Kfreed
asked:
Why is Charles Murray's white nationalist book so intriguing to some people? The man preaches Nazi-style eugenics for Pete's sake: Southern Poverty Law Center: "Charles Murray has become one of the most influential social scientists in America, using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority..." https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extrem
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The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,
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Dallas
Kfreed: going forward, it may help you to read a book before commenting on it. If you do so, more people who can help you through your life may choose to do so. If you have real interest in the book and not just stirring up things, you may be interested to listen to Sam Harris' recent interview with one of the authors. The podcast is called Waking Up. Find episode 73. I recommend it. Good luck!
Darjeeling
"Nazi-style eugenics"? page 275 of The Bell Curve: "Jews-specifically, Ashkenazi Jews of European origins-test higher than any other ethnic group. The literature indicates that Jews in America and Britain have an overall IQ mean somewhere between a half and a full standard deviation above the mean, with the source of the difference concentrated in the verbal component. "
Page 142 of 912 of The Bell Curve: "...these are supposed to be the advantaged Americans: whites of European descent. But they have one big thing working against them: they are not very smart." Have you read the book? Perhaps if you did it would answer your question.
The SPLC have also put a black Somali born ex-Muslim woman who founded a charity for young female abuse victims on thier little list of "racists".
They have also added a brown skinned Muslim reformer who founded an organisation to try and stop young muslims from joining ISIS.
They have completely lost the plot i'm afraid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lubw7...
Here is a conversation with the author for those who are interested
https://soundcloud.com/samharrisorg/7...
Page 142 of 912 of The Bell Curve: "...these are supposed to be the advantaged Americans: whites of European descent. But they have one big thing working against them: they are not very smart." Have you read the book? Perhaps if you did it would answer your question.
The SPLC have also put a black Somali born ex-Muslim woman who founded a charity for young female abuse victims on thier little list of "racists".
They have also added a brown skinned Muslim reformer who founded an organisation to try and stop young muslims from joining ISIS.
They have completely lost the plot i'm afraid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lubw7...
Here is a conversation with the author for those who are interested
https://soundcloud.com/samharrisorg/7...
Radu
Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate group.
Oliver
The SPLC are a national joke. They will label anything under the sun as 'Nazi'.
Tim Buktu
The book is not only intriguing but 20 something years after it's initial publication it appears the many of his observations are factually correct...just as Moynihan's 'The Case for the Negro Family' was 50 years after it was first published.
Ross
The book is purely factual. What the facts really mean is not understood in large measure, and that is what the authors state. Deep puzzle in the "facts."
Mike
I would argue (contra some here) that while follow on studies have confirmed some of the book's points in a narrow sense, they've shown that the more speculative findings are unsupported. For example, I would argue that subsequent research suggests that the heritability of IQ seems to be somewhat lower than they thought and that that undermines several of their arguments. But the SPLC is an illiberal, anti-intellectual hate group that deserves the disrespect of any person of good will or normal mental capacity.... They think that they're fit to act as the nation's censors when they can't even figure out what the word "group" means (hint: an individual can't be one).
If you think that Murray is wrong (and I do on some core conclusions), you should make that case. Shouting "bigot!" and accusing him of preaching "Nazi-style eugenics" (when, in fact, he leans closer to advocating "benevolent" paternalism) is silly and unhelpful.
It's also possible to disagree with some of his points and to still get some value from the book. While I have a few problems with his methodology (starting with his use of the AFQT as a metric) and with his argument (with IQ heritability on the lowest end he claimed to consider, it's not at all obvious that race is significantly correlated with the genetic component of IQ), the book, which, in light of my complaints, I found mediocre, did make me consider his point that it might be unfair to arrange society in such a manner that those with lower intelligence are consigned to misery. He argues compellingly for that point, and regardless of how much of IQ is determined by genes, prenatal development, early childhood exposure, etc., that part seems to hold.
If you think that Murray is wrong (and I do on some core conclusions), you should make that case. Shouting "bigot!" and accusing him of preaching "Nazi-style eugenics" (when, in fact, he leans closer to advocating "benevolent" paternalism) is silly and unhelpful.
It's also possible to disagree with some of his points and to still get some value from the book. While I have a few problems with his methodology (starting with his use of the AFQT as a metric) and with his argument (with IQ heritability on the lowest end he claimed to consider, it's not at all obvious that race is significantly correlated with the genetic component of IQ), the book, which, in light of my complaints, I found mediocre, did make me consider his point that it might be unfair to arrange society in such a manner that those with lower intelligence are consigned to misery. He argues compellingly for that point, and regardless of how much of IQ is determined by genes, prenatal development, early childhood exposure, etc., that part seems to hold.
Larry O'Mara
The SPLC is a Zionist pressure group, just like the ADL – ever wonder who funds them? Frankly anybody naive enough to swallow their propaganda deserves all they get. The Bell Curve retains its authority for the simplest of reasons, namely that it describes reality – if that rustles a few SJW jimmies so be it.
Bruce Watson
The book gets its power from its heft, its long list of sources, its statistics. Few of us know enough to argue this. But the experts did and they trashed the book. Stephen Jay Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man” had already refuted everything the Bell Curve said. Gould called the Bell Curve “outdated Social Darwinism,” and point-by-point revealed its shoddy science. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/cour...
Eric Siegel
"The Bell Curve" endorses prejudice by virtue of what it does not say. Nowhere does the book address *why* it investigates racial differences in IQ. By never spelling out a reason for reporting on these differences in the first place, the authors transmit an unspoken yet unequivocal conclusion: Race is a helpful indicator as to whether a person is likely to hold certain capabilities. Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use. The net effect is to tacitly condone the prejudgment of individuals based on race.
... Astonishingly, this tome's hundreds of pages never actually specify what one is meant to do with the information about racial differences, and never attempt to steer readers clear of racial prejudgment. That's an egregious, reckless oversight, considering this is a pop science bestseller that comprehensively covers great numbers of subtopics and caveats, maintaining a genuinely proficient and clear writing style throughout. So we must call this book what it is: racist.
Above is an excerpt from my lengthier Scientific American blog article about this book, easily found online.
Below expounds further in light of more recent comments in response to my writing.
A study showing one race performs lower on average than another (on IQ test, in this case) can be used to either benefit or harm members of that race. So therein lies my point: Which of the two is it? If there's to be a way such analysis could be put to use, it would be one or the other. And given it has been heavily on the "harm" side historically, researchers who don't clarify the intent are truly tone deaf.
This is a social point I am making, not a technical one. And I am not suggesting the data be censored. Rather, I am making a point about the intent conveyed/communicated by any given report/book/piece.
Eric Siegel, Ph.D.
Founder, Predictive Analytics World
Author, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
... Astonishingly, this tome's hundreds of pages never actually specify what one is meant to do with the information about racial differences, and never attempt to steer readers clear of racial prejudgment. That's an egregious, reckless oversight, considering this is a pop science bestseller that comprehensively covers great numbers of subtopics and caveats, maintaining a genuinely proficient and clear writing style throughout. So we must call this book what it is: racist.
Above is an excerpt from my lengthier Scientific American blog article about this book, easily found online.
Below expounds further in light of more recent comments in response to my writing.
A study showing one race performs lower on average than another (on IQ test, in this case) can be used to either benefit or harm members of that race. So therein lies my point: Which of the two is it? If there's to be a way such analysis could be put to use, it would be one or the other. And given it has been heavily on the "harm" side historically, researchers who don't clarify the intent are truly tone deaf.
This is a social point I am making, not a technical one. And I am not suggesting the data be censored. Rather, I am making a point about the intent conveyed/communicated by any given report/book/piece.
Eric Siegel, Ph.D.
Founder, Predictive Analytics World
Author, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
Ultan
Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it Nazism. I suppose you want to burn the book too?
Arthur Sido
Clearly you haven't read the book and are relying on the highly partisan $PLC to inform your opinion. As such it you question is both silly and hilarious.
Daniel
The irony is that genetics and modern science don't particularly favor conservative politics. For example in the USA, the conservative voting base largely believes in the literal truth of Noah's Ark. Trump's approval rating has hovered mostly around 40%; and roughly the same percentage of America believes in Noath's Ark. There is evidence that these two groups overlap considerably. If you visit the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, you will likely see a lot of Trump/MAGA stickers on the fossil fueled vehicles in the parking lot. (Said vehicles wouldn't even have been able to drive there had the petroleum companies tried to use "Flood Geology" to figure out where to drill - ExxonMobil clearly does not require its customers to be as smart as its geologists.)
I find it odd that liberals tend to selectively reject the biology of human differences, while (a minority of) conservatives tend to accept it (when they aren't, say, blaming the black-on-black violence in Chicago on Democratic domination of the municipal government, or standing silently by as Trump praises neo-Nazis as "very good people" when old school Nazis targeted the group with highest average IQ scores for extermination), when science is pretty much a threat to every pre-conceived ideology. All ideologies that pre-date the relevant science will be wrong to some extent, just as none of the world's thousands of diverse religions guessed correctly on Darwin's theory of evolution with their origin myths. Human imagination has never been very good at guessing what future data will reveal.
If everyone were smart enough to read and understand a book such as The Bell Curve, Trump would find himself without a gullible base of supporters to believe his non-stop lies. The real lesson of the book isn't stated in the book - we need a Moon Shot-level scientific commitment to raising everybody's IQ. If people have cancer, we don't react with prejudice or favoritism - instead we recognize cancer as a disease and we try to find a cure (or cures), even if this search requires decades or centuries. It seems obvious to me that if we have people trying to find cures for known genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease, we ought to have people trying to find cures for low IQ.
The philosopher Peter Singer (who is perhaps no one's idea of conservative) wrote a book about incorporating scientific reality into progressivism (A Darwinian Left). In it, he writes:
"If your belief in equal rights and opportunities for all – and against racism, sexism and other kinds of discrimination – is based on there being no biological differences between people, then you’ll find it very hard to know what to do if clear evidence of biological differences actually appears."
I find it odd that liberals tend to selectively reject the biology of human differences, while (a minority of) conservatives tend to accept it (when they aren't, say, blaming the black-on-black violence in Chicago on Democratic domination of the municipal government, or standing silently by as Trump praises neo-Nazis as "very good people" when old school Nazis targeted the group with highest average IQ scores for extermination), when science is pretty much a threat to every pre-conceived ideology. All ideologies that pre-date the relevant science will be wrong to some extent, just as none of the world's thousands of diverse religions guessed correctly on Darwin's theory of evolution with their origin myths. Human imagination has never been very good at guessing what future data will reveal.
If everyone were smart enough to read and understand a book such as The Bell Curve, Trump would find himself without a gullible base of supporters to believe his non-stop lies. The real lesson of the book isn't stated in the book - we need a Moon Shot-level scientific commitment to raising everybody's IQ. If people have cancer, we don't react with prejudice or favoritism - instead we recognize cancer as a disease and we try to find a cure (or cures), even if this search requires decades or centuries. It seems obvious to me that if we have people trying to find cures for known genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease, we ought to have people trying to find cures for low IQ.
The philosopher Peter Singer (who is perhaps no one's idea of conservative) wrote a book about incorporating scientific reality into progressivism (A Darwinian Left). In it, he writes:
"If your belief in equal rights and opportunities for all – and against racism, sexism and other kinds of discrimination – is based on there being no biological differences between people, then you’ll find it very hard to know what to do if clear evidence of biological differences actually appears."
Shanda Quintal
The entire tome is filled with faulty logic simply because it is based on an the inaccurate premise of supremacy the white male patriarchy "A white male patriarchy developed in England as the British empire grew, expanding its colonial exploitation around the world. A rational explanation was required to explain how a small number of men deserved to control this enormous and growing wealth. With Darwin's theory of evolution (survival of the fittest), Galton's studies of genius (rich and successful men were related to each other) and Spencer's insight that natural selection in human societies was Nature's way of getting rid of bad stock and preserving the best, the theory took shape. The theory was imported to America where it flourishes. Psychologists provided evidence to support the ideas of the ruling class: intelligence, mental disorders, crime and the addictions are all due to bad genes and bad brains. The defect model occupies the center of the stage. There is no need to act to remove injustice, sexism, racism, homophobia-the causes of distress are not social, they are internal, personal defects. Drugs will reduce the symptoms while the search goes on for the internal defects." Taken from the Journal of Primary Prevention - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2...
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