Shalizi is somewhere around Marxism in politics. This makes his writings on intelligence very frustrating, but on the other hand, it also means he can write very interesting things on economics at times—his essay on Red Plenty is the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen on economics & computational complexity. Horses for courses.
Shalizi states at least part of his position as follows:
“Market socialism” is a current of ideas [...] for how to make extensive use of markets without thereby creating gross economic and political inequality. [...] On the other hand, modern states are powerful enough as things stand; to turn the economy wholly over to them is a bad idea. To combine markets with socialism seems like an elegant and feasible solution, at least technically, and it’s one which I support [...]
and on the same page says these things:
Incredible things were done in the name of [the political control of economic life], some of them noble and heroic (like resistance to Fascism, and the creation of democratic welfare states), others scarcely matched for wickedness (like Stalin’s purges and deliberate famines) and stupidity (like Mao’s Great Leap Forward and apparently unintentional but highly foreseeable famines).
and
The history of socialist movements is [...] bound up with the histories of organized labour, of economics and left-wing politics and general, and, less honourably, with that of revolutions and totalitarianism. [...] it had become clear [...] that they [sc. the Soviets] were far, far worse than capitalist democracies [...]
I have to say that none of this sounds very Marxist to me. Shalizi apparently finds revolutions dishonourable; the most notable attempts at (nominally) Marxist states, the USSR and the PRC, he criticizes in very strong terms; he wants most prices to be set by markets (at least this is how I interpret what he says on that page and others it links to).
Sometime between [1956] and 1968 [...] he [sc. Kolakowski] stopped considering himself a Marxist, even a revisionist one [...] though still a socialist and (I think) an atheist.
followed in the next paragraph by
I think his views of socialism and Marxism are absolutely on-target
which seems to me to imply, in particular, that Shalizi doesn’t consider himself “a Marxist, even a revisionist one”.
He’s certainly a leftist, certainly considers himself a socialist, but he seems quite some way from Marxism. (And further still from, e.g., any position taken by the USSR or the PRC.)
[The ideas of the Frankfurt School] are very extreme examples of ways of thinking about society, both normatively and descriptively, for which I have very little sympathy, yet are closely affiliated to ideas I am receptive to. (E.g.: so far as I can see, they were all what Marxists would call “idealists”, which is not a compliment, yet they claimed to be Marxists, even historical materialists!) My interest in them is thus interest in my notorious and embarrassing ideological cousins...
Not that I think pigeon-holing him is very useful for determining his views on economics or politics, let alone IQ.
This makes his writings on intelligence very frustrating
Does having political views that approximate Marxism imply irrationally-derived views on intelligence? I don’t see why it should, but this may simply be a matter of ignorance or oversight on my part.
I am not an expert on Marx but would be unsurprised to hear that he made a bunch of claims that are ill-supported by evidence and have strong implications about intelligence—say, that The Proletariat is in no way inferior in capabilities, even statistically, to The Bourgeoisie. But to me “somewhere around Marxism in politics” doesn’t mean any kind of commitment to believing everything Marx wrote. It isn’t obvious to me why someone couldn’t hold pretty much any halfway-reasonable opinions about intelligence, while still thinking that it is morally preferable for workers to own the businesses they work for and the equipment they use, that we would collectively be better off with much much more redistribution of wealth than we currently have (or even with the outright abolition of individual property), etc.
In another comment I’ve given my reasons for doubting that Shalizi is even “somewhere around Marxism in politics”. But even if I’m wrong about that, I’m not aware of prior commitments he has that would make him unable to think rationally about intelligence.
Of course it needn’t be a matter of prior commitments as such. It could, e.g., be that he is immersed in generally-very-leftist thought (this being either a cause or a consequence of his own leftishness), and that since for whatever reason there’s substantial correlation between being a leftist and having one set of views about intelligence rather than another, Shalizi has just absorbed a typically-leftist position on intelligence by osmosis. But, again, the fact that he could have doesn’t mean he actually has.
I think the guts of what you’re claiming is: Shalizi’s views on intelligence are a consequence of his political views; either his political views are not arrived at rationally, or the way his political views have given rise to his views on intelligence are not rational, or both. -- That could well be true, but so far what you’ve given evidence for is simply that he holds one particular set of political views. How do you get from there to the stronger claim about the relationship between his views on the two topics?
I think the guts of what you’re claiming is: Shalizi’s views on intelligence are a consequence of his political views; either his political views are not arrived at rationally, or the way his political views have given rise to his views on intelligence are not rational, or both. -- That could well be true, but so far what you’ve given evidence for is simply that he holds one particular set of political views. How do you get from there to the stronger claim about the relationship between his views on the two topics?
At least part of it was reading his ‘Statistical Myth’ essay, being skeptical of the apparent argument for some of the reasons Dalliard would lay out at length years later, reading all the positive discussions of it by people I was unsure understood either psychometrics or Shalizi’s essay (which he helpfully links), and then reading a followup dialogue http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/495.html where—at least, this is how it reads to me—he carefully covers his ass, walks back his claims, and quietly concedes a lot of key points. At that point, I started to seriously wonder if Shalizi could be trusted on this topic; his constant invocation of Stephen Jay Gould (who should be infamous by this point) and his gullible swallowing of ‘deliberate practice’ as more important than any other factor which since has been pretty convincingly debunked (both on display in the dialogue) merely reinforce my impression and the link to Gould (Shalizi’s chief comment on Gould’s Mismeasure of Man is apparently solely “I do not recommend this for the simple reason that I read it in 1988, when I was fourteen. I remember it as a very good book, for whatever that’s worth.”; no word on whether he is bothered by Gould’s fraud) suggests it’s partially ideological. Another revealing page: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/iq.html I can understand disrecommending Rushton, but disrecommending Jensen who invented a lot of the field and whose foes even admire him? Recommending a journalist from 1922? Recommending some priming bullshit? (Where’s the fierce methodologist statistician when you need him...?) There’s one consistent criterion he applies: if it’s against IQ and anything to do with it, he recommends it, and if it’s for it, he disrecommends it. Apparently only foes of it ever have any of the truth.
Shalizi is somewhere around Marxism in politics. This makes his writings on intelligence very frustrating, but on the other hand, it also means he can write very interesting things on economics at times—his essay on Red Plenty is the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen on economics & computational complexity. Horses for courses.
Shalizi states at least part of his position as follows:
and on the same page says these things:
and
I have to say that none of this sounds very Marxist to me. Shalizi apparently finds revolutions dishonourable; the most notable attempts at (nominally) Marxist states, the USSR and the PRC, he criticizes in very strong terms; he wants most prices to be set by markets (at least this is how I interpret what he says on that page and others it links to).
Oh, here’s another bit of evidence:
followed in the next paragraph by
which seems to me to imply, in particular, that Shalizi doesn’t consider himself “a Marxist, even a revisionist one”.
He’s certainly a leftist, certainly considers himself a socialist, but he seems quite some way from Marxism. (And further still from, e.g., any position taken by the USSR or the PRC.)
How about this?
Not that I think pigeon-holing him is very useful for determining his views on economics or politics, let alone IQ.
Suggests that Marxism is an idea Shalizi is “receptive to” but not (at least to me) that he’s actually a Marxist as such.
Does having political views that approximate Marxism imply irrationally-derived views on intelligence? I don’t see why it should, but this may simply be a matter of ignorance or oversight on my part.
I am not an expert on Marx but would be unsurprised to hear that he made a bunch of claims that are ill-supported by evidence and have strong implications about intelligence—say, that The Proletariat is in no way inferior in capabilities, even statistically, to The Bourgeoisie. But to me “somewhere around Marxism in politics” doesn’t mean any kind of commitment to believing everything Marx wrote. It isn’t obvious to me why someone couldn’t hold pretty much any halfway-reasonable opinions about intelligence, while still thinking that it is morally preferable for workers to own the businesses they work for and the equipment they use, that we would collectively be better off with much much more redistribution of wealth than we currently have (or even with the outright abolition of individual property), etc.
In another comment I’ve given my reasons for doubting that Shalizi is even “somewhere around Marxism in politics”. But even if I’m wrong about that, I’m not aware of prior commitments he has that would make him unable to think rationally about intelligence.
Of course it needn’t be a matter of prior commitments as such. It could, e.g., be that he is immersed in generally-very-leftist thought (this being either a cause or a consequence of his own leftishness), and that since for whatever reason there’s substantial correlation between being a leftist and having one set of views about intelligence rather than another, Shalizi has just absorbed a typically-leftist position on intelligence by osmosis. But, again, the fact that he could have doesn’t mean he actually has.
I think the guts of what you’re claiming is: Shalizi’s views on intelligence are a consequence of his political views; either his political views are not arrived at rationally, or the way his political views have given rise to his views on intelligence are not rational, or both. -- That could well be true, but so far what you’ve given evidence for is simply that he holds one particular set of political views. How do you get from there to the stronger claim about the relationship between his views on the two topics?
At least part of it was reading his ‘Statistical Myth’ essay, being skeptical of the apparent argument for some of the reasons Dalliard would lay out at length years later, reading all the positive discussions of it by people I was unsure understood either psychometrics or Shalizi’s essay (which he helpfully links), and then reading a followup dialogue http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/495.html where—at least, this is how it reads to me—he carefully covers his ass, walks back his claims, and quietly concedes a lot of key points. At that point, I started to seriously wonder if Shalizi could be trusted on this topic; his constant invocation of Stephen Jay Gould (who should be infamous by this point) and his gullible swallowing of ‘deliberate practice’ as more important than any other factor which since has been pretty convincingly debunked (both on display in the dialogue) merely reinforce my impression and the link to Gould (Shalizi’s chief comment on Gould’s Mismeasure of Man is apparently solely “I do not recommend this for the simple reason that I read it in 1988, when I was fourteen. I remember it as a very good book, for whatever that’s worth.”; no word on whether he is bothered by Gould’s fraud) suggests it’s partially ideological. Another revealing page: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/iq.html I can understand disrecommending Rushton, but disrecommending Jensen who invented a lot of the field and whose foes even admire him? Recommending a journalist from 1922? Recommending some priming bullshit? (Where’s the fierce methodologist statistician when you need him...?) There’s one consistent criterion he applies: if it’s against IQ and anything to do with it, he recommends it, and if it’s for it, he disrecommends it. Apparently only foes of it ever have any of the truth.
Informative. Thanks! Though I must admit that my reaction to the pages of Shalizi that you cite isn’t the same as yours.