Strong disagree based on the “evidence” you posted for this elsewhere in this thread. It consists one-half of some dude on Twitter asserting that “Scott is a racist eugenics supporter” and retweeting other people’s inflammatory rewordings of Scott, and one-half of private email from Scott saying things like
HBD is probably partially correct or at least very non-provably not-correct
It seems gratuitous for you to argue the point with such biased commentary. And what Scott actually says sounds like his judgement of … I’m not quite sure what, since HBD is left without a definition, but it sounds a lot like the evidence he mentioned years later from
a paper by scientists Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman, who, I notice, wrote this book with “an analysis of the reporting on intelligence testing by the press and television in the US for the period 1969–1983, as well as an opinion poll of 207 journalists and 86 science editors about IQ testing”, and
(yes, I found the links I couldn’t find earlier thanks to a quote by frankybegs from this post which―I was mistaken!―does mention Murray and The Bell Curve because he is responding to Cade Metz and other critics).
This sounds like his usual “learn to love scientific consensus” stance, but it appears you refuse to acknowledge a difference between Scott privately deferring to expert opinion, on one hand, and having “Charles Murray posters on his bedroom wall”.
Almost the sum total of my knowledge of Murray’s book comes from Shaun’s rebuttal of it, which sounded quite reasonable to me. But Shaun argues that specific people are biased and incorrect, such as Richard Lynn and (duh) Charles Murray. Not only does Scott never cite these people, what he said about The Bell Curve was “I never read it”. And why should he? Murray isn’t even a geneticist!
So it seems the secret evidence matches the public evidence, does not show that “Scott thinks very highly of Murray”, doesn’t show that he ever did, doesn’t show that he is “aligned” with Murray etc. How can Scott be a Murray fanboy without even reading Murray?
You saw this before:
I can’t find any expert surveys giving the expected result that they all agree this is dumb and definitely 100% environment and we can move on (I’d be very relieved if anybody could find those, or if they could explain why the ones I found were fake studies or fake experts or a biased sample, or explain how I’m misreading them or that they otherwise shouldn’t be trusted. If you have thoughts on this, please send me an email). I’ve vacillated back and forth on how to think about this question so many times, and right now my personal probability estimate is “I am still freaking out about this, go away go away go away”. And I understand I have at least two potentially irresolveable biases on this question: one, I’m a white person in a country with a long history of promoting white supremacy; and two, if I lean in favor then everyone will hate me, and use it as a bludgeon against anyone I have ever associated with, and I will die alone in a ditch and maybe deserve it.
You may just assume Scott is lying (or as you put it, “giving a maximally positive spin on his own beliefs”), but again I think you are conflating. To suppose experts in a field have expertise in that field isn’t merely different from “aligning oneself” with a divisive conservative political scientist whose book one has never read ― it’s really obviously different how are you not getting this??
I feel like maybe what’s going on here is that you do not know what’s in The Bell Curve, so you assume it is some maximally evil caricature? Whereas what’s actually in the book is exactly Scott’s position, the one you say is “his usual “learn to love scientific consensus” stance”.
If you’d stop being weird about it for just a second, could you answer something for me? What is one (1) position that Murray holds about race/IQ and Scott doesn’t? Just name a single one, I’ll wait.
Or maybe what’s going on here is that you have a strong “SCOTT GOOD” prior as well as a strong “MURRAY BAD” prior, and therefore anyone associating the two must be on an ugly smear campaign. But there’s actually zero daylight between their stances and both of them know it!
My post is weirdly aggressive? I think you are weirdly aggressive against Scott.
Since few people have read the book (including, I would wager, Cade Metz), the impact of associating Scott with Bell Curve doesn’t depend directly on what’s in the book, it depends on broad public perceptions of the book.
Having said that, according to Shaun (here’s that link again), the Bell Curve relies heavily of the work of Richard Lynn, who was funded by, and later became the head of, the Pioneer Fund, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. In contrast, as far as I know, the conclusions of the sources cited by Scott do not hinge upon Richard Lynn. And given this, it would surprise me if the conclusions of The Bell Curve actually did match the mainstream consensus.
One of Scott’s sources says 25-50% for “heritability” of the IQ gap. I’m pretty confident the Bell Curve doesn’t say this, and I give P>50% that The Bell Curve suggests/states/implies that the IQ gap is over 50% “heritable” (most likely near 100%). Shaun also indicated that the Bell Curve equated heritability with explanatory power (e.g. that if heritability is X%, Murray’s interpretation would be that genetics explains or causes X% of the IQ gap). Shaun persuasively refuted this. I did not come away with a good understanding of how to think about heritability, but I expect experts would understand the subtlety of this topic better than Charles Murray.
And as Shaun says:
It’s not simply that Herrnstein & Murray are breaking the supposed taboo of discussing IQ differences that sparked the backlash. It’s that they explicitly linked those differences to a set of policy proposals. This is why The Bell Curve is controversial, because of its political ideas.
For example, that welfare programs should be stopped, which I think Scott has never advocated and which he would, in spirit, oppose. It also seems relevant that Charles Murray seems to use bad logic in his policy reasoning, as (1) this might be another reason the book was so controversial and (2) we’re on LessWrong where that sort of thing usually matters.
Having said that, my prior argument that you’ve been unreasonable does not depend on any of this. A personal analogy: I used to write articles about climate science (ex1, ex2, ex3). This doesn’t mean I’m “aligned” with Greta Thunberg and Al Gore or whatever specific person in the climate space you have in mind. I would instantly dislike someone who makes or insists upon claiming my views correspond to those particular people or certain others, as it would be inappropriate as well as untrue. Different people in the climate space do in fact take different positions on various questions other than the single most contested one (and they have different reputations, and I expect that human beings in the field of genetics work the same way). Even if you just say I have a “James Hansen poster on my bedroom wall” I’m going to be suspicious―sure, I respect the guy and I agree with him in some respects, but I’m not familiar with all his positions and what do you know about it anyway? And if you also argue against me by posting a Twitter thread by someone who appears to hate my guts… well… that is at least weirdly aggressive.
I also think that insisting on conflating two different things, after someone has pointed out to you that they are different, is a very anti-rationalist, un-LessWrong thing to do.
Edit: also weirdly aggressive is strong downvoting good faith replies. I don’t have the faintest idea why you’re acting like this, but it’s scary as hell and I hope to Moloch that other people notice too. A downvote is not a counterargument! It’s precisely as meaningful as a punch in the face! It doesn’t make you right or me wrong, it merely illustrates how humanity is doomed.
Strong disagree based on the “evidence” you posted for this elsewhere in this thread. It consists one-half of some dude on Twitter asserting that “Scott is a racist eugenics supporter” and retweeting other people’s inflammatory rewordings of Scott, and one-half of private email from Scott saying things like
It seems gratuitous for you to argue the point with such biased commentary. And what Scott actually says sounds like his judgement of … I’m not quite sure what, since HBD is left without a definition, but it sounds a lot like the evidence he mentioned years later from
a paper by scientists Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman, who, I notice, wrote this book with “an analysis of the reporting on intelligence testing by the press and television in the US for the period 1969–1983, as well as an opinion poll of 207 journalists and 86 science editors about IQ testing”, and
“Survey of expert opinion on intelligence: Intelligence research, experts’ background, controversial issues, and the media”
(yes, I found the links I couldn’t find earlier thanks to a quote by frankybegs from this post which―I was mistaken!―does mention Murray and The Bell Curve because he is responding to Cade Metz and other critics).
This sounds like his usual “learn to love scientific consensus” stance, but it appears you refuse to acknowledge a difference between Scott privately deferring to expert opinion, on one hand, and having “Charles Murray posters on his bedroom wall”.
Almost the sum total of my knowledge of Murray’s book comes from Shaun’s rebuttal of it, which sounded quite reasonable to me. But Shaun argues that specific people are biased and incorrect, such as Richard Lynn and (duh) Charles Murray. Not only does Scott never cite these people, what he said about The Bell Curve was “I never read it”. And why should he? Murray isn’t even a geneticist!
So it seems the secret evidence matches the public evidence, does not show that “Scott thinks very highly of Murray”, doesn’t show that he ever did, doesn’t show that he is “aligned” with Murray etc. How can Scott be a Murray fanboy without even reading Murray?
You saw this before:
You may just assume Scott is lying (or as you put it, “giving a maximally positive spin on his own beliefs”), but again I think you are conflating. To suppose experts in a field have expertise in that field isn’t merely different from “aligning oneself” with a divisive conservative political scientist whose book one has never read ― it’s really obviously different how are you not getting this??
Weirdly aggressive post.
I feel like maybe what’s going on here is that you do not know what’s in The Bell Curve, so you assume it is some maximally evil caricature? Whereas what’s actually in the book is exactly Scott’s position, the one you say is “his usual “learn to love scientific consensus” stance”.
If you’d stop being weird about it for just a second, could you answer something for me? What is one (1) position that Murray holds about race/IQ and Scott doesn’t? Just name a single one, I’ll wait.
Or maybe what’s going on here is that you have a strong “SCOTT GOOD” prior as well as a strong “MURRAY BAD” prior, and therefore anyone associating the two must be on an ugly smear campaign. But there’s actually zero daylight between their stances and both of them know it!
My post is weirdly aggressive? I think you are weirdly aggressive against Scott.
Since few people have read the book (including, I would wager, Cade Metz), the impact of associating Scott with Bell Curve doesn’t depend directly on what’s in the book, it depends on broad public perceptions of the book.
Having said that, according to Shaun (here’s that link again), the Bell Curve relies heavily of the work of Richard Lynn, who was funded by, and later became the head of, the Pioneer Fund, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. In contrast, as far as I know, the conclusions of the sources cited by Scott do not hinge upon Richard Lynn. And given this, it would surprise me if the conclusions of The Bell Curve actually did match the mainstream consensus.
One of Scott’s sources says 25-50% for “heritability” of the IQ gap. I’m pretty confident the Bell Curve doesn’t say this, and I give P>50% that The Bell Curve suggests/states/implies that the IQ gap is over 50% “heritable” (most likely near 100%). Shaun also indicated that the Bell Curve equated heritability with explanatory power (e.g. that if heritability is X%, Murray’s interpretation would be that genetics explains or causes X% of the IQ gap). Shaun persuasively refuted this. I did not come away with a good understanding of how to think about heritability, but I expect experts would understand the subtlety of this topic better than Charles Murray.
And as Shaun says:
For example, that welfare programs should be stopped, which I think Scott has never advocated and which he would, in spirit, oppose. It also seems relevant that Charles Murray seems to use bad logic in his policy reasoning, as (1) this might be another reason the book was so controversial and (2) we’re on LessWrong where that sort of thing usually matters.
Having said that, my prior argument that you’ve been unreasonable does not depend on any of this. A personal analogy: I used to write articles about climate science (ex1, ex2, ex3). This doesn’t mean I’m “aligned” with Greta Thunberg and Al Gore or whatever specific person in the climate space you have in mind. I would instantly dislike someone who makes or insists upon claiming my views correspond to those particular people or certain others, as it would be inappropriate as well as untrue. Different people in the climate space do in fact take different positions on various questions other than the single most contested one (and they have different reputations, and I expect that human beings in the field of genetics work the same way). Even if you just say I have a “James Hansen poster on my bedroom wall” I’m going to be suspicious―sure, I respect the guy and I agree with him in some respects, but I’m not familiar with all his positions and what do you know about it anyway? And if you also argue against me by posting a Twitter thread by someone who appears to hate my guts… well… that is at least weirdly aggressive.
I also think that insisting on conflating two different things, after someone has pointed out to you that they are different, is a very anti-rationalist, un-LessWrong thing to do.
Edit: also weirdly aggressive is strong downvoting good faith replies. I don’t have the faintest idea why you’re acting like this, but it’s scary as hell and I hope to Moloch that other people notice too. A downvote is not a counterargument! It’s precisely as meaningful as a punch in the face! It doesn’t make you right or me wrong, it merely illustrates how humanity is doomed.