a recent study from the UK Biobank, which has a collection of genotypes of individuals together with measures of their social characteristics, supports the idea that there is strong genetic assortment in mating. Robinson et al. (2017) look at the phenotype and genotype correlations for a variety of traits – height, BMI, blood pressure, years of education – using data from the biobank. For most traits they find as expected that the genotype correlation between the parties is less than the phenotype correlation. But there is one notable exception. For years of education, the phenotype correlation across spouses is 0.41 (0.011 SE). However, the correlation across the same couples for the genetic predictor of educational attainment is significantly higher at 0.654 (0.014 SE) (Robinson et al., 2017, 4). Thus couples in marriage in recent years in England were sorting on the genotype as opposed to the phenotype when it comes to educational status.
The paper is entitled “For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls.” Pointer from Tyler Cowen. The conclusion points to a very strong Null Hypothesis view of all forms of social intervention.
n aspirations that by appropriate social design, rates of social mobility can be substantially increased will prove futile. We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth.
Clark has been finding evidence for heritability and for the broader Null Hypothesis for some time. See my essay on The Son Also Rises.
He is one of the few people doing this sort of research. Here is why. Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
Is the null hypothesis that “ all forms of social intervention” will fail to impact social mobility? Because it seems that lots of forms of social intervention can improve people’s lives. For instance, London’s homicide rate has been falling for centuries, and I suspect that has more to do with the increasing power and sophistication of the British state, including the invention of modern policing, and not due to genetics.
In terms of the measured impact of controlled experiments for educational interventions different from the typical status quo, Arnold defined it earlier as expecting that:
He has also quoted Rossi who generalized beyond the educational context: “The Iron Law of Evaluation: The expected value of any net impact assessment of any large scale social program is zero.”
If you start with the assumption that the Null Hypothesis is true, then the implications regarding the state of society and politics are too deep, ugly, and depressing for most people to contemplate for long.
Why are the implications ugly? It has always seemed to me a silly idea to think that changes to schooling could do much to change things at a societal level (outside of basic literacy and numeracy). I suspect that most developed countries already have levels of social mobility higher than that in agrarian societies, so I am not sure why people should expect rates of social mobility to stay persistently high. It seems to me like the period of time in which a society transitions from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society will be a time period of unusually high social mobility, as such a transition entails a dramatic expansion of white collar work and work in skilled trades, coincident with a huge expansion in the productive capacity, wealth, and income of that society. But that transition only happens once, and so once it is over you would expect something of a lower level of social mobility.
The fundamental myth of our society is that you are the master of your own fate. It’s a totalizing myth, to the point where people literally think they can choose their gender or whatever else. When reality comes up against a foundational myth it gets ugly.
LKY can say in a speech that he can only make your life 15% better and you are stuck with whatever else fate gave you, but The Singapore dream isn’t the same as the American dream.
Moreover, while people claim that The Bell Curve can imply a social welfare state based on fairness (from each according to, to each according to), that is not the basis behind most of our social spending. Educational funding is justified primarily based on the assertion that is is positive ROI. If it isn’t then lots of people will question whether that is the best use of funds. Multiply that across huge swaths of our society.
asdf,
>–“Moreover, while people claim that The Bell Curve can imply a social welfare state based on fairness (from each according to, to each according to), that is not the basis behind most of our social spending.”
Exactly which “people” have ever claimed that The Bell Curve implies a communist welfare system? I have never heard that idea from anyone.
Both Clark and Murray conclude that their work supports the kind of welfare system that makes sure all citizen’s most basic needs are met, NOT one that insures they achieve anything like economic equality. Both are quite clear that economic equality is an impossible goal.
This contrasts quite vividly with your idea (which you bizarrely claim is based on theirs) that “the children of the dysgenic need to die.” The welfare systems that Clark and Murray support are intended to keep the children of the poorest people alive.
Your inability to understand this point raises the issue of whether maybe you don’t have the superior IQ you claim or do have it and are using it to misrepresent what their work means. I’d have a higher opinion of you if it was the first and you were sincerely misunderstanding them instead of cynically misrepresenting their work.
>—“The fundamental myth of our society is that you are the master of your own fate.”
Yeah, we get it. No chance you are falling for that myth and giving up your righteous victimhood.
Freddie deBoer’s The Cult of Smart comes close. He says that there is a great difference in people’s academic intelligence and that more school isn’t going to change that. It isn’t going to make less smart people into high earners, and we should stop pretending that it will. He is on board with the idea, “good schools don’t make good students; good students make good schools.” He proudly calls himself a Marxist and likes the idea “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The long last chapter is short-run and long-run suggestions for getting there.
Of course, he doesn’t say nice things about Murray or Clark because they are icky people.
Andrew Sullivan takes seriously The Logic of Bell Curve Leftism. Alex Tabarrok quotes from and links to something related by “the left-leaning behavioral geneticist” Paige Harden.
Also related: Mickey Kaus’s Two Paths for Meritocracy.
Yeah, I don’t know which is more idiotic, the idea that genetic differences are unimportant or the idea that we know so much about them as to settle ethical and policy questions.
How about we remember our options are not so limited as to trap us in this false dichotomy?
Greg,
What are “basic needs”? Lots of people think unlimited medical care, unlimited free education, assistance paying your rent, etc are “basic needs”. As I’ve mentioned before, if we define “basic needs” as “manufactured products machines can make lots of for cheap” then maybe that can be arranged. However, if we define “basic needs” as “free labor from high IQ people” ala medical care or education then its not necessarily affordable.
It seems to me that this “basic needs” category is elastic enough to justify almost anything. The pattern I’ve seen is that when the dysgenic have the necessary political power they tend to define “basic needs” in expansive enough a way to kill the golden goose. For instance, Baltimore City has taxes far in excess of most of the nation, to the point they killed their tax base and entered a death spiral. A similar pattern can be seen in Venezuela.
Either the dysgenic lack the ability to understand they are killing the golden goose, or they understood that the goose might eventually wake up and not want to die, or both. The bottom line is that it’s not a stable equilibrium in practice.
>—“What are “basic needs”? Lots of people think unlimited medical care, unlimited free education…”
Well, in the context I used the term which was, since you apparently forgot:
” Both Clark and Murray conclude that their work supports the kind of welfare system that makes sure all citizen’s most BASIC NEEDS (emphasis added) are met”
For Murray it’s a UBI. I don’t remember exactly the dollar figure but I don’t think it was even as much as is now being spent on the poor. The point is, for him, its purpose is to keep the kids of those receiving it alive, not to facilitate their “need to die” which would be an entirely opposite purpose.
How you get from there to “unlimited” anything is something I’d love to hear you explain.
For Clark it’s a Nordic style (not Venezuelan style) social safety net. This time larger but still very far from “unlimited.”
As for the “lots of people” (all unnamed of course) who think is possible for welfare to be “unlimited” I don’t know or care how they would answer your question or if they even exist.
[Time to take these discussions off line. Other people are tired of them. I am–ed.]
Greg,
Murray proposed a UBI and catastrophic health insurance. His numbers for catastrophic health insurance were lower than true catastrophic health insurance. But beyond that statement the deductibles on catastrophic health insurance are still too high for most low income people to afford.
Let me tell you a story. I once attended a meeting where we were discussing how specialty drugs were eating my entire industry. The entire benefit it going bankrupt due to them. These are really expensive drugs.
What do most of these drugs treat. I would say they fall into two categories.
1) STDs and other vice related drugs.
2) Stuff all old people get like arthritis but low income people take the drugs 10x as often or more because they get $10,000 drugs for $8 of cost sharing (they can’t afford anything more don’t you know).
To the first, which as the main problem at the time, our executive commented “the 70s, woohoo!”. Referring to the fact that faggots having orgies on fire island were the ones with most of the STDs being treated by these drugs.
The bottom line on all this is that the amount of medical needs people who lack the discipline to care for their bodies can declare is unlimited. They can always eat, fuck, drink, or inject themselves into worse health status. And of course when they do they will “need” more medicine and medical services and all the rest. They really will need it! They will die without it!
But that’s the rub. Either you let the die of their vices or you agree to unlimited expense to cover them (usually at near zero cost share, after all they are broke).
Murray’s math of his plan was flawed. It required people getting SS and Medicare to take a huge haircut, but what are the odds of that.
And it relied on the idea that people would be satisfied with bare bones catastrophic insurance plans (what democrat is talking about that exactly, they all want $0 coverage of everything).
The difference between a Nordic and Venezuelan style welfare system is just the inputs and outputs. Nordics are productive enough to pay a lot of taxes and conscientious enough to take care of themselves and not be wasteful. They have enough sense as citizens not to loot their own treasury. They have that sense and those habits because they are eugenically superior. The dysgenic have no such sense, as evidenced by their actual behavior which it well documented across multiple examples.
>—“They will die without it!”
No one gets a guarantee they won’t die. In fact, everyone gets a guarantee they will die.
>—” Either you let the die of their vices or you agree to unlimited expense to cover them”
You repeat this false dichotomy endlessly. Limited expenses is a much more realistic option than either no treatment or unlimited treatment.
And of course when drugs sweep through a black community it is perfectly obvious to you that their racial inferiority is the reason for it. But when drugs sweep through white communities racial inferiority suddenly has nothing to do with it.
>—“Nordics are productive enough to pay a lot of taxes and conscientious enough to take care of themselves and not be wasteful. They have enough sense as citizens not to loot their own treasury.”
Middle class Nordics pay much higher taxes than you do with much less complaining in order to fund benefits that are more generous than those you take to be a looting of the treasury in this country.
>—“They have that sense and those habits because they are eugenically superior.”
It would appear then that you lack the genetic superiority than enables most Nordics to cheerfully support their more generous welfare system.
“Referring to the fact that faggots having orgies”
Excellent – nice job in undermining your cause as per the usual!
I’m happy to report that my new firearm finally arrived today after 6 months of patiently waiting.
The ATF firearm transaction record (form 4473) now includes a check box for “non-binary” in question 14 for sex. So, at least we are finally being inclusive in our firearm transfers.
The preferred pronouns for my new AR-15 are she/her. And, I’ve got no problem with that. She’s beautifully dangerous.
https://www.bravocompanymfg.com/specification/bcm_recce14_mcmr.php
[Time to take these discussions off line. Other people are tired of them. I am–ed.]
Arnold I’m fine with that.
If Greg keeps bringing it up in I will just ignore.
@asdf – In the hope that this is not violating the editor’s wishes (and if so, please delete): What exactly makes one person dysgenic and another person eugenic? Is there some way to tell beforehand who will be which?
Roger,
In the spirit of Arnold’s request let’s just table it.
I understand the null hypothesis is largely meaning ‘at the margin’ for modern societies. I think it’s well established that you can make a lot of people smarter by teaching basic literacy in a society full of illiterate pre-industrial peasants or perhaps by reducing lead poisoning, but the null hypothesis says we’re well past the point of diminishing returns.
Exactly.
I am not sure that we are past the point of diminishing returns in terms of heavy metal poisoning.
Why not? The amount of heavy metals in the environment is considerably less than it has been for decades. Lead from gasoline has been going down since 1975. It’s been illegal since January 1, 1996. Lead went out of new paint in the 1970s. There is, of course, old lead paint in lots of buildings, but less every year.
I see- I mistook diminishing returns to mean negative returns, which is something different. I do wonder if there is much of anything being done in modern countries that are not and have not been experiencing diminishing returns.
“For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls.”
Awesome choice! Greg better finish a book with the same title before it gets canceled. I need this on my bookshelf to go along with his other two books with Hemingway influenced titles.
A perfect trilogy.
I have no ability to assess the genetic formulae. However, the authors conclusion, “ this should push us towards compressing differences in income and wealth that are the product of such inherited characteristics.” ought to be catnip for the woke and socialist left. So I don’t entirely understand their fierce opposition.
Secondly, we all likely have a family story like this: I have a pair of cousins conceived by the same parents. The firstborn, a male, entered the Navy, came out, rattled around various construction jobs, married a low-status woman with several children, was soon divorced, and descended into a life of drug use. He died in his 50s. His sister, born about three years later, went to work for a state agency at age 18, and stayed there until retirement at 48, after which she sold her expertise to the state as a consultant. She married, had one son, divorced, remained single, and is now in her mid 70s. The son has a stable marriage with a woman who had children by a previous relationship, and he owns and operates his own business.
While it is likely that there is a great macro sweep in which genetics and assortative mating plays a major role in societal outcomes, it still seems unlikely based on millions of similar examples (were they captured by the study?) that genetics so determinedly predicts outcomes at the individual level.
If you read the study, he doesn’t say that interventions and social arrangements don’t matter. What he’s staying is that they’re not stable, and over multiple generations they tend to wash out and the overall predictor of elite outcomes (note that wealth in his view is more heavily influenced by customs and the environment than education or social status of profession, which have stronger genetic components) ends up being some mix of genetics and genetics enhanced by assortative mating. Even when men marry women of different class, they tend to pick women from any given group of who certain genetypic characteristics in common. On the average of course. The range of exceptions is large but doesn’t add up to steady patterns over time.
And ye high heavens, the temple of the gods,
In which a thousand torches flaming bright
Doe burne, that to us wretched earthly clods,
In dreadful darknesse lend desired light;
And all ye powers which in the same remayne,
More then we men can fayne,
Poure out your blessing on us plentiously,
And happy influence upon us raine,
That we may raise a large posterity,
Which from the earth, which they may long possesse,
With lasting happinesse,
Up to your haughty pallaces may mount,
And for the guerdon of theyr glorious merit
May heavenly tabernacles there inherit,
Of blessed Saints for to increase the count.
-Spenser
I know this evidence will get ignored, but does not the principle of consilience mean that the position of strong hereditarianism (genetics explain >70% of social outcomes) looks pretty damn good? We have adoption studies and twin studies implying a strong role for genetics in, say, IQ. Clark came up with huge datasets of surnames to show the large genetic component of “moxie” (Gregory Clark’s term–moxie being roughly the same but not exactly the same as IQ). Clark now has created a massive dataset of genealogies to again reach the same conclusion. How many other angles can we come up with to address this question?
That kind of talk will get you cancelled in Scotland.
My understanding is that Clark is getting pushback from journals that won’t even touch parts of his book that he wants published in the academic reviews first. People who otherwise admire him and even reluctant to discuss his work publicly.
Refusal to allow statements of truth. The Bell Curve is basically true.
Big Lie is to claim it’s not true; pretend it’s not true; claim the problems caused by believing the lie is instead due to racism or sexism.
Sailor says what is happening.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/weiss-the-miseducation-of-americas-elites/
Wokeness appeals to people who are meaner, stupider, uglier, and less fair-minded than their peers, but we have a culture in which nobody is allowed to point that out and remain in polite society. So the Woke are using their vices to take over rich institutions.
The “Here is why” linked letter is frightening :
We firmly oppose the circulation of genetically-determined ideas of any aspect of social worlds.
When, not if, actual genetic science is done that influences society, those ideas are opposed.
Georgetown fired a law prof – because so many bottom students are Black. Again.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/georgetown-law-prof-cancelled-for-saying-what-cant-be-said.php
We have to be resigned to living in a world where social outcomes are substantially determined at birth.–Gregory Clark
Maybe so.
I am not a fan of social welfare. But probably labor should never be taxed, and anyone who works qualifies for basic healthcare. And labor markets kept tight as a drum.
The Bell curve is what it is, and telling a lot of people to re-skill and become software programmers is like telling me to practice harder to get into Major League Baseball.
Does taxing property rather than labor make sense?
Yes, very much so. Land is zero-sum, the more one person has, the less available for others. The gov’t’s main job is to protect the property ownership contracts – who owns the land that the gov’t protects.
“Public Choice” made a mistake in their name, it’s really “Government Choice”. The public is NOT the gov’t, and it’s people in the gov’t who are choosing the “public choices” that are chosen – they are gov’t choices.
We need a more honest conversation about what gov’t paid benefits will be given to citizens who are lazy,
stupidlow IQ, mistake making, choosing unhealthy lifestyles. I believe offering them all a gov’t guaranteed job is better than UBI, which Murray & Arnold support.Spending wisely is more important, and is being done less, than taxing wisely.
When you say “zero sum”, I presume you mean an asset that can show no further growth in productivity/usefulness. Such assets are used to display relative wealth ie status.
Government is ‘on a hiding to nothing’ in trying to redirect human nature. I think this is the lesson to be drawn from the failure of communism.
The trick for “government” is to distinguish between such status assets and accumulated capital/wealth useful for productive investment. I suggest what is needed is a mechanism where status is earn’t by individuals rather than inherited from parents.
When one dies seems like a suitable time to reset such status displays. In the past this has been done with death taxes and with sequestration of burial goods.