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[nel e nel]

I don't understand why people like this are invited to universities. Doesn't the university have any oversight over who student bodies invi speak on university locales?

The Bell Curve made a big splash in the behavioral sciences, and was extremely polarizing from the get go.

 

[excelsiorlef]

No, I'm saying that most people in here and critics have not even read the book. The comparison between black and white IQ is a small section in which the author states that there is not enough evidence to draw a conclusion. They say the measured IQ difference could be a result of environment or genetics but there is nothing to draw conclusions off of.

You all are acting like this is a racist manifesto.

The interpretation of those data, however, is very much in dispute. So, too, are the authors’ conclusions that little or nothing can or should be done to raise the ability of the IQ-impaired, since so much of their lower intelligence is due to heredity. Murray and Herrnstein instead write sympathetically about eugenic approaches to public policy (though they do not endorse them outright). It is therefore interesting that Charles Murray recently expressed his own sense of queasiness about the book’s sources to a reporter from The New York Times: “Here was a case of stumbling onto a subject that had all the allure of the forbidden,” he said. “Some of the things we read to do this work, we literally hide when we’re on planes and trains. We’re furtively peering at this stuff.”

What sort of “stuff” could Murray mean? Surely the most curious of the sources he and Herrnstein consulted is Mankind Quarterly—a journal of anthropology founded in Edinburgh in 1960. Five articles from the journal are actually cited in The Bell Curve’s bibliography (pp. 775, 807, and 828).2 But the influence on the book of scholars linked to Mankind Quarterly is more significant. No fewer than seventeen researchers cited in the bibliography of The Bell Curve have contributed to Mankind Quarterly. Ten are present or former editors, or members of its editorial advisory board. This is interesting because Mankind Quarterly is a notorious journal of “racial history” founded, and funded, by men who believe in the genetic superiority of the white race.

Mankind Quarterly was established during decolonization and the US civil rights movement. Defenders of the old order were eager to brush a patina of science on their efforts. Thus Mankind Quarterly’s avowed purpose was to counter the “Communist” and “egalitarian” influences that were allegedly causing anthropology to neglect the fact of racial differences.

Must be a coincidence....

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/12/01/the-tainted-sources-of-the-bell-curve/

 

[ant_]

Why even put it in the book if it's not relevant? It doesn't take a genius to realize that specific issue would be all anybody took away from the book.

There are plenty of interviews and talks given by the author where you could investigate his thoughts on why they included it. Or we could just all call him racist?

 

[ponpo]

Books don't have to be, they aren't scientific journals.

They don't have to be, but criticizing them for not being reviewed is valid if it's attempting to be a scientific study.

 

[Kinyou]

Was he actually about to spread his racist views? Sounds like he was meant to talk about the white working class.

....then again, that could also take a racist angle

 

[mid83]

Have you read the book?

That's the same arguement Tucker Carlson used when he was debating a socialist about this issue. You don't have to read hundreds of pages to know any assertion that people are smarter or dumber based on race is complete garbage.

This shouldn't even be a discussion, no matter what your political ideology is. I don't consider myself a liberal and I think people defending this shit are gross.

 

[excelsiorlef]

There are plenty of interviews and talks given by the author where you could investigate his thoughts on why they included it. Or we could just all call him racist?

Try to imagine a GOP presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, "One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy." You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve

Come on...

 

[mid83]

There are plenty of interviews and talks given by the author where you could investigate his thoughts on why they included it. Or we could just all call him racist?

I've been blasted on here before for arguing that people overuse the word racism.

That said, isn't this the perfect definition of racism? The guy makes the assertion (just bringing up the IQ data is enough...even if he attempts to say he can't draw concrete conclusions) that whites are superior in terms of intelligence. That's textbook racism. Pretty cut and dry.

 

[OrangeGrayBlue]

There are plenty of interviews and talks given by the author where you could investigate his thoughts on why they included it. Or we could just all call him racist?

How about, instead of feigning concern over others' due diligence, you reassure us that you don't agree with his theories? Because they're pretty straightforwardly bullshit, as excelsiorlef is pointing out. And if you feel that you would have to do more research, as you implore of us, before you could confidently say that there's no intellectual advantage to being white, then wow.

 

[nel e nel]

They don't have to be, but criticizing them for not being reviewed is valid if it's attempting to be a scientific study.

My understanding is that this book is more of a systematic review than based on original research. And this book has been highly criticized from the get go. This protest is just the latest incarnation.

 

[excelsiorlef]

I mean seriously?

Murray has attracted controversy for his views on differences between gender and racial groups. In a paper published in 2005 titled "Where Are the Female Einsteins?", Murray stated, among other things, that "no woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions. In the sciences, the most abstract field is mathematics, where the number of great female mathematicians is approximately two (Emmy Noether definitely, Sonya Kovalevskaya maybe). In the other hard sciences, the contributions of great women have usually been empirical rather than theoretical, with leading cases in point being Henrietta Leavitt, Dorothy Hodgkin, Lise Meitner, Irene Joliot-Curie and Marie Curie herself."[29] Asked about this in 2014, he stated he could only recall one important female philosopher, "and she was not a significant thinker in the estimation of historians of philosophy," adding "So, yeah, I still stick with that. Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary, I'll stick with that statement."[30]

In the April 2007 issue of Commentary magazine, Murray wrote on the disproportionate representation of Jews in the ranks of outstanding achievers and says that one of the reasons is that they "have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested." His article concludes with the assertion: "At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God's chosen people."[38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve

I begin with the assumption that elevated Jewish intelligence is grounded in genetics. It is no longer seriously disputed that intelligence in Homo sapiens is substantially heritable. In the last two decades, it has also been established that obvious environmental factors such as high income, books in the house, and parental reading to children are not as potent as one might expect. A ”good enough" environment is important for the nurture of intellectual potential, but the requirements for ”good enough" are not high. Even the very best home environments add only a few points, if that, to a merely okay environment. It is also known that children adopted at birth do not achieve the IQ's predicted by their parents' IQ.

To put it another way, we have good reason to think that Gentile children raised in Jewish families do not acquire Jewish intelligence. Hence my view that something in the genes explains elevated Jewish IQ. That conclusion is not logically necessary but, given what we know about heritability and environmental effects on intelligence in humans as a species, it is extremely plausible.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jewish-genius/


It's clear he believes there is a genetic (or divine?) link to IQ (high or low) so there I did my research and feel comfortable calling him a racist.

 

[boiled goose]

Lol. You don't come to the conclusion that black people are genetically inferior to whites and write an entire book on the subject, nor become a fan of such a book, just because you misinterpreted the facts. If someone is that far down the racism hole I'm not about to dedicate the enormous amount of effort it would take to change their entire world view.

You don't engage to change THEIR world view. It's about the importance of facts and "truth" for truths sake.

Again it's a nuanced issue and yes the authors are racist. (Again, their hypocrisy on Asian iq)

The issue is nuanced. For example, if you have people take an IQ test (now) or GRE even, there is a clear, statistically significant difference for different racial groups. That's a fact.

A lot of research has gone into understanding what this means. Currently, no genetic factors have been identified. Also, correcting for factors like culture, socio economics, etc. Accounts for the issue in part. Moreover, there are biases in test taking performance itself such as stereotype threat, etc. There are even bigger questions about what IQ even means.

My worry is that by silencing racist or unappealing interpretations we concede facts to them. It's not that we deny the facts, we have better interpretations and more complete data.

 

[samn]

Why have the left given up on the principle of freedom of speech?

Violence against someone saying something you disagree with is not justified.

 

[OrangeGrayBlue]

You don't engage to change THEIR world view.

Again it's a nuanced issue and yes the authors are racist. (Again, their hypocrisy on Asian iq)

The issue is nuanced. For example, if you have people take an IQ test (now) or GRE even, there is a clear, statistically significant difference for different racial groups. That's a fact.

A lot of research has gone into understanding what this means. Currently, no genetic factors have been identified. Also, correcting for factors like culture, socio economics, etc. Accounts for the issue in part. Moreover, there are biases in test taking performance itself such as stereotype threat, etc. There are even bigger questions about what IQ even means.

My worry is that by silencing racist or unappealing interpretations we concede facts to them. It's not that we deny the facts, we have better interpretations and more complete data.

All fair, but I think it's easy enough to see this author's agenda and give it a pretty concise "bullshit" in response. I see little reason to believe that he's made a good-faith effort to understand these differences in IQ and arrived at his result as a matter of impartial research. Since his ideology is what's most important to him, it's the aspect of his work that I think should be addressed. If his priority was actually research and data, then maybe he'd deserve the time of day on that front. But it isn't, so he doesn't.

 

[boiled goose]

All fair, but I think it's easy enough to see this author's agenda and give it a pretty concise "bullshit" in response. I see little reason to believe that he's made a good-faith effort to understand these differences in IQ and arrived at his result as a matter of impartial research. Since his ideology is what's most important to him, it's the aspect of his work that I think should be addressed. If his priority was actually research and data, then maybe he'd deserve the time of day on that front. But it isn't, so he doesn't.

Don't disagree.
Just think it's hard to make that call.

If there was a more objective way to formalize "it's easy to see", then I'm all for it.

One such standard might be not addressing critiques of the work, or deliberate ignoring of evidence that doesn't fit conclusions etc.

At that point work is not academic but ideological.

Im not convinced the protesters took this nuanced view. Was their protest on academic on ideological grounds?

 

[Dude Abides]

Why have the left given up on the principle of freedom of speech?

Violence against someone saying something you disagree with is not justified.

College students = The Left.

 

[Mivey]

Why have the left given up on the principle of freedom of speech?

Violence against someone saying something you disagree with is not justified.

It's justified though, if you first identify him as a nazi. Just make sure he shows you his party membership card for the national socialist party. There is no moral ambiguity here.

 

[entremet]

I know Charles Murray. The Bell Curve was quite controversial when it came out in back in its day.

IQ testing has be tinged with racial ramifications for a while.

The Flynn Effect is a good rebuttal to Murray's thesis.

According to Murray's research, East Asians (correction. I think it's Ashkenazi Jews) have the highest median IQ. But yeah, I feel like I'm going back in time. This stuff was hugely debated back in the day.

 

[Messofanego]

Must be a coincidence....

The interpretation of those data, however, is very much in dispute. So, too, are the authors’ conclusions that little or nothing can or should be done to raise the ability of the IQ-impaired, since so much of their lower intelligence is due to heredity. Murray and Herrnstein instead write sympathetically about eugenic approaches to public policy (though they do not endorse them outright). It is therefore interesting that Charles Murray recently expressed his own sense of queasiness about the book’s sources to a reporter from The New York Times: “Here was a case of stumbling onto a subject that had all the allure of the forbidden,” he said. “Some of the things we read to do this work, we literally hide when we’re on planes and trains. We’re furtively peering at this stuff.”

What sort of “stuff” could Murray mean? Surely the most curious of the sources he and Herrnstein consulted is Mankind Quarterly—a journal of anthropology founded in Edinburgh in 1960. Five articles from the journal are actually cited in The Bell Curve’s bibliography (pp. 775, 807, and 828).2 But the influence on the book of scholars linked to Mankind Quarterly is more significant. No fewer than seventeen researchers cited in the bibliography of The Bell Curve have contributed to Mankind Quarterly. Ten are present or former editors, or members of its editorial advisory board. This is interesting because Mankind Quarterly is a notorious journal of “racial history” founded, and funded, by men who believe in the genetic superiority of the white race.

Mankind Quarterly was established during decolonization and the US civil rights movement. Defenders of the old order were eager to brush a patina of science on their efforts. Thus Mankind Quarterly’s avowed purpose was to counter the “Communist” and “egalitarian” influences that were allegedly causing anthropology to neglect the fact of racial differences.​

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/12/01/the-tainted-sources-of-the-bell-curve/

Try to imagine a GOP presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, "One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy." You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve

Come on...

I mean seriously?

Murray has attracted controversy for his views on differences between gender and racial groups. In a paper published in 2005 titled "Where Are the Female Einsteins?", Murray stated, among other things, that "no woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions. In the sciences, the most abstract field is mathematics, where the number of great female mathematicians is approximately two (Emmy Noether definitely, Sonya Kovalevskaya maybe). In the other hard sciences, the contributions of great women have usually been empirical rather than theoretical, with leading cases in point being Henrietta Leavitt, Dorothy Hodgkin, Lise Meitner, Irene Joliot-Curie and Marie Curie herself."[29] Asked about this in 2014, he stated he could only recall one important female philosopher, "and she was not a significant thinker in the estimation of historians of philosophy," adding "So, yeah, I still stick with that. Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary, I’ll stick with that statement."[30]

In the April 2007 issue of Commentary magazine, Murray wrote on the disproportionate representation of Jews in the ranks of outstanding achievers and says that one of the reasons is that they "have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested." His article concludes with the assertion: "At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God's chosen people."[38]​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve

I begin with the assumption that elevated Jewish intelligence is grounded in genetics. It is no longer seriously disputed that intelligence in Homo sapiens is substantially heritable. In the last two decades, it has also been established that obvious environmental factors such as high income, books in the house, and parental reading to children are not as potent as one might expect. A “good enough” environment is important for the nurture of intellectual potential, but the requirements for “good enough” are not high. Even the very best home environments add only a few points, if that, to a merely okay environment. It is also known that children adopted at birth do not achieve the IQ’s predicted by their parents’ IQ.

To put it another way, we have good reason to think that Gentile children raised in Jewish families do not acquire Jewish intelligence. Hence my view that something in the genes explains elevated Jewish IQ. That conclusion is not logically necessary but, given what we know about heritability and environmental effects on intelligence in humans as a species, it is extremely plausible.​

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jewish-genius/


It's clear he believes there is a genetic (or divine?) link to IQ (high or low) so there I did my research and feel comfortable calling him a racist.

Thank you, excelsiorlef.

 

[nynt9]

I find it hard to believe that people in this day and age actually believe there is a difference in intelligence based on race.

While I personally don't believe here are racial differences in intelligence, and while every study I've seen that claims are differences has been dubious, ill-researched and racially motivated; is there a conclusive study that actually shows there is no racial difference in intelligence? I'm not "just asking questions"-ing, I legitimately haven't done research on the subject (because why would I) and would like to know if there's an authoritative text I can refer to every time someone brings up these pseudo phrenological racist studies.

 

[John Kowalski]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)#The_Bell_Curve

Come on...

Ooof

 

[Messofanego]

While I personally don't believe here are racial differences in intelligence, and while every study I've seen that claims are differences has been dubious, ill-researched and racially motivated; is there a conclusive study that actually shows there is no racial difference in intelligence? I'm not "just asking questions"-ing, I legitimately haven't done research on the subject (because why would I) and would like to know if there's an authoritative text I can refer to every time someone brings up these pseudo phrenological racist studies.

If there's no evidence found that there are racial differences in intelligence, that already answers your question.

 

[Heroman]

While I personally don't believe here are racial differences in intelligence, and while every study I've seen that claims are differences has been dubious, ill-researched and racially motivated; is there a conclusive study that actually shows there is no racial difference in intelligence? I'm not "just asking questions"-ing, I legitimately haven't done research on the subject (because why would I) and would like to know if there's an authoritative text I can refer to every time someone brings up these pseudo phrenological racist studies.

Race doesn't exist so no , the reason why different races have different IQ is due to socal institutions.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Just for a tl;dr

Charles Murray writes a book where he says black folk have lower IQ than white folk and wishy washly says it may or may not be genetic...

Then he says elsewhere there is a lazy gene and poverty can be tied to genetics

Then he says Jewish folk have a genetic predisposition to higher IQ

Conclusion: He believes IQ is tied to genetics.

Further conclusion that means he's racist.

And that's before we even talk on his sexism too...

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

What benefit is the school seeing in giving him a platform? He is deriding and discouraging minority students, why should that be allowed?

 

[Boney]

How does he establish a link between enviromental and genes.

This guy being anywhere near a college campus is beyond me.

 

[KDR_11k]

To the bolded umm no it wouldn't

*shrug* it's what the author claimed to have identified as the cause. I have no idea how deeply buried in bullshit his head is.

 

[I_D]

It's not difficult to imagine that a lineage full of poverty, disease, and malnutrition would lead to genetically-handicapped people. Could this affect intelligence? It definitely could. It is a big enough difference that proper environments can't overcome the 'defect?' Probably not.


"Studies suggest that genetic factors underlie about 50 percent of the difference in intelligence among individuals."
"Studies have not conclusively identified any genes that underlie differences in intelligence. It is likely that a large number of genes are involved, each of which makes only a small contribution to a person’s intelligence."
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/intelligence

If animals can be bred for aggression and passivity, intelligence doesn't seem that far-fetched.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwq3rs_evolution-in-action-the-silver-fox-experiment_shortfilms


It's a bit ironic that this author would look at something like performance in schools (the bell curve) and surmise that race is the issue, rather than environmental and economic factors. He had all the proper evidence in front of him, and he came up with the entirely wrong result.

Do black students perform poorly compared to whites? Of course they do. Do white students perform poorly compared to Asians? Of course they do.
Is this because of their race, or because of economic, environmental, and cultural factors regarding how each race views education and rearing children?

The ironic part is that if humans actually selectively-bred each other for positive traits, this author would definitely have a point. We could absolutely create naturally-intelligent and naturally-dumb people with enough time and proper breeding.
Humans haven't done that, though, so the author is 100% off the mark. The difference in school achievement is so clearly linked to things outside of school that it's laughable that anybody would argue otherwise.

 

[ultratruman]

This guy being anywhere near a college campus is beyond me.

he's got a doctorate from MIT

 

[Slayven]

Once again folks love debating the humanity of minority like folks lives are thought experiments. Shame on anyone that entertain this nonsense let alone validates it by thinking it iseems worthy of discussion other then how fucking nasty it is.

 

[nynt9]

If there's no evidence found that there are racial differences in intelligence, that already answers your question.

Sure, but if we're being rigorous, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Race doesn't exist so no , the reason why different races have different IQ is due to socal institutions.

I know this. Environmental factors are a way bigger player in how a person turns out in this area.

Well, regardless, I don't wanna push back on this question too much because it's not a comfortable subject. Thanks anyway guys.

 

[Trurl]

I always view Charles Murray with suspicion and his views can irk me, but I don't think it was right to prevent him from speaking.

I get that left has a zero tolerance policy for nazis now and that has its place, but we shouldn't be developing our own authoritarian streak either.

Charles Murray is open to debate and doesn't defame people personally.

 

[JoeyJungle]

I really hate people pretending like protesting is crippling free speech. I mean first off, free speech means that you can't be punished or arrested by the government for what you say. Second, protesting is just as legitimate an exercise of free speech as anything else. Being able to shout down free speech with free speech is one of the points of having free speech.

 

[entremet]

Once again folks love debating the humanity of minority like folks lives are thought experiments. Shame on anyone that entertain this nonsense let alone validates it by thinking it iseems worthy of discussion other then how fuck ingredients nasty it is.

Charles Murray's dubious research has been used by White Supremacist groups for a bit now.

It all came out pre-Internet, but the book caused a shitstorm even back in it's original publication date and it one of the most critiqued pieces of writing in the last 30 years.

It has a pretty high Amazon score:

https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/

I do think he should be able to speak, though. At least to have his ideas challenged in a public forum. Most of these college speeches do have QA sessions.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

I always view Charles Murray with suspicion and his views can irk me, but I don't think it was right to prevent him from speaking.

I get that left has a zero tolerance policy for nazis now and that has its place, but we shouldn't be developing our own authoritarian streak either.

Charles Murray is open to debate and doesn't defame people personally.

Exercising the right to protest is not "developing an authoritarian streak".

 

[Sulik2]

Good the USA needs to stop protecting hate speech as freedom of speech. In theory its the right thing to do, in reality giving hate speech any sort of platform breeds the millions of racists of are the core of republican support and the alt right movement worldwide.

 

[Riposte]

Feel like OP should've mentioned this part of the story:

There, several masked protesters, who were believed to be outside agitators, began pushing and shoving Mr. Murray and Ms. Stanger, Mr. Burger said. “Someone grabbed Allison’s hair and twisted her neck,” he said.

After the two got into a car, Mr. Burger said, protesters pounded on it, rocked it back and forth, and jumped onto the hood. Ms. Stanger later went to a hospital, where she was put in a neck brace.

Antifa is really tough, beating up 50 year old women.

 

[entremet]

Good the USA needs to stop protecting hate speech as freedom of speech. In theory its the right thing to do, in reality giving hate speech any sort of platform breeds the millions of racists of are the core of republican support and the alt right movement worldwide.

Even using broader applications of hate speech laws, which are not applicable in the US, Murray's ideas aren't hate speech. They've been taken down and refuted by other academics already.

I disagree with his thesis, but it's not hate speech.

Exercising the right to protest is not "developing an authoritarian streak".

When is attacking, in this specific instance, non aggressive parties a valid form of exercising free speech? It now becomes assault, which is not protected.

 

[ultratruman]

Exercising the right to protest is not "developing an authoritarian streak".

suppressing free speech with aggressive behaviour is 100% authoritarian, and it's also fucking stupid. You can debate whether this sort of behavior fits the definition if you want, but it's plain stupid. It makes us look like thugs.

 

[Mr. X]

Yeah we need to be considerate of the racists' feelings and safety while they instigate hate and violence towards others. Give hate a chance.

 

[BeesEight]

Why would anyone invite Murray to speak at their campus? The Bell Curve only comes up in academia as an example of abusing statistics in order to come to fallacious conclusions. The book is pretty much the gold standard for teaching students that data can lie.

While I personally don't believe here are racial differences in intelligence, and while every study I've seen that claims are differences has been dubious, ill-researched and racially motivated; is there a conclusive study that actually shows there is no racial difference in intelligence? I'm not "just asking questions"-ing, I legitimately haven't done research on the subject (because why would I) and would like to know if there's an authoritative text I can refer to every time someone brings up these pseudo phrenological racist studies.

There is none because it's not an academic question.

First "race" is a meaningless term in science outside of sociology which uses it only because it's a concept involved in self identification in our modern society. No psychology or biology research will mention it because it doesn't exist. The closest you have is ethnicity which doesn't make any sense to investigate due to the nature of its definition and of which there are over 1300 different ethnicities anyway so it would be a monumental waste of time.

Second, how are you defining and testing intelligence? That concept alone is incredibly nebulous abs rife with a bunch of methodological or theoretical problems on its own. The studies done on intelligence show there is variation in the mean results based on education of the people in different areas depending on what is valued amongst those people.

Thus African tribes will score low on history or Latin tests but will score higher on body kinesthetics.

Basically, intelligence is far more complex in research and hugely difficult to examine comprehensively and race is an outright meaningless variable.

 

[Trurl]

Exercising the right to protest is not "developing an authoritarian streak".

Yes. If Murray's ideas are bad they should be able to be defeated in a debate. Doing so will strengthen your own ideas.

And maybe Murray's ideas are stupid and offensive (I believe that they are), but to decide that we're all in agreement and that Murray should be shouted down instead of refuted seems dangerous to me. What if a view that we hold to be sacred turns out to be wrong? How would we know if someplace, somewhere we don't allow for a debate?

For the record I really don't like Murray and I get annoyed every time he's on TV. He seems to get invited on to the PBS Newshour way too much for example. But he was already invited to the campus and I think college is the place to hear ideas that make you uncomfortable. If you don't like those ideas you should refute them and you can learn more about your values in the process.

Edit: The protestors should have asked him if he still stands by the Bellcurve. As far as I can tell he has stopped talking about his bad ideas on race and now talks about bad ideas on class.

 

[entremet]

Why would anyone invite Murray to speak at their campus? The Bell Curve only comes up in academia as an example of abusing statistics in order to come to fallacious conclusions. The book is pretty much the gold standard for teaching students that data can lie.



There is none because it's not an academic question.

First "race" is a meaningless term in science outside of sociology which uses it only because it's a concept involved in self identification in our modern society. No psychology or biology research will mention it because it doesn't exist. The closest you have is ethnicity which doesn't make any sense to investigate due to the nature of its definition and of which there are over 1300 different ethnicities anyway so it would be a monumental waste of time.

Second, how are you defining and testing intelligence? That concept alone is incredibly nebulous abs rife with a bunch of methodological or theoretical problems on its own. The studies done on intelligence show there is variation in the mean results based on education of the people in different areas depending on what is valued amongst those people.

Thus African tribes will score low on history or Latin tests but will score higher on body kinesthetics.

Basically, intelligence is far more complex in research and hugely difficult to examine comprehensively and race is an outright meaningless variable.

This has been the assertion since Gardner's work on multiple intelligences theory came out.

Classic IQ testing also didn't take into effect neuroplasticity, which is relatively new as well.

 

[excelsiorlef]

*shrug* it's what the author claimed to have identified as the cause. I have no idea how deeply buried in bullshit his head is.

I mean you realize how racist that hypothesis is yes?

 

[Messofanego]

Yes. If Murray's ideas are bad they should be able to be defeated in a debate. Doing so will strengthen your own ideas.

And maybe Murray's ideas are stupid and offensive (I believe that they are), but to decide that we're all in agreement and that Murray should be shouted down instead of refuted seems dangerous to me. What if a view that we hold to be sacred turns out to be wrong? How would we know if someplace, somewhere we don't allow for a debate?

For the record I really don't like Murray and I get annoyed every time he's on TV. He seems to get invited on to the PBS Newshour way too much for example. But he was already invited to the campus and I think college is the place to hear ideas that make you uncomfortable. If you don't like those ideas you should refute them and you can learn more about your values in the process.

This wasn't a debate, though.

 

[Slayven]

Yes. If Murray's ideas are bad they should be able to be defeated in a debate. Doing so will strengthen your own ideas.

And maybe Murray's ideas are stupid and offensive (I believe that they are), but to decide that we're all in agreement and that Murray should be shouted down instead of refuted seems dangerous to me. What if a view that we hold to be sacred turns out to be wrong? How would we know if someplace, somewhere we don't allow for a debate?

His ideas already been defeated, it is the same shit the founding fathers used to justify keeping slaves, and again by the southern states. People act like this bullshit is new, it is the same stuff bigots been using since time began to justify stripping someone of their humanity. Just that instead of saying it was commanded by the gods, now they use a slide rule and protractor to pretty it up.

Hell they use to use it to justify shit like this

 

[entremet]

This wasn't a debate, though.

Many college speeches have QA sessions. I don't think I've been any where the speaker didn't have a QA session. I've seen a few get really heated too.

Personally, I'd rather call out charlatans in the public forum.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Many college speeches have QA sessions. I don't think I've been any where the speaker didn't have a QA session. I've seen a few get really heated too.

Personally, I'd rather call out charlatans in the public forum.

Ahh yes the Q&A where you get 30 seconds to ask a question and the speakers controls how much he's going to respond and how long.

Also Q&A where the organizers of the event aka the people who invited him can set it up anyway they see fit including in ways to ensure their side gets most of the questions....

 

[stonesak]

His ideas already been defeated, it is the same shit the founding fathers used to justify keeping slaves, and again by the southern states. People act like this bullshit is new, it is the same stuff bigots been using since time began to justify stripping someone of their humanity. Just that instead of saying it was commanded by the gods, now they use a slide rule and protractor to pretty it up.

Just like white nationalism was defeated? The only way to keep these ideas from going underground and gaining support from the next generation is to let these people talk, and refute their ideas (seriously not that hard to do).

 

[Nabbis]

I imagine if you asked different people, you'd get different answers. So who gets to decide?

There's nothing to decide. If you understand the theory of evolution and it's concepts then the whole premise for this falls apart at the race aspect already. It's not really a debate for anyone but the ignorant.