[lit-ideas] Are Muslims lowering the intelligence of German society?
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:46:04 -0500
On 11/27/2010 3:39 PM, Robert Paul quoted:
4. IQ tests measure how "smart" or "intelligent"
people are and are capable of rank ordering people in a linear
order.
5. IQ tests can measure this accurately.
6. IQ tests are not biased with regard to race
ethnic group or socioeconomic status.
Brace proceeds to argue that there are faults
in every one of these assumptions."
No particular horse in this race except my usual
glee in poking at people's motives.
I read _The Bell Curve_ about six years ago. The
authors -- one of whom received an award for his
statistical methodology and clarity -- seem to
take every opportunity to qualify their claims. I
recall an extensive section that discusses "5."
and an even longer section on "6."
In the *section* on bias, the authors outlined a
spectrum of cultural and social biases that can
alter the results of IQ tests, as well as the
variety and changes in such tests, and described
the selection of bias-free or bias-adjusted
testing. As I recall, they admitted the
fallibility of attempts to evaluate the best
bias-free tests or bias adjusted tests, and
described how they employed the best metrics
available at the time of the research.
The storm that followed the book interests me more
than the results of the studies, but I'll take a
moment to mention one of their findings (which
were limited to the US population as I recall):
* American female high-school students with
low IQs -- regardless of ethnicity -- are much
more likely to have teenage pregnancies.
Back to the storm. Mike culled sections from
Wikipedia about black-white comparisons. However
the book seldom if ever reads as fuel for a racism
campaign. For example, the authors state that
Asian-Americans consistently score higher than
white-Americans (albinos?) across the range of
metrics. By Mike's and Konner's reasoning, then,
this "scurrilous study" could be viewed as "a
deliberate assault on efforts to improve the
school performance of White-Americans." No sense
schooling us European mutts: no good will come of
it. Only school Asians only in that thar book
learning.
I enjoyed the play of unexamined motives in the
sudden rush to condemn the book. In fact, I read
one supposed refutation of the authors' methods
online which, although dressed up in statistics
and straining to maintain the language of
scientific journals, couldn't help but seethe out
its ideological rage. Now that's comedy, ladies
and gentlemen, a statistical version of _Pale
Fire_, only the "Kinbote"-author of that
refutation is more concerned with hate than with
narcissistic memory. All scientific tuxedo and he
was still sputtering with flushed cheeks.
Regards,
Eric
IQ: 152
occupation: stooge
PS: As for IQ itself, my opinion is that it's like
medical diagnosis and treatment: immense
individual variability of one's personal baseline
makes "best practices" dicey at best.
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