Say something about IQ, as Tyler Cowen did over at Marginal Revolutions. Brad DeLong did something similar before, as well as Kevin Drum, and Andrew Sullivan. All you have to do is take the issue of IQ seriously, and bam!
The debate centers around three key issues that are somewhat independent: IQ is 1) important (has socio-economic consequences) 2) heritable (say 50%) and 3) varies systematically between different genetic families (eg, races). These factual hypotheses--and though racists believe in them, they are still statements about reality--and people on both sides have strong opinions, but the IQ crowd is generally more knowledgeable about what they are speaking because if you believe in IQ, you read up on it, while if you think it is meaningless, you don't. So when the anti-IQ crowd makes silly comments that they think definitively refute the above points, they face an avalanche of commenters who know much more about the issue than they do (usually these double to quadruple and average econ blog's comment).
The standard anti-IQ cliches include about how poor natives are so smart (eg, Jared Diamond's assertion that New Guinea tribesmen are smarter than Europeans), or that because race explains only 15% of genetic variability that races don't exist (it's the correlation in the variation that matters), that IQ can be altered significantly through early education (Heckman now thinks it's the non-IQ components that can be changed, and they are economically important), that the Flynn Effect will save us all (it stopped), that it's not nature but the combination that is essential (who said 100% nature?), etc., are smacked down by a rabid pack who have been reading GNXP and Steve Sailer.
To Cowen's point--that natives are smart because they can fish and gossip very well--I think the key point, is that while tribesmen are much better than Cowen at living off the land, so is my dog, and I'd be hesitant to say he's got a higher IQ (though certainly more 'fit' if we were in the forest).
The debate centers around three key issues that are somewhat independent: IQ is 1) important (has socio-economic consequences) 2) heritable (say 50%) and 3) varies systematically between different genetic families (eg, races). These factual hypotheses--and though racists believe in them, they are still statements about reality--and people on both sides have strong opinions, but the IQ crowd is generally more knowledgeable about what they are speaking because if you believe in IQ, you read up on it, while if you think it is meaningless, you don't. So when the anti-IQ crowd makes silly comments that they think definitively refute the above points, they face an avalanche of commenters who know much more about the issue than they do (usually these double to quadruple and average econ blog's comment).
The standard anti-IQ cliches include about how poor natives are so smart (eg, Jared Diamond's assertion that New Guinea tribesmen are smarter than Europeans), or that because race explains only 15% of genetic variability that races don't exist (it's the correlation in the variation that matters), that IQ can be altered significantly through early education (Heckman now thinks it's the non-IQ components that can be changed, and they are economically important), that the Flynn Effect will save us all (it stopped), that it's not nature but the combination that is essential (who said 100% nature?), etc., are smacked down by a rabid pack who have been reading GNXP and Steve Sailer.
To Cowen's point--that natives are smart because they can fish and gossip very well--I think the key point, is that while tribesmen are much better than Cowen at living off the land, so is my dog, and I'd be hesitant to say he's got a higher IQ (though certainly more 'fit' if we were in the forest).
Eric Falkenstein - am 2007-07-19 02:26