Sailer's remarkably strong correlation still stands, and begs for explanation. And it is clear to me, at least, that people do choose where to live based in part on schools.
All people want good schools for their kids. They will move to get them. However, moving is expensive. This plays out in several ways:
(1) People who don't have kids can live whereever they want. The funnest places to be for many people are cities, so, that's where the non-fertile people end up. (Gays, singles and couples w/o children.)
(2) People who can afford private schools don't need to move to get good schools, so they, too, end up in cities
(3) People who can't afford private schools, but do have kids, end up moving into suburbs which they perceive as having good schools.
Now, if it were only those factors operating, you'd still see a white/black separation (and voting effect) due to the simple fact that white people have more wealth than black people. Moving is not cheap, in three ways:
(1) the direct cost of the move itself (not really expensive)
(2) the cost of buying/renting in suburbs is high because the price of good schools is partly built in
(3) the opportunity cost of movement in terms of commuting may be very high, esp. for people depending on public transit
However, it seems clear to me the effect is stronger than just the effects above would produce. And there, I think the simplest explanation is racism. But that's not racism as in "evil white people who hate black people" so much as: that all people want to live in neighborhoods where there are lots of other people "like them", in whatever ways they perceive as important, with race being one of those. Hence, self-segregation. The fact that race is perceived by all people is "racist". But I'd not call that evil - it's just the way things are. Not being able to see race in our society, at this time, is a sign of singular stupidity.
So, segregation is happening due to both black "racism" as well as white "racism". White people certainly are reluctant to live in cities. There is a code for talking about this: "safety", and, yes "the schools". But black people are reticent to move out into lily-white burbs. They prefer burbs that have large black minorities. (I'd suggest this is not irrational.)
I'd even suggest that one aspect that people select for in deciding where to settle is the politics thereof. I know I live on a solidly Democratic street, where there were numerous Kerry signs (including my wife's), and zero Bush signs. (I live in Baltimore, within city limits.) My wife bought this place because, in part, she feels politically comfortable here.
My block is a perfect microcosm of Sailer's thesis. In addition to being solidly Democratic/liberal, there are no white kids I know of on my block who are school age. The residents are:
(a) a few senior citizens (all white), possibly original residents (block was built in the '40s)
(b) a hispanic woman and her grown daughter
(c) one white couple with one 2-year-old, another white single mother with ~4 year old, who is moving (I don't know where)
(d) many young educated single professional white women, mid-30s. (My wife was one of these until recently.)
(e) several black families including several school-aged kids
Of these, I don't know of any who would have voted for Bush other than possibly a few of the old people, none of whom I have met. The white fertility on my street is very low, and the vote almost entirely Democratic.
Where do you live? Do you not know couples who've gotten married, had kids, then moved to the burbs for the schools? If you do, then you have an anecdotal handle on Sailer's thesis. -
Nature vs. Nurture
I really just wanted to see if people would acknowledge the possiblity that nature played a role in testing and/or intelligence. It seems to me that some people who post here are not open to the possibility. Their mind is closed.
For those that do acknowledge the possibility, I don't really want to get into a actual debate about nature vs. nurture here, but I will make a couple of points.
1) Your upbringing does not seem typical even for white people. College admissions tests are giving to a very large sample of white students very few of which do much of anything except attend standard suburban public schools. They are not doing math flash cards at home or entering spelling contests. Most barely do the homework assigned to them, get B's, and are focused on socializing.
2) Trying to find the effect of racism, or lack thereof, on the academic performance of black people is difficult. However, one can observe the difference between the scores of east asians and hispanics. These two groups have somewhat similar experiences here in the US in term of their migration and their skin color. One would think they have experienced similar levels of racism. Yet we see very different sets of scores on admissions tests and the like. This would lead one to conclude something other than racism was causing this difference.
-d#: Posted by on 12/12 at 06:18 PM -
Yeah. Like culture.
Look, you're talking to a DST fan here. When I see people barking up the ol' nature vs nurture tree, I pretty much figure they don't know what they're talking about. I reject both—developmental information resides neither in genes nor environment exclusively, but is an emergent property of interactions between disparate developmental resources. Genes. Cytoplasmic factors. Culture. Environment. Maternal history. Imprinting. Accidents.
And don't even get me started on "intelligence". g is what you get when you want to pretend mind can be reduced to a simple linear scale, and again, it reflects a conceptual failing in the believer. -
Leonard, ... you could have simply said that wealth and income provide one more choices in housing, education, transportation, etc. SS, though, is arguing that there is something white about this. To answer your question, I have lived in large cities and saw people of all colors attempt to maximize the advantage for their children by moving to the suburbs. I would argue that this was not an effective strategy, as they often bring their baggage with them. I have also lived in rural areas where people of all colors move to semi-remote school districts to escape the 'bad' schools in towns of 20,000. Again not a particularly effective educational strategy. Good Calculus and Science teachers are few and far between in tiny schools.
SS is saying that the only people worth studying in these matters are white people, and that is an entirely inappropriate approach.#: Posted by on 12/12 at 08:27 PM -
For the record, I am completely open to hearing evidence that there is a genetic component to intelligence, whatever the hell that is, and even that there may be differential appearances of said putative smarts gene in different ethnicities.
I don't think there's any such thing, but I'm open to hearing actual evidence.
The problem is, none of what's been "presented" here (to stretch the usual meaning of that word) constitutes anything close to evidence. What we have been offered here is a stated agenda - why are Black people dumber than whites? - and a whole raft of subsequent misrepresentations, confusions of slight statistical trends with ubiquitous states, and statements ex[posing the utter ignorance of the speaker.
For instance:
Trying to find the effect of racism, or lack thereof, on the academic performance of black people is difficult. However, one can observe the difference between the scores of east asians and hispanics. These two groups have somewhat similar experiences here in the US in term of their migration and their skin color. One would think they have experienced similar levels of racism. Yet we see very different sets of scores on admissions tests and the like.
The number of errors in the above is rather daunting. Let's just take two that I'm most familiar with: That the racism faced by Asians is roughly comparable to that faced by Blacks, and that Asians excel at obtaining high test scores despite this racism.
The first can be dismissed quickly. Asians have experienced and continue to experience heinous treatment based on their "race," with examples such as the Chinese Exclusion Acts and wartime relocation and individual hate crimes that continue to this day. But a quick application of two thought experiments - "bringing home the new boyfriend" and "who just bought the place next door?" - indicates to the intellectually honest prson that there's a marked difference between the treatment Asians receive in the US and that which Blacks receive.
The second is itself based on a racist assumption: Asians are a uniform people. The truth is, there is as wide a difference in test scores within the Asian communities as in the test-taking nation as a whole. Middle-class (or higher) people of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent have done very well on standardized tests and college entrance exams and such. The important modifier there is "middle-class." Cultures, even minority cultures, which place a premium on educational achievement tend to exhibit higher scores among their members - because parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents and siblings hound kids to study. Add to that the monetary means to aquire educational resources, and the test scores are explained, no genes necessary.
My (incidentally Chinese-American) wife is a grade school teacher in a poor neighborhood with a large Asian population. Plenty of the "superiorly intelligent" Asian kids in that school do poorly on tests, probably as poorly as the poorest of the African American kids. Some of them are of ethnicities without as strong an educational emphasis, and some of them have parents who prize education but who are too busy working two and a half shifts every day to make sure homework gets done, and some of them just fall into the anti-intellectualism so prevalent among the US poor of all colors and ethnicities.
Pretty much everthing I've said here about Asians can be said of Latinos: a diverse set of cultures subsumed under one artificial taxon; far more willingness among the mass culture to grant "honorary whiteness" to some members; differences in class standing and cutural attitudes about education; test scores all over the map (including at my wife's school.)
In other words, Daveg, your desire to prove that your prejudice against blacks is in some way supported by biology has led you far down the road into the Land of You Don't Know What You're Talking About. This has nothing to do with anyone's unwillingness to consider possibilities.. It has to do with our knowing a shoddy, dishonest argument when we see one.#: Posted by Chris Clarke on 12/12 at 08:43 PM -
PZ writes:
Look, you’re talking to a DST fan here. When I see people barking up the ol’ nature vs nurture tree, I pretty much figure they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Well, I don't think anyone who has even briefly thought of the "nature/nurture" issue would seriously disagree that one's phenotype is due to an interaction between genetics and environment. Everyone from a raving commie to a neo-Nazi could agree that one's phenotype is the result of interaction between genetics and environment. I think it is perfectly fair to say that one's position can gene