The curmudgeonly view epitomized by Turkheimer says that science is about understanding the _causal structure_ of phenomena, and that polygenic scores don't fucking tell us anything. [Divorce is heritable _in the same way_ that intelligence is heritable](http://www.geneticshumanagency.org/gha/the-ubiquity-problem-for-group-differences-in-behavior/), not because there are "divorce genes" in any meaningful biological sense, but because of a "universal, nonspecific genetic pull on everything."
-Notably, Plomin and Turkheimer aren't actually disagreeing here: it's a difference in emphasis rather than facts. Polygenic scores _don't_ explain mechanisms—but might they end up being useful, and used, anyway? Murray's vision of social science is content to make predictions and "explain variance" while remaining ignorant of ultimate causality. Meanwhile, my cursory understanding (while kicking myself for [_still_](/2018/Dec/untitled-metablogging-26-december-2018/#daphne-koller-and-the-methods) not having put in the hours to get farther into [_Daphne Koller and the Methods of Rationality_](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/probabilistic-graphical-models)) was that you need to understand causality in order to predict what interventions will have what effects—maybe our feeble state of knowledge is _why_ we don't know how to find reliable large-effect environmental interventions that still yet might exist in the vastness of the space of possible interventions.
+Notably, Plomin and Turkheimer aren't actually disagreeing here: it's a difference in emphasis rather than facts. Polygenic scores _don't_ explain mechanisms—but might they end up being useful, and used, anyway? Murray's vision of social science is content to make predictions and "explain variance" while remaining ignorant of ultimate causality. Meanwhile, my cursory understanding (while kicking myself for [_still_](/2018/Dec/untitled-metablogging-26-december-2018/#daphne-koller-and-the-methods) not having put in the hours to get much farther into [_Daphne Koller and the Methods of Rationality_](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/probabilistic-graphical-models)) was that you need to understand causality in order to predict what interventions will have what effects—maybe our feeble state of knowledge is _why_ we don't know how to find reliable large-effect environmental interventions that still yet might exist in the vastness of the space of possible interventions.
There are also some appendicies at the back of the book! Appendix 1 (reproduced from, um, one of Murray's earlier books with a coauthor) explains some basic statistics concepts. Appendix 2 ("Sexual Dimorphism in Humans") goes over the prevalence of intersex conditions and gays, and then—so much for this post broadening the [topic scope of this blog](/tag/two-type-taxonomy/)—transgender typology! Murray presents the Blanchard–Bailey–Lawrence–Littman view as fact, which I think is basically _correct_, but a more comprehensive treatment (which I concede may be too much too hope for from a mere Appendix) would have at least _mentioned_ alternative views ([Serano](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intrinsic_Inclinations_Model)? [Veale](/papers/veale-lomax-clarke-identity_defense_model.pdf)?), if only to explain _why_ they're worth dismissing. (Contrast to the eight pages in the main text explaining why "But, but, epigenetics!" is worth dismissing.) Then Appendix 3 ("Sex Differences in Brain Volumes and Variance") has tables of brain-size data, and an explanation of the greater-male-variance hypothesis. Cool!
If the blank slate doctrine isn't _scientifically_ compelling—it's not something you would invent while trying to build shared maps that reflect the territory—then its appeal must have something to do with some function it plays in _conflicts_ over the shared map, where no one trusts each other to be doing Actual Social Science rather than lying to fuck everyone else over.
-And that's where the blank slate doctrine absolutely _shines_—it's the [Schelling point](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) for preventing group conflicts! (A [_Schelling point_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yJfBzcDL9fBHJfZ6P/nash-equilibria-and-schelling-points) is a choice that's salient at a focus for mutual expectations: what I think that you think that I think ... _&c._ we'll choose.) If you admit that there could differences between groups, you open up the questions of in what exact traits and of what exact magnitude, which people have an incentive to lie about to divert resources and power to their group by [establishing unfair conventions and then misrepresenting those contingent bargaining equilibria](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/) as some "inevitable" natural order.
+And that's where the blank slate doctrine absolutely _shines_—it's the [Schelling point](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) for preventing group conflicts! (A [_Schelling point_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yJfBzcDL9fBHJfZ6P/nash-equilibria-and-schelling-points) is a choice that's salient at [a focus for mutual expectations](/2019/Dec/more-schelling/): what I think that you think that I think ... _&c._ we'll choose.) If you admit that there could differences between groups, you open up the questions of in what exact traits and of what exact magnitude, which people have an incentive to lie about to divert resources and power to their group by [establishing unfair conventions and then misrepresenting those contingent bargaining equilibria](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/) as some "inevitable" natural order.
If you're afraid of purported answers being used as a pretext for oppression, you might hope to _make the question un-askable_. Can't oppress people on the basis of race if race _doesn't exist_! Denying the existence of sex is harder—which doesn't stop people from occasionally trying. But the taboo mostly only applies to _psychological_ trait differences, because those are more [politically sensitive](http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/judgment-punishment-and-the-information-suppression-field/)—and easier to motivatedly _see what you want to see_: whereas things like height or skin tone can be directly seen and uncontroversially measured with well-understood physical instruments (like a meterstick or digital photo pixel values), psychological assessments are _much_ more complicated and therefore hard to detach from the eye of the beholder. (If I describe Mary as "warm, compassionate, and agreeable", the words mean _something_ in the sense that they change what experiences you anticipate—if you believed my report, you would be _surprised_ if Mary were to kick your dog and make fun of your nose job—but the things that they mean are a high-level statistical signal in behavior for which we [don't have a simple measurement device](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests) like a meterstick to appeal to if you and I don't trust each other's character assessments of Mary.)
But this kind of defensive half-measure satisfies no one. From the oblivious-science-nerd perspective—the view that agrees with Murray that "everyone should calm down"—you shouldn't _need_ to genuflect to the memory of some historical injustice before you're allowed to talk about Science. But from the perspective that cares about Justice and not just Truth, an _insincere_ gesture or a strategic concession is all the more dangerous insofar as it could function as camoflage for a nefarious hidden agenda. If your work is explicitly aimed at _destroying the anti-oppression Schelling-point belief_, a few hand-wringing historical interludes and bromides about human equality having no testable implications (!!) aren't going to clear you of the suspicion that you're _doing it on purpose_—trying to destroy the anti-oppression Schelling point in order to oppress, rather than because it's just not true.
-And sufficient suspicion makes communication nearly impossible. As far as many of Murray's detractors are concerned, it almost doesn't matter what the text of _Human Diversity_ says, how meticulously researched of a psychology/neuroscience/genetics lit review it is. They're not mad about _this_ book; they're mad about specifically chapters 13 and 14 of a book Murray coauthored twenty-five years ago.
+And sufficient suspicion makes communication nearly impossible. (If you _know_ someone is lying, their words mean nothing.) As far as many of Murray's detractors are concerned, it almost doesn't matter what the text of _Human Diversity_ says, how meticulously researched of a psychology/neuroscience/genetics lit review it is. They're not mad about _this_ book; they're mad about specifically chapters 13 and 14 of a book Murray coauthored twenty-five years ago. In 1994's _The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life_, Murray and coauthor Richard J. Herrnstein argued that a lot of variation in life outcomes is explained by variation in intelligence.
-In 1994's _The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life_, Murray and coauthor Richard J. Herrnstein argued that a lot of variation in life outcomes is explained by variation in intelligence. Some people think that folk concepts of "intelligence" or being "smart" are ill-defined and therefore not a proper object of scientific study. But that hasn't stopped some psychologists from trying, and it turns out that if you give people a bunch of different mental tests, the results all positively correlate with each other: people who are good at one mental task, like listening to a list of numbers and repeating them backwards ("reverse digit span"), are also good at others, like knowing what words mean ("vocabulary").
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+Some people think that folk concepts of "intelligence" or being "smart" are ill-defined and therefore not a proper object of scientific study. But that hasn't stopped some psychologists from trying to construct "intelligence quotient" (or _IQ_ for short) tests, and it turns out that if you give people a bunch of different mental tests, the results all positively correlate with each other: people who are good at one mental task, like listening to a list of numbers and repeating them backwards ("reverse digit span"), are also good at others, like knowing what words mean ("vocabulary"). There's a lot of fancy linear algebra involved, but basically, you can visualize people's test results as a hyperellipsoid in some high-dimensional space where the dimensions are the different tests. (I rely on this visual metaphor _so much_ for _so many_ things that when I started [my secret ("secret") gender blog](/), it felt right to put it under a dot-space [TLD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain).) The longest axis of the hyperellipsoid corresponds to the "_g_ factor" of "general intelligence"—the choice of axis that cuts through the most variance in mental abilities.
+
+So Murray and Herrnstein talk about this "intelligence" thingy, and how it's heritable, and how it predicts income, school success, not being a criminal, _&c._, and how this has all sorts of implications for Society and inequality and class structure and stuff.
+
+This _should_ just be more social-science nerd stuff, the sort of thing that would only draw your attention if, like me, you feel bad about not being smart enough to do algebraic topology and want to console yourself by at least knowing the Science of not being smart enough to do algebraic topology. The reason everyone and her dog is still mad at Charles Murray a quarter century later is Chapter 13, "Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability", and Chapter 14, "Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ". So apparently different "racial" groups have different average scores on IQ tests. Ashkenazi Jews do the best, East Asians are a little better than "whites", and—this is the part no one is happy about—the difference between U.S. whites and U.S. blacks is about Cohen's _d_ ≈ 1.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff