Re: THE BELL CURVE

Ezra Story (ezy@panix.com)
25 Jan 1995 12:20:17 -0500

In article <tbev@parcplace.com> wrote:
>
>> Zeno wrote:
>> >It seems to me that there are multitudes of idiots who go around
>> >criticizing a book using secondary sources. I believe that if you have
>> >not read the complete book, you do not have any right to say anything
>> >about it. I am not supporting or antagonizing any scientific and

If you believed what others (and I) do about the book, would you support
Murray by buying the damn thing? No way.. Hell, anyone with a simulacrum
of sense can see its racist design, and therefore won't bother with it.
It is only because digit-heads can't see whats going on in front of them
that people have to even pick up the damn thing and point out its racist
sources as if we're teaching impatient schoolchildren wanting to go to
recess. "But the data says... wah! wah!"

>> >political views expounded by the book. I am just criticizing the amount
>> >of ignorance present in these discussions.

Of what? Textual content or agendas? Contrary to what seems like popular
belief around here, TBC is not a scientific paper; it is a popular book
with zero conclusions and lots of allusions. What was it that my third
grade teacher said? "Read between the lines".

>> How many people have read _The Protocols of the Elders of Zion_ or _Mein
>> Kampf_....? This reasoning is similar to the huffing and puffing of the
>> holocaust revisionist movement and is meant to throw a smoke screen upon
>> the subject.
>
>Are you so limp-minded that all you can do in an argument is raise the spectre
>of Hiltler and the Holocaust? I have NOT read Mein Kampf NOR TPOTEOZ and
>because I have not, I can't with integrity say didley about either. Period.

Are you so limp-minded that you cannot see the similarity of TBC to these
books in the eyes of its detractors? Perhaps so...

>This thread is discussing a book and the ideas it contains. It is certainly
>appropriate to take a side on the issue but it is fundamentally dishonest to
>oppose the contents, ideas, sources, etc. of a SPECIFIC work/book without
>1) having read it and/or 2) having provided compelling alternative evidence
>that would make reading it as unnecessary as reading a book on the mating
>habits of unicorns.
>
>You, like Mike Turton, seem to constantly indulge in psychologizing about
>the motives of H&R and then offering sly assertions that "their contradictions
>and dubious data would be all too exposed to reasoned debate..." Would

Ok, let's examine the assertions that appear in the book that cause so much
debate:

1) black score lower than whites in IQ tests
2) IQ is correlated with all those important things like economic status,
job performance, etc.

So? Why even publish a book like this? Neither of these things is
contrary to common knowledge, and indeed common sense. It is precisely
because the book comes to no firm conclusions about anything (it can't)
that many people have questions about it. It smacks of an agenda which is
larger in scope than the data can support. Anyone who ignores the racist
sources present in the TBC as irrelevant are just thrusting their swelled
head into the mud.

Look, this has been addressed before. If Murray was so interested in
maintaining proper scientific standards instead of pushing his own racist
agenda, why not publish something in a peer reviewed journal?

-- 
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