Re: BELL CURVE CRITIC EXPOSED?
John McCarthy (jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU)
03 Feb 1995 19:48:02 GMT
In article <MCGUFFIN.95Feb3141357@elmer.llan> mcguffin@ll.mit.edu (Bruce McGuffin) writes:
For the purposes of TBC, "race" is defined as the ethnic and/or cultural
group that a person considers him/herself to be part of. A white child
being raised by a black family is thus defined as being black.
"Intelligence" is the quantifiable ability to function within the
framework of society.
But if this is your definition of race, how can racial differences
in IQ be genetic?
This is a nice, concise question.
IQ tests could show that the average IQ of people who identify
themselves as being of one race was larger than that of people who
identify themselves as being of another race. It might also show that
the IQs of children and parents are correlated and that this
correlation could not be explained away as environmental. It might
also be shown that there is a strong correlation between the race a
person ascribes to himself and the race(s) ascribed to themselves by
his parents and children.
It would be nice to have a definition that didn't depend on
self-identification, but neither the theory nor the data for such a
definition is likely to become available.
Lacking such a definition, scientific progress and good public policy
depends on making use of such information as is available. The public
policy I have in mind is to not infer that all differences in outcome
*must* be consequences of racism.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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