"He may, in other words, have found his intellectual solace not in political ideology of any sort but rather in the false-reality fantasies of writers like Philip K. Dick, who all but invented a science-fiction genre about how the powerful have the rest of us living in a dream world in which we are manipulated. The most commercially popular version of this worldview is The Matrix.."Like Loughner, PKD had some mental health issues, although it is not clear he was schizophrenic. However, he never would have had anything to do with dreck like The Matrix if only because he knew the second law of thermodynamics. The Matrix was inspired by continental philosophers like Jean Baudrillard. So Heidegger should take the blame for the shooting.
Monday, January 10, 2011
The neocons are linking the Arizona massacre to ... Philip K. Dick?
On the Commentary blog John Podhertz is linking the Arizona massacre to the late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick . Podhertz opines
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Ok, question about the HH.
The "default hypothesis," according to Jensen, is that the between group difference is of the same nature as the within group difference (i.e; substantially genetic). Now, we now know that the genetic component of the within group difference increases with age (i.e h^2 increases from ~0 to ~85%, between age .6 and 24).
Given the default hypothesis, this implies that the genetic component of the between group difference should also increase with age.
This, of course, contradicts a number of Jensen's, Gottfredson's, and Rushton's early claims. Accordingly, a substantial part of younger Black's IQ difference is due to the rearing practices of their low IQ parents -- and so can be improved. On the other hand this allows the HH to be reconciled with some of the findings of the adoption studies and recent decreases in differences (i.e. Black parenting is being outsourced).
Anyways, what is the predicted genetic component of the difference? Jensen originally argued (1969)that the difference was .75 to .5 heritable. At that time he considered the difference to be 1SD, which implies a genetic component of .75 to .5 SD.
Let's say we assume this estimate.
Would we say that the genetic component of the difference at age 24 was .75 to .5 SD? -- this would imply that a significant narrowing could happen. If a within group h^2 at age 10 of .5 that would imply that the genetic component at age 10 is .38 to .25. Let me put this in perspective. If the genetic component of the IQ (g) difference at age 10 was .38 to .25, given equal (parental) environments, the NAEP reading scores could be reduced to .23 to .15. (There's a .6 correlation between reading scores and IQ).
OA,
I think I am missing something here. What claims are contradicted if the genetic component of the gap increases over time? This just means some of the early gap can be alleviated but not all of it. HH only requires some of the gap to be explained by genes not that it is consistent over time. Also, I thought gap observed in the adoptions studies increased over time?
"I think I am missing something here. What claims are contradicted if the genetic component of the gap increases over time? This just means some of the early gap can be alleviated but not all of it. HH only requires some of the gap to be explained by genes not that it is consistent over time. Also, I thought gap observed in the adoptions studies increased over time?"
In Jensen's 1969 paper he argued that the gap (1SD) was .5 to .75 heritable. At that time he conceived it as being constant across age. (See: "A cumulative Deficit: A testable hypothesis"). Rushton latter argued this, as did Gottfredson and Murray and numerous others -- with the point being that trying to closing the gap was more or less futile.
Since, Rushton (2005) Jensen and Rushton (2010) have modified their position somewhat, using high within race e^2 at young ages to explain away inconvenient findings. Yet they have never developed this logic. Perhaps, understandably:
If the h^2 of the between group gap acts in the manner that the the h^2 of the within group gap, then most of the early black deficit (is due to their parents) and can be decreased (by outsourcing parenting). It's due to factors as such: http://www.socsc.smu.edu.sg/events/Paper/sdarticle.pdf
To me that's an interesting point as the solution, if the HH is correct, will obviously be to turn the US into even a larger adoption study than it is via the managerial state. (Somebody recently pointed out the More study in arguing against the HH N= 23 B/W), and I pointed out the US study N = 240 million B/W).
Regardless, that was a tangent. My inquiry was:
what is the predicted BGH of the difference at age X? We might as well as set X at 24 since at this age WGH is at a maximum. The maximum that the genetic component could be, of course, is 1.1 SD (BGH=100).
If we say that BGH = 1 at 24; the minimum magnitude of the IQ gap < age 24 would be ~ .65. Anyways, I thinks it's worth projecting out a few age 24 BGHs and seeing how different ones fit the data.
OA,
Got it. I did not recall that early work.
The problem with trying to close the gap with "early childhood" intervention lies in the fact that, within races, the shared environment has little effect on IQ in the long run so outsourcing black parenting is unlikely to work.
It would be very interesting to look at the max. environmental differences necessary to explain the gap assuming a non-constant heritability. That is recalculate the indirect argument over time.
"It would be very interesting to look at the max. environmental differences necessary to explain the gap assuming a non-constant heritability. That is recalculate the indirect argument over time."
I don't see how the increasing e^2 with youth could invalidate the WGH/BGH argument. The argument works as long as older cohorts have or at some time had a high h^2 and >1SD difference.
....
Hey, would you know how to simulate an IA-IQ correlation?
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/direct-measurement-of-genetic.php
The guy at gene-expression gets Jensen's argument a tad mixed up. Jensen estimated the Skin color - IA correlation to be 40% (it's ~ 44% for AAs) and argued that the IA-IQ correlation could be .5 at max. From this he concluded a .2 max skin color-IQ correlation.
Anyways, it would be nice to get an estimate of the IQ-IA correlation-- and this time one that factors in an age variable h^2.
OA, I don't understand your argument. Jensen says in "The g factor" that the B-W gap is about 0.7 SDs at age 6, grows to 1 SD in adolescence, and 1.2 SDs in adulthood. Is this not compatible with the increase in heritability from 40 percent (age 6) to 60 percent (adolescence), and finally to 80 percent (adulthood)?
Whenever I try to do Pop Gen I get something wrong. If you assume that AAs are 20% with 100% heritability the average IQ gap = 1.25*IA. If you assume X% heritability then wouldn't this just be gap = 1.25*IA*X%? Fromthis you could run a simulation. This is usually where I screw up though. This might be a useful calculation if you had some real data an wanted to make a prediction but other than that I do not see a point.
See this 1977 interview of Dick. It took place in France, maybe Baudrillard was in the audience?
I saw that video after I wrote the post. This should teach me to stick with more obscure topics. Regardless, Dick's unreality usually had some supernatural sources and so made more sense than the matrix.
Post a Comment