there’s no conflict between leftism and a belief in the heritability of ability. In this respect at least, the left has nothing to fear from science.
Suppose that one believes that intelligence is heritable and that intelligence affects economic status. To the extent that you believe those two things, you have to maintain a somewhat lower belief in the importance of effort in determining economic status. Accordingly, in scoring a policy of pure income redistribution, as Dillow points out, you have to give it additional philosophical points because the well-off are the beneficiaries of lucky inheritance. In addition, such a policy loses fewer economic-efficiency points, because taxes that discourage effort will not diminish total wealth as much as they would if wealth were entirely determined by effort.
So Dillow would appear to be correct. And in fact Gregory Clark, who is well known for his findings supporting heritability of economic status, says that his findings support income redistribution.
Why, then, is heritability of intelligence a problem for the left? I believe that the three-axes model can help provide the answer.
In the three-axes model, progressives want to squeeze every issue into an oppressor-oppressed narrative. To suggest that ethnic groups differ in average income for reasons other than oppression would be to weaken that narrative. So even if from a policy perspective a belief in heritability is tolerable, from a narrative perspective a book like The Bell Curve represents a huge threat.
My sense is that this produces a great deal of cognitive dissonance on the left. I have many friends on the left, and I do not know a single one who would instinctively deny the heritability of intelligence. On the other hand, they have been instructed to regard Murray and Herrnstein as vile racists.
Evidence that runs counter to the oppressor-oppressed axis narrative is difficult for people on the left to process. I think that, notwithstanding Dillow’s reasoning, the left is going to continue to be uncomfortable with the science of heritability of intelligence.
I would add that in the case of intelligence, the philosophical justification for redistributing the fruits of luck comes up harder than usual against the moral idea of self-ownership. Your intelligence is a fundamental part of who you are, and claiming that it can be used forcibly for others’ purposes because it results from luck is uncomfortably like justifying slavery.
“So even if from a policy perspective a belief in heritability is tolerable, from a narrative perspective a book like The Bell Curve represents a huge threat.” There’s an implicit leap here from “genes explain individual differences” to “genes explain group-level differences”. Which is bogus.
Here is the rub. Why then do the left focus on groups?
Not really, if you posit that the “group” achievement gap is nothing more than the results of many individual differences caused by heritability.
Murray and Herrnstein both thought that increased income distribution was an obvious solution policy suggested by their book.
As for why the left oppose it–first off, while the left may enjoy the idea of more income redistribution, Democrats didn’t sell the idea of affirmative action and other entitlements as a permanent solution. No one would. Officially acknowledging that the achievement gap is just an artifact of heritability, rather than caused by discrimination or past wrongs, would be incredibly disruptive unless we stopped caring about race entirely–which would also be difficult.
What we need to do first is establish that race, in fact, doesn’t matter in educational outcomes, once controlled for cognitive ability. It might not help, but at least it would get people thinking. I suggested a possibility here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/philip-dick-preschool-and-schrodingers-cat/
Yes. The left is focused on group identity politics right now.
Telling their votes that they still want cash for them because they don’t deserve it would be problematic, methinks.
A second big part of progressivism is the idea that the right govt policy can deliver Cosmic Justice ( http://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html )
IQ, the Knowledge Problem, Principal-Agent problem, & others all place strict limits on what govt can do.
There’s no “knowledge problem” involved in raising taxes on the rich to give bigger checks to poor people. Red herring.
A significant element of libertarian-style thinking exists on the left too, but they refer to it as “agency” where libertarians would call it “individual choice” and the like. To the extent that a largely white scientific priesthood would be somehow denying agency to people of color by implementing policy based on IQ heritability, they’re against that. Even if strictly speaking it doesn’t DENY anything (see for example reaction to the idea of giving criminals the option to sterilize).
It depends on how big the checks are. If it us based in the idea that the poor are poor for lack of bigger checks then yes there is a “knowledge”problem.
I call this the busy-body impulse. I don’t know what other people call it It may be related to Popper and Hayek’s concept of scientism. It is the idea that ” progress” and “science” can measure everything as with laser micrometer precision and point the way toward no brainer improvements. It dovetails with oppressor-oppressed because if any discrepancy exists it must be remedied, not studied, because progress is no discrepancy and the “science” is settled when the first left leaning academic publishes the first scientific paper claiming there is discrepancy. Since science rules all, it cannot fail to explain, measure, and prescribe remedy.
Tell me why oppression can’t be the result of inherited differences. That may make it less likely to be altered, but it doesn’t say there may not be justice in countering it.
Yeah, we get this about you 😉
I am assuming you have already read this, but in the event that you havent:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/
“there’s no conflict between leftism and a belief in the heritability of ability.” <– Most leftists fiercely disagree. Leftist leaders like Obama and Mandela have quite aggressively denounced this. I am sure some variant of the left can accommodate this belief, but much of the left as it is today logically requires at least a superficial rejection of heritability of ability. It is surprising that most normal people of both left and right fully believe that different demographic groups have different inherent abilities and different individuals have different biologically set ability potentials, but will deny this in a political setting or even be outraged at its suggestion.
Many educated leftists that I know still cite "The Mismeasure of Man" as the definitive answer on the subject. If you read the intro to that book, he articulates precisely why: the notion of the heritability of ability undermines much of the policy ideas of the left.
For one thing it is not luck. For another thing, assuming an arbitrary rule whereby you are entitled to your luck is at least at supportable (moreso) than the arbitrary rule whereby you are not.
We don’t need/want Warren Buffett to allocate capital because it is hard for him. We want him to because he is good at it.
Also, the right and libertariano aren’t trying to play the game of regarded science litmus tests, just pointing out why it is retarded.
The time to be concerned is when the Left writ large begins to lose its aversion to the idea of the heritability of ability, and really begins to confront whatever hard limits there are on interventions like prenatal care and Pre-K education. Personally, whatever those hard limits are, I hope the Left remains in denial about them for a long, long time.
Heritability opens up all sorts of vistas for official solutions, benevolent and otherwise.
I dream of the day that nobody assumes Washington is positioned to solve big cultural issues like this. I think if you look back on even Washington’s greatest social successes, like ending slavery and bringing women into the voting pool and the working class, they often look rather hamhanded about how they did it. As well, these successes are mainly reversals of their own earlier mistakes.
Anyway, to wade into it a little bit, if ability is hereditary, then it means that white males really do contribute disproportionately to modern progress and welfare. That strikes me as a really uncomfortable thought for a Democrat. I keep hearing how white men only get ahead due to prejudice and access, but that’s less obviously true if white men really do include the best mathematicians.
At the same time, Democrats need sexuality to be heritable. If a gay person is making a choice in who they sleep with, then they deserve what they get. If there’s a gay gene, it’s easier to say they can’t help themselves.