Human Diversity
All people are equal but, as Human Diversity explores, all groups of people are not the same -- a fascinating investigation of the genetics and neuroscience of human differences. The thesis of Human Diversity is that advances in genetics and neuroscience are overthrowing an intellectual orthodoxy that has ruled the social sciences for decades. The core of the orthodoxy consists of three dogmas: gender is a social construct, race is a social construct, and class is a function of privilege. The problem is that all three dogmas are half-truths. They have stifled progress in understanding the rich texture that biology adds to our understanding of the social, political, and economic worlds we live in. It is not a story to be feared. "There are no monsters in the closet," Murray writes, "no dread doors we must fear opening." But it is a story that needs telling. Human Diversity does so without sensationalism, drawing on the most authoritative scientific findings, celebrating both our many differences and our common humanity.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2019–2022years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > He and Hernstein advocated for abandoning affirmative action, and divert funds away from supporting low IQ groups (e.g. welfare) into supporting high performance groups.
There are perfectly good reasons to support these policies that have nothing to do with being racist.
> This is true, however the reason for this difference, and whether it is of societal significance, is up for debate.
Agreed! But calling people with different conclusions on that question 'racist' is not debating. It is giving yourself an excuse not to have the debate, while doing nothing to convince the other side.
And Murray does not have a strong opinion about how much of group differences are attributable to genes. He only argues that they very likely play a role.
> I would argue that we should care more about SAT scores then IQ scores because SAT scores are actually used as an admission metric
Why do you think those are two separate things? There is not one single IQ test. Any test that is g-loaded is an IQ test. IQ is simply a way of representing a score on any test that measures intelligence. The SAT is an intelligence test, and you can represent scores on that test as a quotient.
> Lewontin's Fallacy is a silly path to go down.
It's a perfectly reasonable path considering you commit the same fallacy.
> Group difference down these groups is way more interesting study then down gene make-up.
There's no reason we can't study all of these things, including genetic differences in population.
> If you want to see for your self how poor the scientific quality of The Bell Curve is, I recommend you read the sources it cites. Of particular interests is the meta-alalyses by R. Lynn (1991) [Here is a summary...
I'll check out the video at some point, but it is very long so I'll have to find the time. A substantive critique would be appreciated.
Murray's most recent work on human diversity, Human Diversity, is also very much worth checking out, as it does far more to address issues, like race, that people seem to be so upset about.
If you want to hear from the perspective of someone who actual works in population genetics, you should checkout what Razib Khan has had to say on Murray's work.
- A good book on this topic was The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy (1988) by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. A forthcoming book by a co-author of The Bell Curve is
Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (2020) by Charles Murray.
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