Thinking about Thinking

I got caught up today reading over a debate between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein over race, IQ, and genetics. Harris did a podcast with Charles Murray, who co-wrote, The Bell Curve back in '94. The controversial bit of The Bell Curve still gets Murray protested; he was hounded off the campus at Middlebury last year, and his host faculty member was injured. Harris apparently feels bad that he got caught up in all the attacks on Murray in the past, to the point that he refused an invitation to join him in a discussion somewhere.

Klein, as editor-in-chief at Vox, published a critique of Harris' podcast. Harris objected, and emailed back and forth with Klein. As a fight, it was a massacre. Harris comes across whiny and childish, accusing others of attacking him personally for comments used to suggest the dangers of giving cover to racists. He also never acknowledges that there is actually no genetic data on which to base Murray's whole argument, just speculation.

I read the critique of the critique that Harris suggested Klein publish. I wasn't impressed. It said that IQ is somewhat inheritable at the individual level, so differences between populations must be partially genetic. There was no discussion of variation within a population and overlap of ranges, so it boiled down to a "common sense" speculation, with no discussion of what that actually means in a scientific discussion. Some part of IQ is inheritable, therefor genetic differences between populations, defined as races, must cause measured differences in IQ. I really don't think that conclusion is solid. We don't know the real potential of the human mind, or how close people get to it, depending on the conditions of their lives. My guess is that the environmental differences are greater than the IQ differences, taken on an average over the populations in question. But it's just a guess.

So having read the whole email exchange, Klein's latest published piece, and the comments from Vox and other sources, I've been thinking about IQ and genetics and what this debate means. Murray seems very confident in his conclusions that there are differences in IQ  between races, that these differences are partly genetic, and that no public policy can address the differences, even if they are partly environmental. No wonder people fear his views will be co-opted by white supremacists. He's basically making their argument for them, and claiming it is scientific fact. I know he doesn't see it that way, but to jump to his conclusions about public policy is absurd. Murray seems to ignore pretty much everything in the social sciences that shows that how children grow up matters to some degree in their success in life.

The criticism Klein published says that there isn't enough evidence to make any conclusions about how much, if any, of the gap in IQ between Asians, Whites, and Blacks in America is due to genetics. I suspect that is true. I haven't seen anything, including in all the discussion I read through, that suggests there is data pointing in that direction. Increases in IQ over time within American populations argue against genetics as a cause. The narrowing of the gap, at least between Blacks and Whites, also argues for an environmental cause. I didn't see much discussion of the gap between Whites and Asians. But the other changes mentioned seem too rapid to be due to evolutionary changes.

I came up with a lot of questions as I read about all this. Are current IQ tests devoid of cultural bias? That is, does an IQ score for a white person mean the same thing as it does for a black person? And how do we know? How much overlap is there between the ranges of white and black distribution of IQ? Are Asians going to displace Whites as the rulers of America before the rise of the data gods? Or will the data gods make this whole discussion moot in my lifetime? Are the algorithms that give rist to the data gods going to be written by whites, Asians, or blacks? And how will that affect the culture they create? I used to be interested in IQ, but now I've realized I really don't know what it measures. People ask me my IQ sometimes. I've learned that most people don't know theirs. But I also know that too often, decisions are made based on assumptions about the traits of a race or other group, and that those assumptions are not sound. Applied to races, that's called racism. And it is still rampant in America. So scientific discussion of race and complex issues like genetics and behavior should be conducted with great care and sensitivity. Maybe Harris should talk to a black geneticist, and see what he thinks.