[lbo-talk] It's the IQ, stupid

[ravi]

Calvin Ostrum wrote:
> ravi wrote:
> 
>>> It is, incidentally, surprising to me that so many commentators
>>> should find it disturbing that IQ might be heritable, perhaps
>>> largely so.  Would it also be disturbing to discover that
>>> relative height, or musical talent, or rank in running the
>>> 100 yard dash is in part genetically determined?
>>
>> i think you may be missing the point: height is well-defined, at least
>> in some sense. gould's and others' criticism is that the notion of IQ is
>> conceptually not well-defined. if its nothing but how one performs on
>> particular tests, surely the onus is on the other camp to prove that
>> such things are indeed hereditary? gould and the related camp could be
>> wrong about their belief. but you may be constructing a strawman above.
> 
> Well, if I am missing the point, and constructing a straw man, then
> so is that respected icon of the progressive intellectual left,
> Noam Chomsky, since the words you quote me as saying above were
> also said by him, word for word, in his 1972 article on Richard
> Herrnstein's famous Atlantic Monthly article.
> 

but we are not talking about noam chomsky here. you said "It is,
incidentally, surprising to me that so many commentators  should find it
disturbing that IQ might be heritable, perhaps largely so". but who
finds it disturbing? someone on this list? gould? the question that is
begged is 'what is IQ?'. something that is measured by an IQ test? the
rest is already touched upon in my response above.


> Now, if you really want answers to some of your questions above,
> I could go on at some length trying to provide them. <...>
> 
> But if you are really interested, you can find these issues addressed
> in the academic literature.  It's pretty complex stuff, though,
> and of course it is not cut and dried either.  The truth, unlike
> simple and comforting ideology, is often like that, unfortunately.

more patronizing stuff.

	--ravi