Gladwell on IQ: My Chance to Answer Two Plausible But Over-rated Arguments

That’s a pretty egregious misstatement on Gladwell’s part. It says a lot that they don’t note the correction inline. It also says a lot about Gladwell’s research on this. Skimming The Bell Curve over the course of a day would quickly reveal that even the tone of the book is entirely inconsistent with Gladwell’s recounting. Murray and Herrnstein go so out of their way to not make any of the data or conclusions remotely possibly offensive to any semi-objective reader! Gladwell is fast becoming “big idea porn”. His stories are fun to read, but he plays fast and loose with the underlying facts.

There is a better explanation than that for argument 1 – intelligence could involve genes on the X chromosone and which would be expressed differently based on gender.

That would suggest that the different sexes could have different intelligence.

And we know that’s impossible.

RICH,

(a) Please stop YELLING.

(b) What is a “quasi-racist assumption”? Is it something different than a racist one?

(c) Caplan has merely introduced a hypothesis. That is what you do when you don’t yet have the data, but want to figure out where it might pay to gather some.

(d) Caplan has offered a suggestion for how people in fact behave, regardless of whether it’s moral or immoral. If you think his hypothesis is wrong, please say why, rather than simply dismissing it with ad hominems.

Dwight – You make a fair point about hypotheses. But I think its naive to think that the line between a hypothesis and reifying assumption is anything but blurry.

Mason – I dont want to say anything rude to you. But what you wrote is completely.. ahem. misguided.

1. Whites have higher IQ’s – fact? How and why is that a fact? That’s precisely the issue in debate.

2. People seek mates with similar IQs – Fact. That’s fine, but the reason for my outburst at Caplan’s statement is that he presumes that white’s already have a higher IQ, and therefore any white that doesn’t will marry black? Or because a white man marries a black woman has a lower IQ? Either way, its a ridiculous assumption which presupposes the ultimate debate.

AND THAT IS WHY I AM YELLING. Sorry.

“the black man who marries a white woman will be above his group average in success and IQ; the white man who marries a black woman will be below his group average in success and IQ.”

This assumes random pairing, which is pretty absurd. Because of cultural barriers to interracial relationships (ranging from just not knowing any people of a given race to overt racism, and everything in between), there is reason to suspect that pairings will be non-random.

The best of my understanding, and I admit I am not aware of detailed research to back this up, is that a lot of highly educated black women marry white men because that is what is available in the social circle they live in. I do not know if that is true of black men.

Add to this consideration that (generally) the more educated someone is, the lower the likelihood of overt racism and (probably) the higher the willingness to be involved in an interracial relationship. If there’s data that controverts this, I’ve got nothing against it, but I’m fairly sure this is true.

If the probability of being exposed to people of a different race is directly correlated with income or social status, as may be likely, and that is in turn correlated with IQ, then interracial couples may tend to be above average for both of their respective races.

Of course, these effects may not represent a majority of such relationships. But it is somewhat foolish to assume random pairing in such a complicated situation where pairing is very unlikely to be random.

On the opposite end, there is some evidence that IQ shows hybrid vigor, in which case the kids have higher IQs as a result of being mixed-race. If that effect applies, then it is quite possible that IQ could be highly genetic and show racial disparity and yet mixed race children perform higher than that alone would predict.

Despite Gladwell’s haphazard play with the truth, his argument rests largely on the Flynn effect, which is something that Bryan has not explained away.

But the problem with Gladwell’s argument is that it assumes an either/or conclusion–consider his repeated claims that IQ measures not intelligence, but how modern we are, or the quality of the environment surrounding us. (Naturally, this is the good liberal assumption: the lurking forces in the environment). But he overemphasizes this. You walk away from the article thinking he’s arguing for a blank slate theory of intelligence. Which simply isn’t true. See twin studies, separated at birth, adopted children and so on. Judith Harris’s books should be sent to Mr. Gladwell.

I’ve linked to this here before, but Karl Smith has an interesting theory why the heritability of IQ increases with age. It has to do with one’s environment being constrained by outside forces when young versus being an adult and being able to shape your own environment in a way that your genes predispose you to.

I think I remember something in “Norton Reader” by Gladwell where he said that just as in many traits men have higher variance than women, blacks could simply have higher variance than whites, explaining both why the top athletes and the special education classrooms are disproportionately black, but La Griffe du Lion claims here that whites have higher variance. Anyone have data to settle this? I usually just assume the same variance unless I have reason to believe otherwise.

You have very interesting site.Thanks for all.

“Either way, its a ridiculous assumption which presupposes the ultimate debate.”

Rich, it’s a ridiculous assumption only if you know it to be false. Do you in fact know it’s false, or are you just making your own assumption?

I misspoke, I should have said: Bucking convention is especially viable and appealing to those with smarts.