Charles Murray is speaking (or is scheduled to speak) at Notre Dame next Tuesday (the 28th). Unfortunately, it's at 12:30, but I;d really like to hear what he has to say (not about The Bell Curve, but about Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which came out a few years ago and is a pretty good book. If anyone is going (I kinda doubt anyone is), let me know.

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At first glance I thought this said Charlie Murphy

Now that would be fun.

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I really don't have a problem him speaking at Notre Dame....giving someone a platform to speak on their opinions does mean you agree with it. Sometimes I think it's better to get it out in the open vs suppress it...that said...

This guy is a vile/awful/racist piece of shit.

Coming Apart is a fantastic book. It is a solid explanation for income inequality and the decline of many things in White America. He specifically took race out of the equation by only focusing on White outcomes. The tables and charts are truly stunning. Almost scary.

What's worse (and yet provides a sound explanation), income inequality is do to "better" matching of intelligent people that really started when the middle class was going to college more often over layed with universities becoming more exclusive. Since higher IQ people attend tougher universities (generally), and many college educated people meet their spouses in college, their offspring will have biologically determined higher IQ's reinforcing the income inequality trend. And one final point is that the workforce is placing a higher value on highly educated and/or highly intelligent knowledge workers and paying them out sized salaries.

He has excellent examples.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I think that might end soon, though, Denis, once companies figure out they can get away with not paying them good money....hope I am wrong.

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Yeah theyll just continue to pay women the 20% less or whatever it is for the same work and be fine.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I've read The Bell Curve, and it's not a racist screed. Its reputation precedes it, definitely. However, I would not want to live in a world that follows Murray's recommendations.

Sorry for not being prolix; 7 of my keys don't work and I have to cut and paste....

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If anything, it is getting worse. You see it in every industry- super star CEO's, highly valued Silicon Valley tech workers, pro athletes, everything in the world of finance. If you have a unique skill set with little supply in a profitable industry, you will get paid a ton.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

That's just pants-on-head retarded.

Does he cite (actual) controlled and peer-reviewed scientific studies to back that up?

Sounds to me like superficial personal truth nonsense that, regardless of whether it's the intention of the statement, ends up being not entirely too far removed from Eugenics.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Will he be signing calipers after the show?

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

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That's better reading it the second time.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

It's been well reported that there are certain myths about the equal pay for equal work movement. If it was cheaper to hire women for the same job then it would make economic sense not to hire any men.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

Murray cites many, but this is where people have focused most of their criticisms. Does his own analysis, too, so it is more than a simple meta-analysis. Monster of a book.

Murray does say that environment pays a role. But the "intelligence is hereditary" argument was ultra-controversial.

The Bell Curve itself was not peer-reviewed. Oddly enough, it did spur plenty of peer-reviewed response articles and books.

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You should read it. Most people who attack the book have not read it and are surprised to learn how much Murray (and his co-author) repeat the standard sociological line about environment producing intelligence.

Still, the book has its problems. Actually, Clarence Page just summarized them:

"But (The Bell Curve) also argued that IQ tests are a better measure of human intelligence than numerous other experts believe, that intelligence is largely the result of inherited traits and that there is not much government can do to improve the outlook of people who are born less gifted cognitively than others. I objected to that book because I thought the authors were too quick to pin poverty, crime, welfare dependency, unwed pregnancies and a host of other social dysfunctions on low IQ — and too reluctant to account for countless other cultural, familial and environmental factors."

Interesting book, nonetheless. Murray's book about whites in the US is much better.

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I'll preface this, with, you need to read the book to come to conclusions.

His IQ discussion in Coming Apart starts in the chapter "The Foundations of the New Upper Class". It is under the subheading "Cognitive Stratifiation Among Colleges".

First Mean IQ of people completing the following:

No degree- 87
High School- 99
Assoc Degree- 104
BS- 113
MS- 117
PhD or similar like MD- 124

He uses that to show how people are self sorting where high educated high IQ people are marrying in large numbers than before 1960.

Then he goes into transmission of IQ's (genetics). He argues that a child's IQ is, on average, the average of his/her parents. If you mix two high IQ, you are very likely to have a high IQ person. There is a range around the parents average IQ for the expected offspring of the students. Empirical studies suggest he is correct.

You may hate or disagree with everything he writes, but you will find the data subsets fascinating. It is a top 5 eye opening book for me.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Well, he didn't do that at all in Coming Apart. He almost exclusively blames the divergence to be socially driven. Self sorting has resulted in less mixing of well off and not well off individuals and produced self reinforced intelligence and values among the top 5% of our country and the top 20% to some extent. He blames things like the decline in religion, devaluing of marriage, exclusive neighborhoods, declining universal values among other things.

I am not sure it explains everything with diverging outcomes, but it is the best explanation I have seen yet.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

On its surface it makes sense to me. At least enough to look into it more. It would explain generational poverty or class stagnation. Of course, other issues are involved but as I said it is interesting. One thing for sure is I see very clearly the selection of mates is pretty insulated.

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Elections have consequences.

I strongly suspect that I don't "need" to read anything to come to any conclusions ... if someone told you to read Dianetics and take whatever horseshit testing before you could come to conclusions about Scientology, I'm gonna figure that you'd be briskly walking away before they reached the end of their sentence ... at least I'd hope so ffs.

All it is is his musings/guesses about what the story is - it's not empirically based, it's not peer-reviewed, it's not irreproachable fact, it's just his opinion, his theory. That's fine having that theory, there may even be shadows of truth in there, but that's all it is ... opinion.

From whence does his data come? Never mind that IQ and its measurements/tests are like a step above a lie-detector test insofar as accuracy and efficacy go ... is this home-grown data or does it come from informed, verified sources? There's other questions but I'm gonna end here so it doesn't turn into a sini/ltg post.

Suffice to say, I need not give it any more credence than I would any other unproven theory paraded about as though it's intellectually sound or "cutting edge" or whatever the hell brand of psuedo-scholarly snake oil he's peddling.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Agree with that, I do.

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Elections have consequences.

His data sets are as follows:

1960 U.S. Census and Population Survey
General Social Survey by National Opinion Research Center
Vital Statistics from National Center for Health
Zip Code and Census Tract Data from Census Bureau.
National Longitudinal Surveys from sponsored by BLS
The Uniform Crime Report from the FBI
Inmate Surveys by the Bureau of Justice Statistics

Of course it is his opinions. It is his opinion on why there is less social mobility and increasing income equality. This isn't pseudo science or religion. He takes statistics to make his points. Many are very compelling. Here is a brief example:

In 1960 the 100th ranked company on the Fortune 500 had $3.2B in annual sales in constant dollars and today that company has $24.5B. The value of a manager of that business who could increase that firm's profitability scaled by the same eight times, thus making the manager more valuable and the difficulty of the task that much harder. Where a high school grad used to rise through the ranks, it now requires a prestigious MBA to get that job.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Ok Yoda!

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Hawaii (fuck) You

DonTiny--

Here's the thing. The book has had so much bad publicity that people refuse to read it but act as if they had. When they do read it, they see a somewhat more balanced argument. I still disagree with a lot of it, but it's an interesting book, and it's challenging in many senses of the word.

It wasn't peer reviewed. Murray did not teach in traditional academia, though his writing partner did. Maybe that's why: I don't know. But it was a mistake.

However, it is definitely research-based. Some people have criticized the math (I just listen and nod and pretend I understand) while others have criticized the interpretations.

In the end, it's hard for me to accept that some people, based on race, are less intelligent than others. Still a fascinating book....the first half of which seems to have been written by liberal sociologists.

The better book is Coming Apart.

As far as Dianetics goes, I love it more than bears like honey...

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

IQ tests are for morons

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest