Something against Propaganda

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

This Gladwell article is almost too stupid to acknowledge, much less argue with. The challenge he places before himself is this: whether it is possible so to interpret the scientific evidence as to demonstrate that there is no genetic basis for interracial IQ differences. And, wonder of wonders, he discovers that it is possible! There are a couple of minor caveats involved, of course. First, we must relegate logic to the dustheap of political incorrectness. Then, we must be extremely selective in deciding what evidence to adduce. By this procedure it is shown that Good-Thinking=Truth.

His thesis seems to be that the Flynn effect (the observation that IQ scores in advanced nations have been rising about 2 points per decade for a century) undermines the idea that intelligence is genetically determined. This is what we call a straw man argument, since no consequential scientist in the last two generations has claimed IQ is purely heritable. The current consensus is that adult IQ is 70-80% heritable--the rest is hammered out by various "nurture" factors. So Gladwell can be congratulated for beating this non-existent foe.

But, then he segues into his real interest, racial differences. My deduction from much evidence reviewed over the years is that the 17 point white-black American IQ gap is partly genetic, partly environmental--my educated guess is 10 points genetic, 7 points environmental--though we would have a clearer idea of this if the whole field of intelligence research weren't considered morally dubious at best. Gladwell mentions two forms of evidence that these differences are environmentally determined. The studies on which he bases the first are not noted and I do not know what they are. I seriously doubt, though, that they were valid for Gladwell’s purposes here. The second form of evidence is the 1961 Eyferth study—read about it on Wikipedia. The bottom line is that these “black” GIs were not altogether black and, moreover, were smarter than average black Americans, whereas the control group of white GIs were not smarter than average white Americans. Also, the children were tested at age 10 on average, at which stage, per Gladwell, there is typically an 8 point white-black IQ gap. By adulthood, the gap, per Gladwell, is 16.6 points. Given that these children are at most half black, one would expect only a 4 point gap at that age. I would guess they are genetically only 30% black (American blacks are 20% white on average and north africans are not black), which would produce a 2.4 point gap. When you have such a long list of qualifications (and I could continue ad nauseam as this is an abysmal study) this is the result: it's not a valid study to prove interracial IQ equality, IQ inequality, or anything else.
 

I think my indictment on grounds of lack of logic and lack of evidence should produce an easy conviction of this Gladwell on the charge of rank mendacity. And, yet, he's a celebrated author among our "educated" classes. Why? He's part black and all politically correct.

I have never seen or heard of a study that demonstrates that equal environments for blacks and whites produce equal IQs. This would, of course, be the holy grail of the elite establishment as it would justify to the end of time government intervention to impose equality of results among all the peoples of the world.

Science and Genius

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

It seems a matter of common sense that the more cognitively challenging the task of discovery or reconception is, the less likely it is to be discovered more than once. Leaping over a rivulet is possible for many, over a river for few. This begs the question: just how many scientific advances entail the application of an extreme degree of cognitive power? What Newton did and what Einstein did, in reconceiving the laws of physics, seem to be defensible examples of extremity. So much of science, though, especially outside the highly abstract realms of physics and mathematics, resembles a process of incremental, random discoveries, happy accidents, the accumulation of data to ramify an extant paradigm.

The key difference between those advances susceptible to access by multiple minds and those reserved for high genius may be the relative degree of discovery content versus thought content--discovering and describing a new species of beetle is entirely distinguishable from postulating the theory of relativity. And this distinction may also partially explain why there is more clarity in the arts as to who is and who is not a genius. Even an artist like Flaubert, a founder of the "realist" school, which emphasized details discovered in the real world, only achieved his greatness by selecting and placing those details to maximize their symbolic and aesthetic power. Thus, the "discovery" element, the knowledge of relevant details, is only a minor aspect of his work--their aura and their consequence derive from the conceptual powers active through them. The other form of artistic discovery is the imitation of other artists--their forms, techniques, perspectives. But, like the greatest scientists, who "stand on the shoulders of giants" and must reconceive their conceptual inheritance to make major advances, great artists also must achieve reconceptions or reinventions to create major works. Revolutions in science, which shower eternal glory upon the revolutionaries, seem rarer than revolutions in the arts--though it would be a reckless leap to assume that supreme genius is more common in the arts. The materials upon which artists and scientists work and the conditions under which they work are too different for a meaningful comparison of relative degrees of genius.

I should add that I was provoked to this consideration by the PC implications of Gladwell's emphasis on the democratisation of discovery. There is nothing more PC than the assumption that all humans are equal. This is the unquestioned and unquestionable foundation stone of PC ideology. When one of the priests of PC happens upon any evidence to further press this notion upon the public consciousness, he is religiously bound and equipped to extrapolate it to the edge of nonsense. So does he slide into this premeditated nonsequitur:

 

No one is a partner to more multiples [multiple discoveries], he [sociologist Robert K. Merton] pointed out, than a genius, and he came to the conclusion that our romantic notion of the genius must be wrong. A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is someone who does what it takes many others to do. The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight.

  

First, I notice that it's no mean achievement for a genius to do single-handedly what would otherwise require the exertions of many other great scientists (Gladwell leaves the impression that the other discoverers are often just average scientists, but, except in the field of beetle-discovery, this is not true). Great scientists are not cheap commodities themselves. More important here is Gladwell's happy endorsement of Merton's nonsequitur: because some discoveries can be made by multiple individuals, all discoveries are available to multiple individuals--which means "the genius is not a unique source of insight," and is therefore scarcely a genius, but merely another rung higher on the continuum of talent. I do not recall that any other candidates were available to lead the Newtonian or Einsteinian revolutions--and those are merely the clearest cases I know of. Very likely examples could be found, especially in the conceptually intense fields of physics and mathematics. There is no equality here or anywhere else in the nature of humanity. There is a natural hierarchy, regardless of what type of artificial hierarchy the politico-social environment imposes.