tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post7823299365474591128..comments2024-03-18T22:32:52.802-04:00Comments on Noahpinion: Nuthin' but a 'g' thangNoah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-61818271383887900632013-04-19T03:43:24.799-04:002013-04-19T03:43:24.799-04:00"Notice that all I need for my "two-g&qu..."Notice that all I need for my "two-g" model to fit the data is that most of the b and c coefficients are nonzero and positive. It makes sense they'd all be positive; more of some mental ability should never hurt when trying to do some task. And the "nonzero" part comes from the conjecture that simple mental tasks can be performed by a number of different, substitutable systems. (Note: the functional form I chose has the two abilities be perfect substitutes, but that is not necessary for the result to hold, as you can easily check.)"<br /><br />From what I gather, this is basically the point of "g". The assumption that an improvement in one intelligence can only improve performance on a meaningful intelligence test guarantees correlation between the intelligences. "g" just tends to be the combination of basis intelligences that has the highest correlation with scores on intelligence tests. <br /><br />One could theoretically create a basis of intelligence vectors that are orthogonal to each other, but that would necessitate the existence of tests where the [b], [c], etc. vectors are orthogonal to each other (i.e. you would need some negative coefficients). <br /><br />Of course, all of this assumes that we're talking about a linear system.a Newsreadernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-23192764137171102262013-04-18T13:16:05.790-04:002013-04-18T13:16:05.790-04:00You know very well that if you managed to find tho...<i>You know very well that if you managed to find those two uncorrelated tests you could disprove g. You would partial out the correlation of P_X and a more general test and show the general test (or the first factor) is correlated to P_Y. So find the two tests.</i><br /><br />Actually it's not so simple as my toy model. Suppose that X and Y are actually correlated at say, 0.2, because both depend on nutrition. They're still mostly distinct, in that they have different genetic and/or developmental causes, but they would actually test as somewhat correlated. I'm pretty sure tasks have been found with correlations as low as 0.2 - just looking at this table from Dalliard's blog reveals quite a few:<br />http://humanvarietiesdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/wj-r_corr_matrix1.png<br /><br />If the weak positive correlation is just due to something simple like nutrition, then we've already found tests that separate X and Y,. we just don't realize it.<br /><br />So why do we care about X and Y? Because while "g" may be perfectly acceptable as an outcome measure for psychometric testing, in order to develop <i>smartification technology</i> we'll need to have a more fine-grained understanding of whether g is monocausal or multi-causal.<br /><br />And as I see it, the purpose of all science is to create useful technology, and smartification seems to be a big unexploited area.Noah Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-45102801307700982302013-04-18T06:20:25.497-04:002013-04-18T06:20:25.497-04:00Noah said:
Over the course of my academic existe...Noah said:<br /><br /><em> Over the course of my academic existence, I've often observed this dichotomy. You have the Einstein-type people who seem to visualize everything, and then you have the Heisenberg-type people would would rather use the symbols. So I've always had the intuitive hypothesis that there are different types of intelligence; that different people tend to process information in different ways, whether due to habit or nature. </em><br /><br />Goodness me the worlds a complicated place, isnt it? How can a thing be one way, and yet another way at the same time. Its just a "buzzing and blooming confusion".<br /><br />Thats why we pay smart people above average wages, so they can take all this complication and reduce it to manageable proportion, easily digestible by dummies.<br /><br />"g" is not a real observable entity like a cell or a star. Its a construct whose sole purpose is to predict behaviour, in this case intelligent behaviour across a variety of domains.<br /><br />"g" means people who are smarter than average at one thing (writing) will also probably be smarter than average at another thing (sums). Sort of like someone who is good at one sport (football) will likely be good at another sport (basketball).<br /><br />Its worth remembering that Einstein, possessed of an unbeatable physical intuition, was no slouch at writing. And Heisneberg, the virtuoso at mathematical formalism, was also an accomplished pianist.<br /><br />Of course "g" works at higher scales. Smart countries such as England and Japan, seem to be smart at a wide variety of domains, making machines, doing sums, designing vehicles and so on. This could be just cultural tradition or it could be natural incarnation. Either way the g factor is highly heritable.<br /><br />This was all laid out nearly two generations ago by Jensen. And all the huffing & puffing by Gould & Cosma will not make a whit of difference. Nature cannot be fooled. <br /><br />Its not that hard to figure out. But clever-silly eggheads like Cosma & Noah like to complicate things. Which prompts the question: Why? No doubt to give themselves something to do that makes them look better than bad people like Jensen, Steve Sailer & me, apparently.jack strocchihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17534084770633227131noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-41432180073888385072013-04-18T00:31:19.361-04:002013-04-18T00:31:19.361-04:00Oh please. The US has richly funded public educat...Oh please. The US has richly funded public education. Urban districts quite often spend more. (For example, my suburban Seattle district spends a couple thousands dollars less per student than the Seattle schools.) Washington DC is probably the most expensive large district in the nation, spending in the high teens per student annually ... and is not known for its impressive results. Equal funding for all students is fine by me. (It would force a bunch of bloated big districts to lay off edu-blob bureaucrats.) But it would do nothing but highlight how much "good schools" simply means good students, from good parents. <br /><br />Food is cheap in America, this is a nation where the poor people are fat, unprecedented in human history. The fast food everyone decries--say a hamburger--has plenty of calories and protein for proper development. The very early age nutrition is obviously breast milk. Yes, more poor women should breast feed. But nutrition is not the problem.<br /><br />Stable environments are created by ... parents. The state is not going to love you like your parents. It *can not* love you like your parents can. It can not create<br />"stability" amid social wreckage--other than perhaps the "stability" of the orphanage.<br /><br />I agree on shared common purpose, but this is something that comes from religion and culture--things that allow people to actually belong, that give their lives meaning and purpose. The left has made nothing but war on them. For instance currently--in evil co-operation with the cheap labor lobby--pushing amnesty to further destroy the whole concept of an American nation with an "American people". With utter contempt for the very idea of a people, a nation, I don't know exactly what the leftist "a shared sense of common purpose" is ... other than buzz words to allow a bunch of petty totalitarian bureaucrats bossing everyone around. Yuck.<br /><br />Our problem is hardly "social darwinism", that's laughable.<br />Our problem is we've seen the rise of a giant WallStreet-Washington rent-seeking, parasitic blob--finance, lawyering, lobbying, bureaucrats, journo-hacks, welfare, grantees, academic hacks--that sucks up the hard work of the ever shrinking fraction of hard working, actually productive Americans... while holding them in contempt and seeking to destroy their nation.<br /><br />As to intelligence, it's mostly--over half--flat out genetic. (If you don't think so, then you must think evolution somehow "stopped working" precisely when humans created environments where "success"--and hence reproduction--was ever more heavily based on intelligently navigating a more complex environment (agriculture, trade, civilization, written language, money, bureaucracy ...) This idea is simply ludicrous and non-scientific. Almost all human evolution and selection the last 20,000 or so years has precisely been in mental traits--intelligence, conscientiousness, time-preference, cooperation, etc. And with environments changing so fast it's been evolution on steroids.<br /><br />But now rather than "social darwinism" (laughable--get a clue!) we have something like the reverse. The traditional "social darwinism" that gave a strong reproductive advantage to the intelligent and well behaved enabling us to become smarter and more cooperative and create this highly productive and prosperous society ... is gone. Welfare and feminism have rolled it back. College educated women have *fewer* children than the poor. And due to our hostile elites we're topping that by flooding the nation with less intelligent (and sometimes hostile) foreign peoples. Of course when that results in yet more poverty and inequality--along with crappy schools and slow growth--someone will shout about "educational equity" and "nutrition" and "social darwinism". <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Gilroy57noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-66440575927557150182013-04-17T23:08:17.925-04:002013-04-17T23:08:17.925-04:00"Now suppose that by luck, we did manage to f..."Now suppose that by luck, we did manage to find "pure" tests for the X and Y. In other words:<br /><br />P_xi = a + b_x * X_i + e_xi<br />P_yi = a + c_y * Y_i + e_yi"<br /><br />You know very well that if you managed to find those two uncorrelated tests you could disprove g. You would partial out the correlation of P_X and a more general test and show the general test (or the first factor) is correlated to P_Y. So find the two tests.<br />Statsquatchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17817921893921527627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-37642492053652005082013-04-16T00:27:01.875-04:002013-04-16T00:27:01.875-04:00Actually, there is rather a lot of evidence that p...Actually, there is rather a lot of evidence that personality traits do predict success in life. Personality traits are a bit more malleable than IQ, especially in early age intervention, and the effects do not seem to fade out as entirely during adulthood as the IQ effects of early intervention. <br /><br />James Heckman does a lot of work on the effects and ROI of early intervention. The results are very encouraging. <br /><br />Here is a recent - April 15, 2013 - paper by Gensowski, reanalyzing the Terman study of high IQ people born in the early 1920's. I'm unable to critique the analysis methods used; they *sound* good to me. http://home.uchicago.edu/~mgensowski/research/Terman/Terman.pdf<br /><br />Gensowski shows that, for this cohort, men who were extroverted, conscientious and less agreeable were likely to earn more. Even for this very high IQ cohort of men, higher IQ meant greater success. <br /><br />There is a lot of recent research on the topic of personality traits and success. I just picked yesterday's paper because it's fun to cite something so recent. JaneWalerudhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01830725022725936576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-49649133141434576652013-04-15T10:35:47.716-04:002013-04-15T10:35:47.716-04:00MBTI can help explain the fundamentally different ...MBTI can help explain the fundamentally different ways in which people like to think. As an Intuitive Perceiver, like Einstein (INTP) , I naturally prefer thinking visually. A Sensing Judger would be more inclined towards the explicit mathematical thinking method.Remconoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-57760336793237215972013-04-15T04:38:20.728-04:002013-04-15T04:38:20.728-04:00Dear Noah:
You ask how can Einstein be smart visu...Dear Noah:<br /><br />You ask how can Einstein be smart visually and Heisenberg be smart symbolically, yet a g factor still exist. Well, how can a glass be half full and half empty at the same time? <br /><br />You might find my 1998 review of Arthur Jensen's "The g Factor" helpful thinking through some of the paradoxes involving the g factor:<br /><br />http://www.isteve.com/jensen.htm<br /><br />Best wishes,<br />SteveSteve Sailerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11920109042402850214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-74550879822709168612013-04-15T04:18:17.105-04:002013-04-15T04:18:17.105-04:00***. I am a radical egalitarian, but none of the p...***. I am a radical egalitarian, but none of the policies I support for promoting an equal society have the slightest connection with views about the innate cognitive capacities of human beings.***<br /><br />@ Dan Kervick,<br /><br />To promote an equal society isn't it useful to understand the causes of inequality? Utopian ideas aren't going to help anyone. Also, if you don't know the causes then the wrong factors (or people) can get blamed (eg. teachers). <br /><br />Liberals like Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have written on this subject. Singer, for example points out that a 'A Darwinian Left' would not:<br /><br />• Assume that all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression or social conditioning. Some will be, but this cannot be assumed in every case;<br /><br />http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1999----02.htmMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01133142115539961665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-13411373454636195132013-04-15T02:26:49.694-04:002013-04-15T02:26:49.694-04:00***How could the knowledge that he's black and...***How could the knowledge that he's black and I'm white possibly add any information to the test result???***<br /><br />@ Noah,<br /><br />Daniel Seligman addressed this in his book 'The IQ Controversy". It's relevant to the extent that there are policies that discriminate in favour of individuals on the basis of group membership. The justification for those policies tends to be that there are statistical discrepancies. <br /><br />Those discrepancies are caused by some external factor (eg. discrimination, institutional bias, terrible public schools etc). So it is morally justifiable to discriminate in favour of individuals from the underrepresented group. The Race Relations Commissioner in NZ has previously suggested exactly this.<br /><br />If group disparities are a policy concern (which they clearly are in terms of education for starters) then you need to investigate causation to formulate a policy response, no? Also, it may be relevant to the moral quesstion of whether counter discrimination is justified?Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01133142115539961665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-48521865208467467352013-04-15T02:15:42.684-04:002013-04-15T02:15:42.684-04:00Apparently not in terms of science and engineering...Apparently not in terms of science and engineering? <br /><br />http://infoproc.blogspot.co.nz/2009/11/pinker-on-gladwell.htmlMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01133142115539961665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-16241158068102094002013-04-14T14:21:02.126-04:002013-04-14T14:21:02.126-04:00There are further exchanges between John Fuerst
(...There are further exchanges between John Fuerst<br /> ('Unknown') and myself at the HV thread, which I won't duplicate here.Macrobiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09188456616686757899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-72124871553158733512013-04-13T14:49:31.059-04:002013-04-13T14:49:31.059-04:00Fleshing out my though a bit — it seems to me that...Fleshing out my though a bit — it seems to me that ‘IQ’ is just voting theory turned on its side, so to speak. Suppose we have an island with 2000 people and 7 policy alternatives. We form a matrix with 7 rows and 2000 columns. Each column contains the preference (a rank from 1 to 7) of each ‘voter’. Along the right hand side, we have a social welfare function that computes the social (global island) utility of that alternative. Under suitable assumptions, there is a single voter whose preferences must mirror the social welfare function. Choosing him for dictator is superior to any voting scheme, so far as directly selecting the highest social welfare for the island is concerned.<br /><br />Now, instead of making the people the columns, make them the rows — that is we have 7 people and give them a battery of IQ tests consisting of 2000 questions total. Along the right hand column, write down their true IQ score — to the ‘global intelligence’ of each of the 7 test takers in fact known, but we wish to rank the individuals without knowing it using some computation based on their answers or perhaps additional information.<br /><br />For each question on each test, we can under suitable assumptions rank the value of that question, ordinal-ly, for each of the 7 individuals — and assuredly each question has economic value to them, since the higher their ‘bundle of scores’ subject to their ‘intelligence constraint’ the better adapted to life they are, which is a sort of utility. Therefore we have columns that are permutations of the numbers 1-7.<br /><br />Again, under suitable assumptions, there is a single question on a single test the value of answering which exactly mimics the IQ ranking. Call it the Dictator Question. That is, IQ would seem to be a mirror of ‘ordinal social welfare’, when we think of people as ‘adaptive policy alternatives’ in an evolutionary situation, and the situations they face — modelled in tests — as the ‘individuals’. The Dictator Question plays the role of a ‘representative agent’ I guess — in the sense that a test replicating it many times would correctly model the expectations of administering a battery of tests to a population.<br />Macrobiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09188456616686757899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-30458015742692731132013-04-13T00:08:54.441-04:002013-04-13T00:08:54.441-04:00A comment of mine added lately to the HV thread, t...A comment of mine added lately to the HV thread, that may resonate more with economists than statisticians:<br /><br />Exceedingly interesting. That does make me think that the claim for unitary g must be analogous to what, in Economics, is called GARP — that is, the existence of a unitary utility function that can rationalise the test data, in the sense of Discrete Choice theory — a sort of Generalised Axiom of Revealed Intelligence.<br /><br />Has there been any work along those lines? Maybe it’s time to get Hal Varian involved. I can see that if we ask ‘what is the economic value of a question on an IQ test to the individual, that theory heterogeneous variability allows them to ‘punch above their weight’ on, might be an excellent way to find distributional evidence in the data for the theory. Such situations are not only extremely rare — they are Generalised Extremely *Valuable* to the individual in question, given the economic value of the test!<br />Macrobiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09188456616686757899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-86749661509387734662013-04-12T17:33:05.904-04:002013-04-12T17:33:05.904-04:00"That would result in a positive correlation ..."That would result in a positive correlation between all simple information-processing tasks.."<br /><br />This is merely a variant of the sampling model. For a good discussion of the main models and their limitations refer to: Van Der Maas, et al. (2006). A dynamical model of general intelligence: The positive manifold of intelligence by mutualism.<br /><br />"(Final note: Looking through "Dalliard's" blog, I see that most of it is an attempt to prove that black people are dumber than white people. Sigh..."<br /><br />You're being overly disingenuous, here. Number 4 on the top 10 list of social science "grand challenge questions that are both foundational and transformative" is: "How do we reduce the ‘skill gap’ between black and white people in America?" (Giles, 2011). That "skill gap" is none other than the general mental ability gap. <br />This differential sometimes also goes under the name of the "achievement gap" (in context to education) and the "human capital gap" (in context to economics), but it's one and the same. I find it incredible that you would play the "Uh, duh" game -- but I guess I'm not overly surprised. <br /><br />Now, specifically in reply to your statement, HV is not devoted to proving "that black people are dumber than white people". If "dumber" means "less generally intelligent, on average" doing so would be unbearably redundant -- since this is a well established fact -- at least if we understand "general intelligence" in terms of the positive manifold. One of the many questions which we are interested in exploring is: "Why?" And what makes our approach relatively unique is that we are willing to indulge in a behavioral genetic perspective, a perspective which is well supported -- see, for example: Rowe, D. C., & Cleveland, H. H. (1996). Academic achievement in blacks and whites: are the developmental processes similar?. Intelligence, 23(3), 205-228.<br /><br />You say: "Well that is bullshit, certainly. But you don't need to prove that black people are dumber than white people to see that "unequal outcomes" is a bad guide to policy."<br /><br />Again, that there is a large mean difference in general metal ability is a fact. The question is: "Why?" The first order relevance is: "This difference accounts for outcome disparities." And the second order relevance is: "Many people find these disparities to be worthy of investigation." Is this irrational of them -- and us along with? This is where I would disagree with you. If the racial intelligence gap -- which underlies most outcome disparities -- is the product of historic discrimination, as commonly thought in some quarters, than it seems reasonable to approach it differently than if it is largely the product of genetic differences (as are the gaps between arbitrarily defined populations (e.g., booger eaters versus non booger eaters), given the h^2 of g in the US). This is where the interest in the question comes from. I'm sure that if you didn't have your head so far up your ass you might, if you tried really hard, be able to recognize this. But maybe not. <br /><br /> John Fuersthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14608519913410960562noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-91353223883913112982013-04-12T11:09:58.379-04:002013-04-12T11:09:58.379-04:00Intrinsic characteristics: Temperament, intelligen...Intrinsic characteristics: Temperament, intelligence to an extent, etc. Fraternal twins & siblings born closely together can and do end up going down very different paths in life.<br /><br />Environment does not determine everything.Dohsanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07884148005077602324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-13996226287542154542013-04-12T11:04:16.023-04:002013-04-12T11:04:16.023-04:00Leon Kautsky said:
*Approvingly cited, I wanted to...<b>Leon Kautsky said:</b><br /><i>*Approvingly cited, I wanted to say.</i><br /><br />Skimming through the first 10 results, none of them cite The Bell Curve to primarily criticize it. The only criticism I found was in RA Gordon's article which while expressing agreement with a number of it's points, criticizes Herrnstein & Murray for under-estimating the role g plays as a causal mechanism for racial differences in socio-economic outcomes, which is essentially a criticism from the opposite direction than how it was primarily attacked in the mainstream press. I won't bother going through the next 174 papers, but since the Google results are organized around most cited articles being listed first, I think it is a pretty good example of the general trend within the psychometric literature.<br /><br />B.B.B.B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00579154174541195967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-57392784675706367182013-04-12T08:01:35.271-04:002013-04-12T08:01:35.271-04:00Leon Kautsky said:
the Bell Curve... is not typica...<b>Leon Kautsky said:</b><br /><i>the Bell Curve... is not typically cited in modern psychometric research.</i><br /><br /><a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=%22Intelligence%22+OR+%22Personality+and+Individual+Differences%22&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0%2C5&cites=5276005421700540498&scipsc=" rel="nofollow">That's not true</a>.<br /><br />B.B.B.B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00579154174541195967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-55257936724568093982013-04-12T06:03:25.486-04:002013-04-12T06:03:25.486-04:00Dohsan, out of curiousity, once you've account...Dohsan, out of curiousity, once you've accounted for the parents you are born to, and environment, and the economic conditions where and when you work, what else is there? <br /><br />I assume you also include such obvious environmental conditions as not being killed in a war while you are growing up.Tracy Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08999246551652981965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-63381775951637323372013-04-12T05:38:53.494-04:002013-04-12T05:38:53.494-04:00" Lots of it can be luck, but persistence, so..." Lots of it can be luck, but persistence, sociability, inborn vigor and high energy levels, bloodymindedness, and the ability to self-motivate seem to be more important than pure G intelligence. If only we could increase THOSE!"<br /><br />You want more "bloodymindedness"? Could be translated as "stubbornness" - but also "ruthlessness". I'm not sure that ability to climb heirarchies (i.e. success) translates exactly into productiveness. Some great people in history, were at the time unsucessful.reasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958786975015285323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-87469586333536132012013-04-11T23:06:19.382-04:002013-04-11T23:06:19.382-04:00>Ignorance? There's no "literature&quo...>Ignorance? There's no "literature" that proves your policy ideas are right, dude.<br /><br />"The Literature" actually shows the opposite of what he's saying...even The Bell Curve!<br /><br />After nattering on about the importance of IQ for overall success in life for hundreds of pages, they cram they cram the actual quantitative research they did into the appendix and speak little of it. <br /><br />It's an impressive-enough looking wall of numbers to a layman, but the results hardly help their case: logistic regressions of success in life by a variety of measures predicted by IQ scores.<br /><br />The results? R-squared values ranging from 0.00 to 0.05. Utterly pathetic.jjrsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-10902385884849285132013-04-11T23:06:02.162-04:002013-04-11T23:06:02.162-04:00This is certainly false in the extremist case (wha...This is certainly false in the extremist case (what possibility for egalitarianism do other species with differing cognitive capacities have?). <br /><br />But I'm unaware of what your policy recs might be and can make no more comment except: in the world we live in, with current law and current priorities, it is an important topic.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15400382660502823241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-9746344721432158722013-04-11T22:36:34.708-04:002013-04-11T22:36:34.708-04:00I don't agree. I am a radical egalitarian, bu...I don't agree. I am a radical egalitarian, but none of the policies I support for promoting an equal society have the slightest connection with views about the innate cognitive capacities of human beings.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-31770237393210081242013-04-11T22:16:23.490-04:002013-04-11T22:16:23.490-04:00"I really don't see why we need any "..."I really don't see why we need any "dispassionate analysis" in this area. It's really not all that important, except to people who are trying to pursue invidious agendas."<br /><br />At first I used to believe something like this, however these facts are important for thinking clearly about the effects of affirmative action, discriminative stop and frisk policies and "disparate impact" laws/lawsuits. <br /><br />If we lived in a world that did not explicitly discriminate on the basis race with a particular policy goal in mind (countering implicit discrimination), then these facts would become less important.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15400382660502823241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-46352903171437862232013-04-11T22:04:16.954-04:002013-04-11T22:04:16.954-04:00I really don't see why we need any "dispa...I really don't see why we need any "dispassionate analysis" in this area. It's really not all that important, except to people who are trying to pursue invidious agendas.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com